How to be a Retronaut is a superb compendium of old snaps and views. It's required reading in my personal blogosphere. Last week The Retronaut people published some really rather wonderful pics from Brighton Beach in 1906 that live here. Take a look.

On the topic of Brighton past, I must also commend you to Brighton Bits. It's a lovely little local blog with a yen for local history.

Back to the present, Brighton's a hub for new music and up and coming bands. And local band, the Muel, released an album last week. They've posted some tracks on MySpace. I particularly like the second track, Roller. Incidentally, yes. That is the steel drum you hear.

Labour: 26%
Conservative: 16%
Green: 12%

Link to the clipping.

The Green’s Jason Kitcat has rubbished the poll and spent a great deal of bloggage slagging off the use of graphs by every party but the Green Party. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. The Brighton Politics Blogger's take is here.

Every party uses polls, graphs and stats to make their point in the material sent out to voters. In Brighton, the Greens use 2007 council and 2009 EU votes to make the point that they’re riding the crest of a wave. They also use a 2009 poll of about 500 people to show they’re doing well here. The Conservatives are using a poll of GPs to suggest they’re the party of the NHS. Labour uses the result of the last General Election in 2005 to suggest that the Greens are well behind the Tories.

It’s a nuanced business. It’s fanciful to imagine that people vote for councillors and MEPs with the same concerns in mind as electing an MP to Westminster. The 2005 General Election was fought 5 years ago on different constituency boundaries. The voters aren’t all GPs. If a party commissions a poll (however venerable the pollsters are) they only want it to show they’re winning. I’ve worked in marketing long enough and commissioned surveys so I know that polls can be legitimately held to prove whatever you want them to say. As is so often the case, Sir Humphrey makes the point so well:

Polls are polls. Past performance is yesterday. We need to compare apples with apples. Methodological quibbling and sampling squabbles aside, the Argus poll is independent and credible. It also provides a few useful reminders:

The People haven’t spoken yet..
The Greens enjoy telling us how they’ve already won the Brighton Pavilion seat. They use the council or Euro elections or their own polls to show they’re a shoe-in. They claim to be the bookies’ favourite and recent campaign material would have you believe that they are a dead cert. It’s a rather presumptuous approach.

I don’t reckon that people much like being told the result before they’ve cast their ballot. Equally, while some pundits have written off Labour locally, this poll shows that’s evidently not the case. The Argus poll reminds us all that bookies, bloggers, pundits, pollsters, candidates, journalists and polticos don’t decide the result. That’s the voters’ privilege and until 10pm on election day, they haven’t spoken. Until then every vote is up for grabs. I love that: game on!

It’s a General Election, stupid.
The 2010 General Election will decide one crucial question: will Labour or the Conservatives form the next government? Talk of a hung parliament means that every vote and MP counts. Brighton’s choice of MP could make all the difference. It’s an amazingly powerful argument on the doorstep: your Labour vote could tilt the balance nationally. From my experience lots of people who have previously voted Green in local elections realise that a national contest is a different matter and much more important. Plenty of previously Green voters are saying to me that they’ll be voting Labour to keep the Tories out.

It’s a fascinating and exciting race here in the City-by-the-Sea. This is a hotly contested three way marginal seat: the Labour, Tory or Green candidate can win. If people tell you otherwise, they’re trying to mislead. Let’s stop second guessing the voters and insulting their intelligence with all this silly chat about opinion polls. They’ll tell us the result in due course. That’s democracy, man.

Disclosure: I'm a rank and file member of the Labour Party in the Brighton Pavilion constituency.

The idea sprang from the Brighton Future of News group. Spearheaded by the pioneering Online Editor of the Brighton Argus Jo Wadsworth, with Sarah Marshall and Steve Bustin, the map is a collaborative experiment to share the political conversations candidates have with voters in the relative privacy of the doorstep and away from the prying eyes of the media.

It’s a good idea and I wouldn’t be surprised if the aim was to expose possible discrepancies between what candidates say publicly and ‘privately’: that’s a good thing. We’re not yet 24 hours into the experiment and what do we see?

When the map was first published the Greens had a tiny handful of flags (3?) and a party apparatchik has spent some time in the past day adding those little green flags. Tory candidate Charlotte Vere told me on Twitter that her ‘flag count’ grew because she was “just including the points from my own map.” Labour candidate Nancy Platts has only used Twitter to add her red flags.

Can the best efforts of a local newspaper experimenting with social media, keen to report one of the most fascinating electoral races in the country, usefully shape a tight run race? I do hope so. If 2010 is the first ‘social media’ General Election, a map such as this with genuine input from voters represents a fine way for people to raise issues and offer perspectives on the campaigns. Politics isn’t just about broadcasting, I venture. It’s a conversation.

So far, from what I’ve seen, nobody unrelated to the three local campaigns has contributed to the Argus map. That’s a real shame.

As I have often said to businesses large and small over the years, the social media secret is letting go. Give up control and let other people chart the course of your journey. Even to someone like me involved in politics, this map shouldn’t be yet another channel we use to skew the discussion by showing how omnipresent and marvellous the parties are. It must be an opportunity to listen. Let’s follow the roadmap rather than draw it. Just for once.

This map will be all the more informative and intriguing if the party people leave it alone and ensure it’s a forum and outlet for the people that matter to express a view. I think we should let democracy breathe. I’m looking forward to day two… and three… and beyond…

Disclosure: I am a rank and file member of the Labour Party in Brighton Pavilion. These ain't nobody’s views but my own.

