To an increasing number of people, the G8 is an anachronism. They argue that the vehicle that has brought the world from the old East West World to the new world of East West North South becomes more obviously in need of retirement every time it meets.

One of the reasons why it sustains is because it is well run, small, and boasts an effective Secretariat. The Toronto meetings of both the G8 and 20 failed to resolve the issue. There is still not the structure that rendered the G8 a success in place to provide the same service for the G20.

But there are other strange dynamics that flow from the gathering strength of the G20 as a global leadership forum. The UK, France, and the US, for example provide aid programmes in a number of the other member nations of the G20.

Amid the all-party domestic consensus surrounding the UK aid programme there is so far little discussion of the reality that one of the biggest elements of the programme flows to one of the world’s top emerging economies – India.

By far the biggest recipient of British aid anywhere in the world, India is currently experiencing economic growth of a hugely enviable 8 per cent a year. Britain is staggering along at around 1 per cent.

There can be little moral argument against a post-imperial order in which what is still one of the world’s richest economies (the UK is still the 4th biggest economy in the world, and the 6th biggest manufacturing power) giving aid to a country with 600 million of whose people rank amongst the very poorest on the planet.

The moral argument may be simple, but for how much longer will a country with growing unemployment, looming social and economic deprivation, and continuing high levels of immigration from the Indian subcontinent, accept the “ring fencing” of a budget that is devoted to assisting a country that in the long term threatens to overhaul their own?

It’s a crude point but no less real for that. In the short and medium term, Minister may have an “education job” on its own populace to maintain the highly effective UK aid programmes in Indian states like Bihar.

A balmy bank holiday weekend for sailing.

Despite the fact that my cousin Peter Snow has had a boat ever since I can remember, I don’t set sail with him enough.

This weekend reminded me of both the joys and perils of sailing. A thousand sails swept along the Solent in brisk winds. Within hours of being aboard I heard my first ever “May Day mayday” on channel 73 on the VHF radio.

An engine fire was clearly threatening to destroy a boat on the other side of the Isle of Wight, and a craft that had gone to the rescue and was urging the coastguard to move fast. Two lifeboats were converging on the catastrophe. I heard no more.

We overnighted off Shanklin, on the south side of the Isle of Wight. Never been there before, a charming little Victorian resort.

Upon landing we met an exuberant Asian family from Hayes. Their achieving daughter had just passed the 11+ into Slough grammar, her brother was already there.

We walked past the frustratingly closed Shanklin Chine – very green, with little eco systems that fill the canyons that spread inland from the cliffs. Who on earth thinks it a great idea to close them at 5pm? Even the ugly lift that carts you to the top of the cliff shuts at 6pm.

We met more Asian couples on the sea front. Ethiopians, too. I marvelled that what I had presumed to be the last redoubt of old England seemed to have become such a multicultural destination.

After a drink at a delightful depot at the bottom of the cliffs, we repaired to the boat. The breeze was rock-a-bye, and I slept one of the soundest eight-hour nights I can remember.

The next day, beetling along at seven knots in a good strong wind, your sense of disconnect from the world is complete. Somehow aboard a boat you lose all sense of time. Even the fine points of hygiene retreat.

We had to wait the tide at Cowes and moored for a walk. Coming down the gangway to the pontoon where our boat was anchored, we spotted three men in matching salmon pink pyjamas and slippers. Each had a white blanket about his shoulders. They were escorted by a policeman.

As prison is a major industry on the island, I assumed they were a prisoner transfer from Parkhurst to the mainland. I suggested as much to two cops waiting nonchalantly on the pontoon. They laughed at my suggestion. “No,” they said, “these guys sank in the winds yesterday – lost the boat.”

They had evidently nearly lost their lives with it. Poor chaps, they had been working at meticulously restoring the Tallulah, a 20-foot sailing boat with a small cabin, for the past 18 months.

On Saturday the skipper, Craig Ashall, a motor cycle workshop superviser from Porchester, and two mates, Mike Cameron, and Leroy Coxy, had put to sea in the now “all but new” craft.

Adorned with new paint, heating, full radio sets and state of the art equipment, they had left Porchester at dawn on Sunday. Ashall had insured the vessel online on Saturday.

Suddenly, just round the corner from Cowes, a gust of wind had caught the boat and capsized it, throwing them into the sea. Somehow they managed a mayday call before the boat sank.

A couple they only knew as Sue and Ben were there in minutes, but they were in the water 15 minutes before final rescue – and that water was COLD. When I caught up with them they had boarded a police launch and were enjoying a fag at the back (see photo above). They were in remarkable spirits after a night being “warmed up” in hospital – just happy to be alive.

The police were amazing. An extraordinary contrast to the G20 stories of violence and the rest. They were taking the guys all the way back to Porchester.

Divested of all their car keys, wallets, house keys and much else that now lay somewhere at the bottom of the Solent, the police had already made arrangements for getting them into their cars and homes and were going to see each of them safely back to their normal lives.

Cups of police tea were brewed even whilst I spoke to them. Lovely chaps. £15,000 of boat, 18 months of toil, and all that was left was a beautifully painted blue and white rudder (see photo below). And yet they were looking on the bright side. Will even the online insurance work?

You may have found the past few days of revelations concerning the inner workings of Downing Street, a heartbeat from the prime minister, hard to credit.

But how about this? On the day the G20 summit met in London’s Docklands, we asked people – mainly via Twitter - to keep an eye open for anyone out there possibly using the event (in the words of sacked official Jo Moore) as a “good day to bury bad news”.

