Politicians … try to do something, or try to be looked like that they are doing something, or try to be looked like that they are trying to do something…

Summzrized from Yes, Minister/Prime Minister(My favorite political novel)

Ha ha very good. The only mising ingredient in this generic article was a ritual condemnation of Iran!!

[…] This is very evil, very funny and very spot on: Alan Beattie’s generic international organisation annual meeting column. […]

What is important is not the organisation, that cna be ridiculous, but the fact that Powers that can destroy each other (and more important, kill millions of innocents as a consequence) talk each other…So good if China joins the club.

It is just an occassion for talk.

The excuse is not important (a compromise for the year 2050…), just an excuse for informal (or not so)talk.

I’ve deleted two comments that have nothing to do with the topic.

Funny, as an occasional reader, I have found that the vast majority of the comments have nothing to do with the topic. How far from nothing does something have to be before it is deleted?

Respectfully,

allow me a bit of T.S Eliot’s poetry on this issue: (from Four Quartets: East Coker):

The captais, merchant bankers,eminent men of letters,

The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants,chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractor, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach of Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,

——————————————–

They are aphasic because they cnnot read the new script.

sorry for the typos: first line should be:

“The captains, merhant bankers, eminent men of letters”

Mr Pig,

I presume you take yourself to be the King of Spain who at a meeting adressed the president of Venezuela in those terms.

You are not the king of spain and i am not Chavez.

Therefore either make a statement about the substance of the G(X) press releases or follow your injuction to me.

Fantastic: don’t keep the juicest stuff for your blog. May I suggest you publish this as one of your weekly columns?

Great column, that should definitely be on the heading.

[…] yet, Alan then emailed Gideon with a standarised column on international institutions.  It goes like this: By reporters […]

I propose a two-step exercise to get an equally relevant statement:

Step 1: take the first first paragraph of the generic column on international organisations:

An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.

Step 2: replace a few words as follows, and then adjust the rest of the generic article accordingly:

An ineffectual [newspaper columnist] yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation [he/she]has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless [newspaper columnists].

Conclusion: Politicians and journalists feed on and mirror each other. What would the world be like without columnists? Less free. What would the world be like without international organisations and multilateral meetings? More dangerous.

I suspect that our best people are excluded from politics because they have been well-educated and/or have spent many years away from home or overseas. This is the unintended result of rising educational standards and the many job opportunities that exist globally. Politics once was related to place of birth and native village/city, but most of us no longer belong there - unless you enter politics at the age of 22 and stay at home. Staying at home is a grave handicap in the modern world.

Wonderful Gideon!!!
I have been trying to think of something to write about the G8 all day long and have come up empty.
Thank you so much for your confession!

Um, just because you reporters don’t have the imagination or journalistic skill to penetrate the inner working of international organizations hardly makes them pointless - behind the scenes (and actually in plain sight of astute observers) the structures of global governance are exerting profound effects on state behaviour and political agendas. Sure, few institutions have power to produce short-term headline-making change on their own - but rarely are any of those things the desired goal. If all these organisations were as pointless as you inferred from this lazy article, then member states honestly wouldn’t bother participating in them, and ambulance-chasing thinktanks would be choosing better targets.

Alan Beattie!…horribly funny!…so clear headed of him!…he must have slept in some yurts during his life!…world leaders should be sent to wild terrains and made to sleep in yurts during these conferences…they could collaspe them and drag them to the next conference the following year!…so many wonderful cultures and people in this world and too many political eunuchs running the show…

Lisa…if sleeping in yurts made good leaders, then Ghengiz Khan would be the most memorable of all!

For a less generic G8 commentary than Beattie’s, see Garry Kasparov in today’s FT on West’s acceptance of new Russian despotism:

“At this week’s G8 summit, George W. Bush, US president, denounced Mr Mugabe while sitting next to Mr Medvedev, whose hold on power is similarly counterfeit. The Russian security services’ methods are more subtle than machetes but our democracy is no more real than Zimbabwe’s.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e70ee6d8-4ee0-11dd-ba7c-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

[…] FT.com | Gideon Rachman’s Blog | The G8: How to write about pointless international organisations […]

i agree w/Ed S. And Ghengiz Khan *is* the most memorable! of course i just recently saw Mongol!

funny, truthful, frustrating stuff from beattie
but know hope, gentleman. i’d rather have medvedev
and putin for chai and a soccer match every few months than not; and G8 will inevitably eventually expand: this is a good thing;
international institutions infantile as of
02008.

now, cutting 50 by ‘50? wow. thanks for the leadership men.

Pacifist”Lisa…if sleeping in yurts made good leaders, then Ghengiz Khan would be the most memorable of all!”

Well he is highly memorable and one heck of a horseman! ans sleeping together in yurts would do a world of good for the G8 leaders…the press should be made to sleep in them too…

So what is the point of the post? Heads of state meet with each other all the time. The G7-8 was intended as a forum, that is all, for the major powers to discuss issues.

Are you advocating some stronger multi-national world government that is empowered to make decisions once reserved for sovereign states? Like the EU maybe? Than say so. Don’t hide behind a facade of calling a meeting impotent when it was never intended to have the powers you evidently wish it did.

[…] Gideon Rachman. Quite a few comments - it obviously struck a […]

This is possibly the most humorless collection of commenters I have ever seen on the Internet. Very entertaining!

[…] Does this sound familiar? An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies. […]

[…] The extract which follows is reproduced from Gideon Rachman’s blog at the Financial Times, one of Adam’s must read papers. This blog, along with others such as Clive Crook’s, from whence Adam first spied mention of this piece, is well worth a regular read. The FT is home also to a blog by Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist who was in NZ earlier this year. […]

[…] Via FT’s Gideon Rachman, FT’s Alan Beattie has a real time-saver—a generic column about a generic international institution: […]

What a great article, it was the highlight of my weeks FT reading! And, as someone else sort of pinted out above, what a reaction - 1/3 supportive, 1/3 serious/pompous/cryptic and 1/3 irrelevant but including, best of all, comments by people who obviously work at the UN or EU and have no sense of humour (and feel insecure enough to defend such organisations/themselves against a humourous “attack”).

[…] spot from Jonza of a template article on intergovernmental organisations from a Balliol colleague. An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning […]

I miss the Nixon years when William Safire could pen such jewels for Spiro Agnew to mouth such as his wonderfully alliterative: “naddering nabobs of negativism” or “doddering dunces of duplicity”. Those apply well to all television journalists and most heads of state in meetings such as the G8 meeting cited in this blog entry.

Mr. Beattie overdoes it in his statement, but there is much truth in it. I will now have to search for Mr. Beattie’s columns which I have not yet discovered.

Hmmm…

…to me it looks like lofty cynicism without any satirical bite.

The G8 is not even an ‘organisation’ - just a club of the few nations who presumably COULD do something about the various crises we face.

So is the joke that international organisations are just self-serving bureaucrats who should be done away with, or are they toothless talking-shops that should be given more powers/resources?

[…] The G8 summit ended with the assembled leaders pledging tough action on reducing climate change and oil crises. Superb analysis of the meeting and its ramifications can be found here. […]

[…] climate change and oil crises. Superb analysis of the meeting and its ramifications can be found here. Tullow Oil (LSE:TLW) was trading well on its Trading Statement of July 9th. Tullow announced an […]

[…] after another ineffectual G8 meeting and fresh stall-tactics from the current US administration, it’s clear that we better start […]

Gideon,

Tsk, tsk. You miss the most important part. The request for more funding!