So, were you part of the 80% of the human race who apparently shared in the Live8 experience on Saturday? I was and I have to say, it did feel like something special. The music wasn't really my scene but that was ok because the music wasn't really the point.

There was an atmosphere of significance that came from the knowledge that these were images we would see again and again in the future and that we would able to nudge one another and say, 'I remember that'. Making poverty history, it's not a wonderful dream, it's a practical necessity, but are we nearly there? No, no we're not.

As sweet as things were, there was bitter background flavour to the day for me. It wasn't that Sir Bob suddenly started echoing Bush & Blair, talking about attaching conditions to the debt, aid & trade package. It wasn't even the hideously uncomfortable scene of Madonna dragging a young and bemused African girl around the stage.

No, the grey cloud hanging over an otherwise sunny day for me was knowing that Live8 will not achieve what it has set out to do. Now don't get me wrong, I support the idea, the campaign itself and think that everyone should do likewise. It's just not going to be enough.

There are few people for whom I have more respect than Nelson Mandela, I skived off lectures at uni to go an see him speak when he visited Leeds a few years ago, the man's amazing. When he launched the MPH campaign in Trafalgar Square his speech cut to the bone of the issue. There is no reason for poverty to exist, and in just the same way as the seemingly invincible institutions of slavery and apartheid were consigned to history, so poverty can and must be.

There has been much focus on the new focus of the mass music protest. This wasn't about money, this was about those eight men. It's not about pouring on cash, it's about changing the system, that's the only way to really change the world. All this is entirely true and it is right here where I find my hope taking a beating.

The aid money is useful, the debt cancellations are obvious, it's the change to trade systems that brings us into deeper water. The fact is that what needs to change is the way in which we in the 'developed' world, (as if we are the end product of human development!) dictate to 'developing' nations, (as if they're just behind us on the same road to the same place!) their economic systems.

Pressure, or 'advice', organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank drive the countries belonging to the world's poorest people to adopt policies that do not serve their interests. Similar thinking lies behind the criminal subsidy regime we employ to prop up our failing agricultural industries.

This is what needs to change and in order for that to happen we don't need to influence the G8, we need to influence the G1, or Mr. Bush. Do you really believe that any kind of popular protest, regardless of scale, is going to change this guy's mind? Besides the fact that I just don't think he cares, it strikes me that Bush and his organ grinders would consider it morally wrong and against all that they hold dear, to allow their policy decisions to be affected by ordinary people outside the political system they control.

When we saw the fuel protests ion the UK a few years ago, there seemed to be an endless stream of pompous MPs eager to denounce the leader of the protest as being 'unelected' and therefore having no right to step onto 'their turf'. The fact that these self righteous little diatribes ignored the crisis that had befallen many ordinary voters was only one type of ignorance the MPs displayed.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that the guy leading the protest didn't need to be elected because he wasn't representing anyone. The many, many people making up the quite astounding convoy behind him were representing themselves. The same arguments were trotted out again, though in quieter voices, in response to the million+ that marched through London against the war we declared on the people of Iraq.

Those in power constantly insist that the system, their system, is the only legitimate way to change society. Anything else, they argue, leads to anarchy, only democratic representation is valid. Of course Live8 poses these people with a problem. There's not a politician in the world represents five billion people. Allowing them to speak for us is not working and so we are increasingly speaking for ourselves and once we reach these kinds of numbers they have no arguments that can ever be heard let alone stand up.

Unfortunately we also have a problem. The march opposing the war against the Iraqi people did not achieve its objective and Live8, for all its atmosphere of history, will not convince the elite of the world to relinquish their grip, why should it? They are, after all, effectively untouchable.

We find ourselves in a situation where democracy is espoused as an almost divine system of governance and yet 80% of human beings, united in a single, simple view, cannot control the actions of those in power. This is not democracy.

Hell, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that those grey little men in their grey little suits emerge from that golf club to announce that centuries of malevolent greed are to be reversed, but will any of you take that bet? If we really want to Make Poverty History there's only one to do it. In the words of As Zack de la Rocha, currently bouncing about my office, 'WE'VE GOT TO TAKE THE POWER BACK!'