Somebody entitled the head of strategic and digital communications at Downing Street, Mark Flanagan (himself presumably a heartbeat from the now former head of strategy, Damian McBride), emailed the following within an hour of our posting.

“Haven’t you people got anything better to do?”

This as the man the most urgent heartbeat away – Gordon Brown – was in that very moment hosting the most important and prestigious gathering of world leaders to meet in London since the 1940s.

Now there’s a team that’s got its priorities sorted.

Just recorded this from the ExCel Centre where today’s G20 fun and games are taking place. The video is a perfectly formed 16 seconds. Enjoy.

Welcome to the end of the earth. Welcome to the land God forgot..

I am in the ExCeL centre. But worry not, the ExCeL centre excels at nothing. It has the shared misfortune with 20 of the world’s most powerful leaders of being the place that this summit is being held.

Even in the best of times, this is a dump, a warehouse in which absurdly large events are staged. Devoid of character, nestling the City airport, it is stuck in the middle of a place that appears never to have seen a shop, never to have seen a pint pulled, never to have seen a baby born, let alone a body buried.

It is the waste tip of east London. And presumably now that the Olympic site has been cleared, basks alone as a gateway to nowhere.

Travelling in here on the security-strewn media buses, I wondered how a Mexican or a Brazilian, or indeed a German or a Frenchman would view this taste of England. Imagine if your only glimpse of Europe was this ghastly pile of metal and concrete. You would think that development meant some voyage into outer Hades.

The thought that there are 3,000 hacks here, sending postcards home, telling mum and dad they have been to Blighty and tasted of the forbidden fruits of the ExCeL centre, fills me with a real fear that this will become emblematic of Britain’s cascade through the economic meltdown.

I am hoping that my view of the otherwise charming ExCeL centre has not been coloured by the fact that it took me two and a half hours and a £110 black cab ride to get here in the small hours of the morning.

There are those who ask: where the hell is it? Rest assured, it is beyond anywhere you have ever been or would ever want to go. I asked the COI man who was organising this event, and he told me that with the shortness of notice, the scale of the operation, the nature of the threat, this was, alas, the only place in Britain that this summit could be staged.

People seem to have forgotten that in the only days the whole idea of these meetings was to gather in private, away from the maelstrom, have serious talks, and then let us know what had been concluded.

I have just emerged from the World Bank offices in Millbank and an interview with its president, Robert Zoellick. He has a formidable intellect and interesting moustache.

He too had a flyer’s cold. I told him of the benefits of squirting saline water up your nasal passages in the morning and at night. He was grateful.

He says it’s not just the fear of protectionism, but the reality. He told me a number of states – 17 at least – have already enacted protectionist measures.

He said trading levels across the world had suffered the worst fall since the first world war. He wants the IMF to monitor the present fiscal stimuli, to report forcefully every quarter on what effect it’s having, and if it’s not enough then for the G20 to sign up to another burst of stimuli down the line.

He says it’s no more optimistic than he was six months ago and that “if the politicians get it right, they could see growth toward the end of 2009, early 2010.

“But if they make the wrong decisions tomorrow at the G20 summit, the effects could be felt for the next five or six years”.

This G20 exists at so many levels. Take Brazil’s President Lula. Fearless campaigner against the carbon footprint. But having flown from Brazil to Doha and Doha to Paris, today he abandoned his plane, sending it empty to London while he took the train.

But the high spot thus far has been the Obama-Brown press conference. Brown, nervous and reading tightly from a script, Obama relaxed. The “One” has a cold.

Fascinating contrast with Bush. When he visited London there was a degree of fear in the air that something might go wrong. George W Bush didn’t exactly exude confidence. Today the atmosphere was relaxed. The Secret Service cast jokes with each other – as if Obama’s confidence enables everyone around him to relax.

There’s little doubt Brown was shirt-tailing Obama. The president is making the prime minister look good.

But whilst the talk centred on fiscal stimuli and international regulation, Obama sidestepped the formality with a reference to meeting Brown’s two boys. He said: “We talked dinosaurs and climate change.”

Obama already looks weathered by his first 70 days in office. Hillary looked on, 10ft directly in front of him, facing him. Impossible to know what was going on in her mind, save that she laughed at his jokes.

Treasury Secretary Geithner sat two away from her, rather small and greying fast. He has a worry or two on his mind.

Brown issued five tests by which we could judge success. One: regulation. Two: action to resume growth. Three: co-operation to sustain growth. Four: fight protectionism. Five: help the poor.

To watch live coverage of Barack Obama’s meeting with Gordon Brown, plus the protests in the City of London, click here.

I’m sitting the Locarno room at the Foreign Office waiting with 200 other hacks for the Obama/Brown press conference, and even in this august circumstance there’s an air of a palpable expectation.

Not of course in terms of economic breakthrough but the mere arrival of The Man.

There are American and British flags entwined on the base in this English Imperial pile, and everybody awaits with some anxiety the arrival of what is called the “travelling White House press corps”.

They are notoriously assertive and will come crashing in, seizing our preciously reserved seats. Some of us have been here since dawn.

As for content, everyone is talking about Sarkozy’s threat to walk out if there isn’t a global regulatory deal. And others are talking about Brazil’s President Lula coming here by train from Paris.

He will change trains at Stratford East, and some are jesting that he will see few white faces with blue eyes (those that he has blamed for the pickle we are in).

To watch live coverage of Barack Obama’s meeting with Gordon Brown, plus the protests in the City of London, click here.