U Who
I OBSERVE that Clare Short is a boon- doggle fancier. She is paying up — well, we are — for Unido. U Who? The United Nations Industrial Development Organisa- tion is one of the rarer and choicer speci- mens in the extensive UN range of boon- doggles. It makes a matching set with Unesco, where she popped up this week to hoist the Union Jack, explaining how nice it felt to come back home. Home for Unesco is a Paris palace, but Unido hangs out in Vienna, where it is handily located for the industrially undeveloped world. Like the Anti-Luncheon League to which Clovis Sangrail's aunt belonged, it has friends and relations who claim that it is doing such a lot of good work in a quiet way. You might wonder what the whole global process of industrial development owes to it and how we would all get along without it. That question, in fact, occurred to Lynda Chalker, who decided to test it out by cancelling Britain's subscription. Clare Short has promptly uncancelled it. There will be relief in the sachertorte salons and wiener schnitzel parlours which depend for their trade on Unido's expense accounts and tax-free salaries, for the Anti-Luncheon League would find no takers in a boon- doggle.
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