Can you name all the countries at the G20

My 13-year-old Godson is visiting at the moment and like all children he managed to ask a question to which I should have known the answer but I have to admit I didn't.

It was a simple one really, something that's making the headlines everywhere and hard to get away from.

"Who are the G20?" Or put another way, "Which countries have sent their head of state or government to the meeting in London?"

Go ahead. If you have time, grab a pen and a piece of paper and try answering that without cheating or Googling.

That's what I did, and this is how far I got.

"Well to begin with," I told him there are the members of the G8. That's easy. It includes the UK, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia."

Then I thought for a while.

"China and India naturally. They should have been part of the club a long time ago," I wisely informed him.

"In fact at the last G8 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan, that's exactly what the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy wanted. But nobody listened to him then."

Yes the poor boy was getting a mini politics lesson as I was just warming up.

"Brazil," I said confidently. "And Saudi Arabia."

I was beginning to crack though, I could feel it.

"Um South Africa and A r g e n t i n a," I rather dragged the last name out as horror of horrors, I was quickly running out of steam.

Now this is the point at which I could have changed the conversation or simply huffed and puffed my way through an answer.

But that wouldn't have been fair to him, and besides it's not really my style.

"You know what?" I said. "I don't know the names of the other countries. I should. But I don't. Shame on me."

So we did what we should have done right at the beginning and Googled, coming up with the five missing pieces of the puzzle. Mexico, Turkey, South Korea, Indonesia and Australia.

And of course we discovered (as you either already knew of have since found out yourselves) that there aren't actually 20 countries that are "members" of the G20, but 19.

Oh yes and we also saw that there are "non-members" present in London from the Netherlands, Spain and Thailand, which of course raised two more questions from that teenager.

"What's a non-member?" and "Do they get to eat at the dinners?"

Thank goodness he didn't ask me to name all the leaders.

DSK for president - in 2012?

Tuesday's left-of-centre French national daily, Libération, published a poll that apparently makes Dominique Strauss-Kahn the front runner for the Socialist party's nomination for the 2012 presidential race.

It also says that a majority of the French would like to see the selection of the party's candidate in 2012 open up to more than just its 233,000 card carrying members.

All right, so the real race itself might be a long way off, but that hasn't stopped the ever-divided French Socialist party from continued internal bickering ever since its candidate in 2007, Ségolène Royal, lost out to Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round of voting.

But Libération's poll seems to indicate that DSK - as he's usually known here - is in with a shout when he returns from his stint as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

And indeed the paper goes as far as to suggest that he's the front runner among the French as a whole regardless of party affiliation.

Of those polled, 28 per cent plumped for DSK.

The outcome though was slightly different when those who declared themselves Left of Centre or Socialists were asked their opinion.

Coming out on top with 25 per cent (Left) and 26 per cent (party members) was none other than Royal once again.

The poll, carried out by Viavoice, also looked at how the French felt about the options open to the Socialist party as it seeks to overcome internal divisions that have characterised it since Royal was nominated as its candidate back in 2007 and came to a head when she went up against Martine Aubry for the leadership of the party last November.

It asked whether the party should choose a future nominee by opening up the vote to a wider base by holding "primaries" along the lines of the US presidential selection process, or stick with the current "members only" procedure.

It's something the party's current leadership is reportedly "considering" changing to ensure its nominee has the widest possible appeal.

But hang on a moment.

As Laurent Ruquier, a well-known radio and television presenter said on his daily round-table radio show yesterday, there could be more to Libération's report and "commissioned" poll than first meets the eye.

Why should anyone outside of the party be consulted as to who they thought would make the best candidate in the first place, he asked.

Ruquier pointed out that the paper had "conveniently" blurred the Socialist party's current modus operandi by introducing a "spurious" concept - that of non-party members getting a say in choosing the candidate in the first place.

He also questioned the "spin" the paper had put on the "findings" of the poll - by appearing to put in a good word in for DSK who has been "absented" from the domestic political scene ever since Sarkozy nominated him to be the head honcho at the IMF.

In fact Ruquier went so far as to call the poll a "lot of nonsense" during his programme, and accused "friends of DSK" and Libération itself of being in cahoots to give a false impression of how popular the man is.

He said the poll and the report was a clear "manipulating of the figures to give the wrong impression."

Oh dear. And thing's had been rather quiet recently on the political front here recently as far as the Socialist party has been concerned.

Perhaps too quiet.

