It was enough to make you choke on your artisan baguette.

I nearly spat out my Fairtrade coffee when I learned last week that not one, not two, but three of Yorkshire’s most middle-class venues could be facing closure because of Government spending cuts.

The Science Museum Group must slash its budget by 10% and Yorkshire council leaders feared this could mean the end of the line for the National Railway Museum in York, or the final reel for Bradford’s National Media Museum, or even one more pit closure for old time’s sake at the National Coal Mining Museum near Flockton.

Only a Philistine – or a southerner – would even contemplate shutting any of these three venues, which do such an excellent job bringing the past to life.

As a fully paid-up member of Yorkshire’s lentil-crunching middle class, I was horrified that these museums – all excellent and enriching places – could be threatened with closure.

I suddenly felt as if my social class was under attack, that any minute the Government would start bulldozing Hebden Bridge, carpet-bombing Saltaire and rounding up anyone who has ever spent a weekend on a drystone walling course.

And I wasn’t exactly reassured when I discovered the background of the people responsible for administering the 10% funding cut.

Of the 24 people who serve as Science Museum Group trustees or advisers, a mere 22 live in London or Cambridge.

They might be middle class, but they’re not Yorkshire middle class. I don’t imagine they spend their weekends pottering around craft stalls in former mill buildings or trudging across Pennine moorland in their best Gore-Tex.

But blow me down if my cynicism didn’t turn out to be misplaced.

Yesterday culture secretary Ed Vaizey announced that all three Yorkshire museums would remain open.

Thank goodness! That was a scary few days for the olive-chomping chattering classes of God’s Own Country.