interesting article in the Guardian:

"Why our landed gentry are so desperate to stay in the EU"

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/apr/21/why-our-landed-gentry-are-so-desperate-t...

Farms are not called “uneconomic” in the same way that pits and factories are. So every British household coughs up about £250 a year and hands it over to the EU, which hands it over to people like the Duke of Westminster – already worth £7bn himself. In 2011, the duke received £748,716 in EU subsidies for his various estates. So, too, Saudi Prince Bandar (he of the dodgy al-Yamamah arms deal), who pocketed £273,905 of EU money for his estate in Oxfordshire. The common agricultural policy is socialism for the rich. It’s a mechanism to buttress the aristocracy – who own a third of the land in this country – from the chill winds of economic liberalism.