Scroll the film forward a year. It’s January 2007 and time for Davos again. Only one topic of discussion interests the ”fat cats in the snow” (as Bono calls them) — that’s how on earth they missed the glaring signs a year earlier that something big and nasty was about to happen.

The story of Europe’s pampered cows is a familiar one but always worth retelling. Each head of cattle in Europe gets a subsidy from the taxpayer worth ,20 a day at a time when half the world’s population — three billion people in all — scrapes by on an income of less that that.

The G8 is taking a long, hard look at itself — and not before time. The meetings have been held every year since 1975 and real — as opposed to synthetic — triumphs have been few and far between. Cologne in 1999 was the last time a G8 encounter delivered, and that was because the city was invaded by tens of thousands of campaigners demanding that Western leaders deliver debt relief.