$125,000 is certain to once again open up the question of whether Bermuda should have full-time Cabinet Ministers.

Mrs. Browne Evans will retain her MP's salary of $32,000 and will then be paid the balance to bring her up to the same level as the previous non-political Attorney General.

The salary -- roughly double what her Cabinet colleagues receive -- has been justified on the grounds that the post will require that she close her own legal chambers and that she will be a full-time AG.

This is understandable; clearly she could not continue her own legal practice while acting as the Government's chief legal advisor.

And it may be true that she will now be a full-time employee of the Government, although it should be noted her responsibilities will be somewhat different from her predecessor, who had responsibility for criminal prosecutions where she does not. On the other hand, Mrs. Browne Evans will be required to give legal opinions in the House of Assembly, where Mr. Mottley could not, although he did advise the Cabinet.

Still, it is likely that Mrs. Browne Evans will be working full time. That is little different from many other Cabinet Ministers, who have in the past 20 years found more and more of their time consumed with Government business.

Few would dispute that the days of MPs being paid a shilling a sitting are long over. So is the idea that the privilege of service in the legislature is payment enough; this was a nice conceit in the days of the restricted franchise when only the wealthy could win a seat, but no-one should be disqualified from running for the House or sitting in Cabinet today because the financial sacrifice would be too great.

On the other hand, Ministries require different levels of attention. Health and Family Services, for example, requires much more attention than Legislative Affairs.

The problem comes in deciding which Ministers are full time and how much they should be paid.

If Cabinet Ministers were to be paid as full-time officeholders, it would make sense for them to receive the same salary as the top civil servant in their respective Ministries.

It would also make sense for a number of the Ministries to be merged in order for them to be full-time posts -- that would hold down costs and assure the public that they are getting their money's worth out of the Ministers.

EATING CROW EDT Eating crow You would have thought that The Royal Gazette would have learned its lesson by now and avoided declaring anything as a first in Bermuda, but recently we got it wrong again -- not once, but twice in the same week.

Our declaration that Lois Browne Evans was the first political Attorney General was incorrect, a sharp-eyed reader has pointed out. MCPs were frequently Attorney Generals in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, so Mrs.

Browne Evans can only claim to be the first political Attorney General since the advent of party politics in 1968. She is, however, the first woman AG.

We also reported that Opposition Leader Pamela Gordon and Patricia Gordon Pamplin were the first sisters to sit in the House of Assembly -- wrong again.

Sisters Gloria McPhee and Helene Brown were both elected to the House of Assembly in 1968 in what is believed to have been the first time that two sisters sat in the same legislature in the entire Commonwealth.