I am losing count of the Gs. Yesterday we had the G8 + G5 (including China and India) + 1. The 1 was Egypt.
Today we have the G8 + 9 + 7, which includes African nations and international institutions like the UN, but perhaps we should take away 1 from that list – so G8 + 9 + 7 – 1, because the Chinese president flew home to handle riots on day one of this summit.
Still, amid handwringing over whether the G8 has lost its potency, because power is shifting from the old world powers to the new, the arguments over what to call this talkfest seem pretty academic to me – as long as everybody who matters agrees to show up and does not mind being a +1, or in China’s case, a – 1.
Even Colonel Gadaffi of Libya is here today as a + 1, looking like an ageing rockstar, wearing a white suit with so many military ranks and honours pinned to his chest – most of which he has presumably awarded himself – that they are in danger of falling off
The Italians have pulled this summit off so far, but only just. They spent $75 million converting a police barracks – where I am now – into the summit venue with a tented media centre attached. And this is on top of the many more millions they spent on the original summit venue, in Sardinia, where the plan was to keep the media an hour’s ferry ride away from the leaders themselves.
This is much better. Yesterday it took us about five minutes to be escorted to interview Gordon Brown: one question each, though good reporters are naughty people and some managed to get away with asking two.
There have been a few hiccups for the 3,700 journalists registered to attend. There are no men’s urinals. Not any that I can find, anyway. The unisex loos have run out of toilet paper and those bathrooms which actually have sinks don’t necessarily have water coming out of the taps.
But such complaints seem petty in comparison with the plight of L’Aquila’s earthquake victims, whose blue tents are dotted all over town. On one hillside overlooking a car park the town’s residents have written a message to the world, riffing on Barack Obama himself: “yes we camp”, it says.