G20: Road to nowhere

The journalist on the bus next to me is snoring like it's going out of fashion.

It's 7am and I have been cleared by the first security screening and am now sitting on a bus waiting to be shuttled to the next electronic frisk and probe.

The bus isn't moving, apparently because the road to the conference is blocked by... well, we're not sure.

But the journalists from all over the world crammed on to the bus are becoming restive.

Welcome to the G20, the conference that Gordon Brown tells us will set the world back on the road to economic recovery.

For most of us stuck on the bus, the road to anywhere would be nice.

I suppose the authorities figure that the only deadline that matters is 1530 this afternoon, when the prime minister will announce to 2,500 hacks like me that the planet has been saved.

There is, of course, a faint risk that if it takes that long to get us there, the polite Dutch, Italian and Spanish journalists dressed in their best smart-casual that surround me will have morphed into rabid, smash-capitalism protesters.

We long for escape from this detention camp in a wasteland on north east London.

If they let us out, we promise to suspend common sense and try to believe that there really is drama in the last closing hours of talks between the leaders of the 20 economies identified as the world's most pivotal.

Thank goodness for le president, M Sarkozy. His tantrum yesterday, his near-threat that he would stomp out if the excesses of Anglo-American financial capitalism aren't definitively tamed, created the almost convincing impression that the stuff which really matters in today's communique hasn't been stitched up and choreographed in the preceding days by diligent officials.

As a minister said to me yesterday, if money had changed hands between Downing Street and the Elysees, M Sarkozy couldn't have done a better job for G Brown of casting him as the peacemaking global statesman.

However, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not trying to downplay the significance of today's global concordat on boosting the resources of the IMF to rescue ailing economies, on the principles of reforming the banking system, and on standing ready to stimulate national economies should that be necessary (this latter a damper squib than Mr Obama and Mr Brown would have liked, but they'll never admit it).

That said, and as you by now may have gathered, I am feeling a little bit grumpy to be stranded on a bus seemingly on the road to nowhere.

Update 08:37: After a wrong turn, by the government-hired bus driver, we're in.

But in what?

We're nowhere near where the leaders will be passionately debating the precise words to employ when declaring that - in the light of evidence that secretive, tax-avoiding financial firms may not all have been a force for good - that they don't like tax havens.

Where we are is Planet Media.

I've been a hack for more than 25 years and I've never seen anything like it.

Picture to yourself the biggest indoor stadium you've ever seen.

And then think of it filled with desk after desk after desk of newspaper reporters in front of laptops and phone points.

Then visualise a couple of hundred yards of cameras directed at TV reporters and presenters.

Finally summon up the image of hundreds of little booths filled with TV editing kit and makeshift radio studios.

This is a heaving, gabbling mass of scribblers and pundits.

Are you feeling queasy? I wouldn't be at all surprised.

It's the London summit. I think we're still on Earth, but actually I can't be sure.

So far my only contribution to the future of the world's economy has been to tip my tea over a tray of free croissants in the refreshment area. Sorry, fellow hacks.

However the torrent of steaming hot brew missed my TV shirt. Disaster averted.

Update 09:26: I've just interviewed Lord Mandelson for the News Channel.

The message of the business secretary is that the prime minister is being "greedy" - greedy for massive additional resources for the IMF for bailing out beleaguered economies; greedy for hundreds of billions of commitments to finance drooping world trade; greedy for a substantial injection of funds into poorer developing nations.

In this instance, Gordon Brown would say that greed is good. Though if he doesn't get everything he wants, presumably we'll be told that lean and mean have their attractions too.