Clare Short: My week in media
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Your support makes all the difference.Last week I read ...
I always read the FT and The Independent. I read The Guardian from the age of 13 until a few years ago. It had become so Blairite I couldn't stand it any more and I switched my affections to The Independent, which I find very brave and stimulating. I think its front pages are wonderful and the way it's taken on Iraq, the environment and civil liberties is admirable.
I saw Bono's edition on Tuesday. I've lived in that world of HIV and Aids campaigning and worked with Bono, and of course it is useful to draw further awareness to the issue. But just saying that there are cheap drugs is not enough. People have got to have access to basic healthcare systems. The FT covers the international economy and development in countries across the world in a way that I find really useful and interesting. There's been a drop in the dollar and a drop in the stock exchange, and then it lifted again. The big question is, is there going to be some kind of global recession? I think the judgement is, not immediately, but it will come.
I get the New Statesman, and the strongest article last week was on Paul Wolfowitz ("The worst man in the world?") and what he's doing to the World Bank. Look at what he did with Iraq. Now he's been put into the World Bank, which is meant to promote equality and development, and he seems to be having a destructive effect there too. I think a lot of people don't know what's going on and it's good to draw it to people's attention.
Last week I watched ...
Have I Got News For You, partly because I'd agreed to go on it but couldn't make any of the dates. Diane Abbott was on, and I thought maybe I'd been wise not to go on it. Like most politicians I don't watch much television but I watched Dan Cruikshank's Marvels of the Modern World. It was very interesting but depressing because modernism ended with great big horrible blocks of flats.
Last week I listened to ...
I have a radio in the bedroom, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen, all tuned to Radio 4. The Today programme is exasperating. I like the post-9 o'clock programmes like In Our Time. Last week it was on John Stuart Mill, who turned out Utilitarianism and On Liberty. He was one of my darlings from my student days.
Clare Short MP will speak in the Hay Festival's Greenpeace Debate on Saturday - Is there a rationale for continuing Britain's nuclear force in the 21st century?
Interview by Sophie Morris
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