T'Northern Powerhouse?

A bod who was captioned as ‘Minister for the Northern Powerhouse’ appeared on a local TV programme the other day.  Perhaps the BBC were having a laugh or maybe it was some sort of prank where someone wins a bet by pretending to be someone that doesn’t exist in order to get on the telly.  The brief was simple enough in this case it seems – being a bloke with nothing to say.  Might try it myself at some point.  The subject might have been railways.  This is the place where there are hardly any trains and hardly anyone can afford to use them but it’s OK because they’re about to spend x pounds on station improvements.  Mm…at least there’ll be a tram running down the bottom of my road by 2007.  Though that’ll be in the same world as the one where they have a Minister for the Northern Powerhouse…