Terminal 2E Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris - a traveller's nightmare

I've been meaning to write about this before as a word of warning to anyone who might be unlucky enough to arrive at, or leave from, the main airport in Paris, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, at Terminal 2E.

But now after a second dose of 2E "Terminalitis" in less than a month, it seemed like the appropriate time to "share".

Quite simply put, the place is a nightmare - still. And it must leave even the most seasoned traveller bewildered.

You might remember that Terminal 2E didn't get off to the best of starts.

Designed by the French architect, Paul Andreu, it opened in 2003 to a hullaballoo and was described as "a stylish triumph of innovative yet practical design".

Just 11 months later of course, part of the terminal collapsed, killing four people and injuring several others.

It has since been rebuilt, and for the past year has been up and running, functioning "properly" or so the Airport authority would have us believe.

The problem is that while the main reconstruction work has been finished, there's still a fair amount of tidying-up that needs to be done.

It's a mess.

At the beginning of March, I had the misfortune of arriving at the crack of dawn at Terminal 2E on a long haul flight from Singapore.

The contrast between the two airports couldn't have been greater.

While order, calm and superb design had made the experience at Changi one to relish, the arrival in Paris brought me right back to earth - with a bump.

After arriving at a far flung gate, passengers were then expected to follow the signs leading to the in-airport train to the main terminal.

There was then a marathon walk to passport control with orange-clad ground staff directing confused passengers past cordoned-off areas (a feature of Terminal 2E) to the inevitable queues as European Union citizens looked for the chance of taking the "fast lane" rather than standing behind those from outside of the 27-nation bloc.

Any advantage gained once through was quickly lost when arriving at baggage reclaim.

The Singapore flight shared the same carousel as earlier 'planes arriving from Montreal and Ouagadougou (the capital of the West African country of Burkina Faso, in case you were wondering).

This wonderful bit of French planning resulted in the reclaim belt being chockablock with luggage from those two other flights as obviously many of the passengers were still stuck, waiting at passport control.

It also meant that the "intelligent" baggage delivery service, which automatically slotted a case onto the carousel whenever a space was available, was unable to function properly because there was simply no space available.

The main conveyor belt was full.

Nor was there any ground staff around to help create gaps by pushing cases closer to one another, or taking them off the belt and putting them to one side.

So the result? It was left to those bleary-eyed passengers to sort out the mess themselves by packing the existing luggage together more tightly on the belt thereby creating some space - which is what they duly did.

Bienvenue to Terminal 2E!

Fast forward to last Thursday and a flight out of Paris to New York's JFK, and ominously the electronic ticketing details listed - you've guessed it - flight boarding at Terminal 2E.

Groan.

"Still at least it would provide proof that departures cannot be as nightmarish as arrivals," I thought.

Wrong.

Air France - along with many other airlines - now offers passengers the chance to check-in on the Internet before arriving at the airport.

In theory it saves times (and personnel) and means you get to choose your seat.

Except of course with Terminal 2E, it doesn't really work the way it should.

Well it wouldn't, would it?

And that's especially true if you have extra luggage that can't be taken as carry-on. A fair bet on a long-distance flight.

Non-US passengers travelling to the States still had to stand in line to have details checked and show they'd completed their Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA).

Then there was another queue to "deposit" luggage and receive the boarding pass.

Next up was another line for passport control before taking Terminal 2E's very own magical mystery tour.

That of course included more orange-clad ground staff, more cordoned-off areas, that in-airport train, and those impossibly long queues at security as departing passengers did battle with those making connecting flights to see who could struggle through first.

All under the watchful and hapless direction of even more orange-clad ground staff.

Finally after all that, the boarding gate loomed somewhere at the back of beyond, and everyone who made it already looked completely shattered from the experience.

Passengers are advised to turn up at least two hours ahead of time for a transatlantic flight.

Believe me, if you're leaving from Terminal 2E you'll need every minute of that - and then some.

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Postscript.

Sunday evening at New York's JFK sitting at the gate waiting for my return flight and scribbling away in longhand.

Once again the mess that is 2E has been brought home to me by being here.

Plane(sic)-sailing all the way. The Internet check-in (or Web check-in as it's called here) works like a dream.

Passport control was a breeze.

Security is of course rigourous (belt, shoes, jacket, computer etc) but there are no snaking, waiting lines or interminable queues that seem to be a feature of European airports.

And all in all I skedaddled through without any problems.

Just one downside - knowing that I'll be arriving the other end at Terminal 2E.