They said it would hurt. They warned the axe would fall. And yet somehow, the scale of the coalition cuts has left us all shellshocked, writes our Dudley man Mark Mudie.

Perhaps it is the frenzied flurry of announcements, each accompanied by a fresh set of dizzying data. ‘Trillions trimmed’ here; ‘billions borrowed’ there.

Or perhaps, after the years of plenty, the seismic shift in perspective is taking a while to sink in. More than a decade of Labour profligacy has, quite naturally, effected a cultural change, an expectation of expense, which will take some time to erode.

To look around Dudley’s scorched earth post-recession landscape is to survey the troubled terrain of a borough which mostly missed out on this reckless era of government by blank cheque.

Its North Priory estate has been razed to the ground but the smart homes which were due to rise from the rubble remain a distant hope, the scheme one of the many victims of the new Age of Austerity.

Government cuts also threaten the £10million revamp of Dudley Zoo, a flagship project council and leisure bosses want to fast-track to encourage investment elsewhere.

The list goes on. A £16million upgrade of Brierley Hill’s ailing town centre, like the zoo plan, is dependent on cash from abolition haunted Advantage West Midlands. Stourbridge College needs £3million for its new campus.

And parents, staff and governors hoping their school would be the next to receive a first class facelift look sure to be disappointed. When Dudley missed out on £80million under the Building Schools for the Future programme in March, many feared it could prove the last chance. This week’s confirmation BSF is to be scaled back will only heighten those fears.

There will be more casualties as messrs Cameron and Clegg swing their scythes. The shockwaves will reverberate beyond the immediate victims – as one senior Dudley politician said this week, what will happen to the building trade as development after development is consigned to the scrapheap?

These are troubling times. As they go about their unpopular business, ministers have accused their predecessors of failing to mend the roof while the sun was shining.

We can only hope there will be some money left so Dudley can dare to dream when the rain stops falling.

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In such a gloomy climate, a good pint and hearty meal are two of life’s little pleasures which warm the heart. So Dudley Man was dismayed to hear of the demise of two of the three Mad O’Rourke’s pubs on our patch. We hope this iconic Black Country brand can ride out the storm.

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To South Africa (and back). One of our circulation lads won the trip of a lifetime to the World Cup and took in the epic Ghana v Uruguay game at the striking Soccer City stadium.
He brought a vuvuzela back, and it is just as annoying as it sounds on the TV.
Still not quite as annoying as multi-millionaire flop footballers whingeing they were ‘bored’ at their luxury training camp, though…