LAST orders, please, for anyone wanting a new school, hospital, college or railway line! Last orders!

Yes, just as the thirsty drinker has ten minutes left once the pub bell tolls, the clock is ticking for pupils, patients and passengers hoping for new, improved facilities.

That was the bottom line of last month’s Budget, a reality even more depressing than the headlines made by ballooning deficits and mounting debt.

The harsh truth is that money is available for capital investment for a further two years at best, before the Government slams down the shutters and cashes up the tills.

In fact, that’s the good news. If the Conservatives win next year’s General Election, the axe will fall even faster in an “austerity” Budget planned for just days after victory.

I was tempted to employ the metaphor of the train leaving the station, but, in the case of the £190m Metro-style light rail scheme planned for Teesside, I fear it never will.

A business case will be submitted soon to the Department for Transport, but a big “local contribution” is needed – and campaigners will have to move fast with the Government coffers emptying.

Similarly, what hope for secondary pupils in Darlington, North Yorkshire and parts of County Durham, who are in the slow lane for cash from the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme?

Buried in the Budget was an admission that, from next year, councils will only join the programme “in line with available resources”.

Five college rebuilding schemes, in Hartlepool, Stockton, South Tyneside, Darlington and Gateshead, are already on hold because of a cash crisis. An extra £300m in the Budget, nationwide, will not be enough for all of them.

And what about hospitals? The £416m dream of an acute hospital to serve the people of Sedgefield, Easington, Hartlepool and Stockton is exactly the sort of scheme that is vulnerable, not being due to open until 2014.

The figures are truly scary for the entire decade to come, one of public spending cuts likely to dwarf even those imposed by the Thatcher government in the Eighties.

From 2011, spending will grow by a puny 0.7 per cent a year – and then it will get even worse, with zero growth pencilled in for 2013 onwards.

The comparison with Thatcher is not entirely valid, because the spending squeeze will follow an unprecedented boom. All those schools and hospitals built in recent years need not be replaced again soon.

Nevertheless, any health chief or headteacher on the waiting list should not copy me, who always leaves his tax return until the last minute. Get that application in now.

LABOUR MPs who believe their party is doomed under Gordon Brown’s leadership will have been slitting their wrists after his dismal performance at prime minister’s questions yesterday.

The worst moment came when a Conservative backbencher asked about “a senior Whitehall boss throwing mobile phones and printers and swearing at switchboard operators”.

Every MP knew this was a jokey reference to reports that a raging Mr Brown has been chucking equipment around as his poll ratings slump – except, it seemed, Mr Brown himself. His lame response, “any complaints are dealt with in the usual manner”, brought only further howls of mockery.