Labour’s outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury left his successors a note, warning there was “no money left”, writes our Dudley man Mark Mudie.

No more welcome, but arguably more sinister, than Liam Byrne’s ill-advised quip were the ticking timebombs the last government deposited outside council chambers across the country on its way out of office.

The clock is ticking to the detonation date, when budgets will be blown apart and dazed officers left to salvage the scraps.

We in the media await the Government’s Spending Review on October 20 with a morbid fascination. Millions of public sector workers await the fallout with terrified trepidation.

Among them are Dudley’s 15,000 council staff. Bosses have confirmed the axe will fall, with “significant” job losses expected at the authority.

However it emerged this week the axeman will be lurking round the corner, watching their every move, before deciding where to make the chop. Employees will face a points-based evaluation to determine whether they will keep their jobs.

Their performance will determine their ability to put food on their families’ tables, creating the most brutal of working environments.

For those who survive the cull, there may be a pay cut, bosses warn. Or longer hours. It seems no-one at the Council House will escape unscathed.

The councillors who will have to stalk the corridors wielding their scythes are all too aware of the desperation of the situation. They are genuinely anguished about the grim responsibility which they will have to bear.

They realise, too, that the real victims of Labour’s legacy are the legions of workers recruited to the bloated bureaucracy of Blair and Brown in the boom years.

Now Britain is bust, it is they who must pay the price. It is they who will have to rebuild their lives from the rubble which Brown’s bombs leave behind.

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The latest round of talks between Muslim and council leaders to try and resolve Dudley’s protracted mosque saga is imminent. It will be the first time they have got round the table since it emerged the Castle Hill alternative to Hall Street has fallen through.

If there is another suitable site, council leader Anne Millward says she is not aware of any. With all sides seemingly agreed Hall Street would be a last option, we can only hope officers have stumbled across one.

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Amid all the gloom, a refreshing ‘and finally’ footnote to end on. Stourbridge salsa granny Paddy Jones has shimmied into the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest salsa acrobatic dancer on the planet. A hearty congratulations to her.