Barometer | 11 June 2015

Forty years on

The forthcoming EU referendum has rekindled memories of the in-out Common Market referendum of 1975. But it seems a strange looking-glass world now. — Mrs Thatcher was a keen ‘yes’ campaigner, sporting a jumper with the flags of EC member states. Neil Kinnock campaigned for a British exit. The SNP and Plaid Cymru campaigned to leave the EC, the former calling it a ‘dangerous experiment in gross over-centralisation’. — The worry then was that England would vote to stay while Scotland and Wales would vote to leave. — But the most surprising supporters now seem the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the latter declaring after the ‘yes’ vote had been confirmed that Britain was now ‘irrevocably’ European.

Making ends meet

Conservative MPs Andrew Bridgen and Mark Field defended their 10 per cent pay rise, the latter saying that being elected to parliament was a ‘bit like becoming a vicar’. What do both MPs earn extra to their supposedly full-time job in the House of Commons?

ANDREW BRIDGEN

£7,773 per monthfor 12 hours work (£647 per hour) as non-executive chairman of AB Produce.

MARK FIELD

£500 an houradvising the London School of Commerce.