It seems as if there is a summit a week on something or other. The G 20 was just held in Australia. These summits are very costly and of questionable value.
The agendas for the G 20 summits are hammered out months before the event. Many hoops are jumped through in order to come up with an agenda. Some topics are off limits because for some countries the topic is untouchable. Some topics are pushed by a country to advance it's own agenda. So by the time an agenda is agreed upon it's pretty mild. The summit happens. Everybody dances around the issue. Another dance takes place to produce a statement as to what was agreed upon. So the end of the summit comes up with some very bland statements and everybody goes home and does nothing.
Now the G 20 wasting their time, would be fine with me but a dump truck of money is spent to prepare, operate and close the summit. Many dump trucks of money are spent on security. Apparently some people don't like these guys and would do them harm. So G 20 guys, look at yourselves and see why some people don't like you.
Canada hosted one of these events and an enormous amount of money was spent on security and fine decorations. Many projects were constructed and I suspicion that the contractors returned money to the governing party as the price of some simple projects was enormous.
To compound matters there is a G 7 and a G 8.
It's also a little sickening to see that the summit is mostly about photo opportunities. There are group pictures and many other photos lined up with symbolic back grounds. The leaders go home and display many pictures of themselves.
Usually I'm pretty open minded about what goes on with our politicians, but the summit thing goes past my open mindedness.
Now I'm sure most of you don't give a hoot or follow all the G's. Some of you probably didn't read this far. That's okay. I don't blame you.
So let's tell these guys to stay home and get some work done.
So there's my rant for the month!
