It takes two to pork-barrel

From this week's running of the Newfoundland Weekly Separatist:

The mayor of St. John’s says strategic considerations take a back seat to politics when it comes to the Royal Canadian Navy’s deployment on Canada’s East Coast.

When asked why Halifax is the base of the entire Atlantic fleet, Andy Wells is blunt.

“Halifax has more votes,” the mayor tells The Independent.

(Didn't occur to anyone to ask, say, the Navy, that question?)

Anyway... further along, His Worship the Tie-betand and Newfoundland Nationalist utters this howler:

“These guys are full of bull. They sold us down the river on the equalization,” says Wells, referring to the provinces’ federal MPs — Loyola Hearn, Norm Doyle and Manning.

“They’re old-style pork barrellers. I mean, ‘whatever you can bring back to keep the natives happy, b’y, that’s what we gotta do.’ That’s the mentality,” he says. “What they are going to try and do now is offer us a few candies, I suppose.

Andy Wells wants a beefed-up navy presence in Newfoundland, all the way from Fort Amherst to Riverhead, because, well, because.

He wants the navy in, for the same reason his predecessors, in the late 19th century, didn't want the British military out: Andy Wells is an old-style pork barrellee.