Is our MoD a credit crunch-free zone?

Hard on the heels of spending a staggering £422m on eight Chinooks that have still never flown, the first-class brains in our MoD have come up with another ruse: a “super hangar” built at a cost of £113m in Wales to provide engineering services for the RAF. Splendid!

Not so fast. No engineering has taken place inside the beast, and it is almost empty. The remarkable National Audit Office has alerted us to this expenditure this very morning.

Oh, and just in case you thought the credit crunch might have the slightest impact on deployments on the battlefield, the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has signalled that despite politicians telling us there are no plans at present to increase the UK force in Afghanistan, Britain could be about to send another 2,000 personnel.

I have not been able to come up with a costing – do let me know if you have.