My favourite website is called euforic - Europe's Forum on International Co-Operation - which gives an overview of development issues on debt, trade and a lot of emphasis on EU programmes. It provides, for instance, information on trade aid for African Caribbean and Pacific countries, and on the globalisation of trade. It's a very good site: user-friendly, speedy, topical, and written in a very accessible way. No matter what issue you're interested in, it crops up here.
There are a number of complex issues with which it deals very well:, for example, the World Trade Organisation in Seattle. It didn't just concentrate on the streets but on the nature of negotiations, the positions of the main negotiations, the role of developing countries.It's not written simply from a northern perspective. You never feel they're giving any kind of spin.
www.ft.com, www.theguardian.com
Newspapers online are equally indispensable in terms of research. There was a story yesterday we were looking at - the South Africa trade agreement with the EU - and we were able to access three pieces the FT had done in the last week. We generally look at the Guardian and the FT. The FT has a global archive, which comes in useful for us - the way we work in this parliament we specialise in areas. I'm responsible for Wales and the FT's global archive helps me access news from Wales at the touch of a key. The newspaper itself does a lot of work on trade issues. Of course, that's an important element in the EU.
In the work I do, the financial pages of Larry Elliott, Dan Atkinson, and a number of people at the Guardian who write on the issues with which I work would be natural to look at. On the other hand, it may be a feature piece - Polly Toynbee, for example - which I might refer to if I'm writing a speech. Newspapers online are useful because I can't read every paper from Caernarvon to Cardiff, but this way, I can quickly get the best of several.
