Mark Gettleson

100% Pork Constituency Guide to the 2015 Budget

Hendon has a special place in my heart. No really. My parents met there. I mourned when my favourite childhood adventure playground, Kidstop, was burnt to the ground. We even took a primary school trip to its RAF museum and wondered at the marvels of the Battle of Britain.

So I felt somewhat nostalgic at the Chancellor’s announcement of £2.5 million to secure the museum’s future.

The RAF Museum does, of course, lie in a constituency with a Conservative majority of just 106 votes, where former Labour MP and now local GLA member Andrew Dismore seems one of his party’s most likely candidates in the country to take a seat from the Tories this May.

I am not for a moment suggesting that Battle of Britain Hall is in any way undeserving of the money, but that doesn’t make the funding, at a time of austerity, any less what it is: pork.

There is a wide pattern here.

Britain’s best politics newsletters

You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Comments

Join the debate, free for a month

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first month free.

Already a subscriber? Log in