G8 Summits, which bring together the leaders of the "leading industrial countries" are meant to be a big deal, where important decisions are made.

So let no-one suggest that last week's summit was just a 3-day beano, for world political leaders and their wives to parade themselves, enjoy lavish banquets, and then agree to do next to nothing in the interests of the world population!

This year, the 33rd such beano, in a grand hotel at the resort of Heiligendamm, cost Germany's taxpayers £66m for security alone. Including over £9m for a fence designed to keep protesters like the anarchist "clowns' army" out - unsuccessfully, as it happened.

So which big decisions were made this time? Given the current number one issue for politicians - the threat of climate change - this summit was meant to mark a turning point on the control of greenhouse gases. And finally, Bush was to be brought on board - mostly thanks to Tony Blair's influence, of course.

Sure enough, by the end of the meeting on Friday a major breakthrough had been made! Guess what? The G8 agreed to "seriously consider" cutting carbon emissions by 50%... by 2050!

And we were told how difficult it had been to get the word "seriously" inserted before the word "consider" with each leader claiming it to his own credit!

Little wonder that normal, ordinary people find little to take "seriously" in the grand meetings of the leaders of the world!

After all, their record on aid to Africa, two years after Gleneagles, shows how empty their promises are. Having implemented some debt relief to the most impoverished countries, aid was actually cut.

Of course, the $50bn aid promised for the all the poor African countries by 2010 was a micro-drop in the ocean anyway. But they have not even begun to deliver that drop.

So now the rich countries can commit to cutting carbon emissions by way of complicated "offsetting schemes" and carbon trading, precisely because no ordinary person has a clue about what this entails nor the means to check on it. Until it is too late.

That said, perhaps one should judge these leaders on what they fail to mention. Because behind all of this hot air about hot air, and political parading, looms the catastrophic situation in the Middle East - Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. The G8 leaders, whose governments all have a bloody hand in creating this catastrophe had nothing to say about it. It was not even on their agenda.