I think The Argus missed the point. This is a resort city with two universities and that, combined with a native population that I venture likes a good time more than most, is going to have a lot of licensed premises. But that doesn’t in itself mean a drink problem. As the Church of England will attest, having more outlets doesn’t necessarily mean more punters.

There are lots of things I like about the 2003 Licensing Act that liberalised the rules. I think being able to have a pint in a pub post 11pm is a good thing. I think having off licences open earlier and later in the day is very convenient. That said, I’m not sure we need 24 hour booze shops and bars that open all night. There is also a case to say that we have too many off licenses now and also it’s worth recognising that the Council doesn’t have the powers it needs to regulate licensed premises.

But it’s not the number of premises that should be front of mind. We also need to think about price. Here’s an example: I checked out the drink in a local off licensed premises and was astonished to find I could buy 3 litres of strong cider for £2.99. This bottle clocks in at 16.3 units. That means that for around about a fiver I can buy my entire weekly government recommended unitage (3/4 units a day for a chap) for somewhere close to a fiver.

That just can’t be right. But what to do? Because I like a drink myself, I can’t get preachy about drinking less. Equally, whilst I can see the value in a minimum price per unit scheme, it is regressive, will hit the poor hardest and probably won’t touch well off folk who are part of the ‘problem’. It is also hardly fair that responsible drinkers should pay more. However, it does seem to be an answer.

And yet there is the paradox at the centre of the discussion. This country is drinking more than ever before and yet pubs are shutting at an alarming rate. If I like a beer, I like pubs more. In my local pub a pint of premium strongish draught cider of the Magners or Bulmers variety will set me back £3.50. It strikes me that part of sorting the drinking culture problem is getting people back into the pub. Pubs are, to some extent, a regulated environment where social norms and a responsible staff can limit massive consumption. “Sorry mate, you’ve had enough.”

A well-run pub is a joy. And, more often than not, a pub is a valuable and considerate member of its community. So that’s why they must be part of the solution and not forgotten or penalised as we consider the issues. They don’t peddle cheap booze. In fact it’s comparatively very expensive when you consider supermarkets and corner shops. We should concoct clever ways of bringing down the price of real ales and favour proper British beverages, for instance. Also, why are soft drinks so bloody expensive in pubs? We also need to give publicans more rights over greedy pub chains that limit choices. And yes, unreasonably noisy and unruly pubs should be treated harshly.

But only when pubs can compete as the face of ‘social drinking’ can we adequately tackle £2.99 3 litre bottles of strong cider and what we should consider as ‘anti-social’ drinking.

Why is this bad? This is the backlog of just three day's rubbish. The refuse collectors have been working to rule, protesting (quite justifiably in my opinion) against massive pay cuts. The strike proper starts on Monday for seven days.

I have always found it bewildering that of all the places I have lived (including 4 London boroughs and Lewes), Brighton and Hove seems to be the one place that can't seem to crack the collection and disposal of refuse without regular disagreements, strikes, backlogs and general incompetance. In terms of recycling too, Brighton's record isn't partcularly glittering.

It seems to me that whilst education spend is more important and elderly care is also a bigger line item, that the one most visible council activity that any administration has to get right to ensure it retains confidence, is 'the rubbish'.

But it looks like Brighton and Hove's Conservative council has forgotten the old maxim that all voters care about locally is "bins, bogs and rats". And the seagulls are gonna love it.

I particularly liked one installation called Circa 69 Sinking Ship, which I've posted below. Based on the premise that people in 2069 have worked out how to send a television signal through a wormhole created by the Large Hedron Collider to us right now, it's the future news. I looked really brilliant projected on a wall in black and white. It also made me laugh rather a lot.

Bring on White Night 2011!

wormhole transmission 24/10/09 from Simon Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Vladimir: That’s the second one today.

Estragon: What?

V: (triumphantly) A fiver!

E: (very seriously) They’re like gold dust.

V: I know. It’s always good to get a fiver.

E: I keep ‘em when I get ‘em.

V: Me too.

E: I keep mine in a drawer.

V: (Nods) You never know when you’re gonna need a fiver.

E: (Sagely) They should print more.

So when I discovered Councillor Kitcat was on Twitter, I obviously followed him. I have also read his blog for some time and also subscribed to the RSS feed. Nothing unusual there. I follow a load of people on Twitter and spend time every day keeping up with the vibrant chat and tweets of the people I follow. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. I also follow dozens of bloggers via RSS. It’s fun to read what folk say. I also try and reply to posts that provoke me to do so.

Obviously, this is relevant to the work I do but more importantly I get so much out of it. As far as I’m concerned, if you join up to Twitter, start blogging and reading blogs then you’ve joined a conversation. It shouldn’t be a chore and it isn’t compulsory.

But vitally, it isn’t about simply broadcasting. I could cite the Cluetrain Manifesto or just good old-fashioned manners. But I won’t. I’ll tell you why I’m in on it: I find it enriching. I love to find out what people are doing, enjoy the information and insight. I’m not waiting for people to come to me. I get out there and listen to what they’re saying. Different and challenging opinions are the bread and butter of social media.

I recently asked Councillor Kitcat why he only follows 21 people (those 21 are mostly Greens or the ‘usual Twitter suspects’). He is followed by more than 100 and also solicits Twitter followers on his blog.

He replied: "@wilsondan I'm trying to avoid school disco type popularity contest aspects of Twitter. Is it better to follow & ignore or not follow?"

I needless to say replied: "Idea: @jasonkitcat Why not consider & respond to the people you represent? Or are constituents just kids at a school disco, Sir? #brighton"

I though his final response was really rather telling: "@wilsondan I converse every single day by email, phone and post. Should I also subscribe to every RSS feed of residents who blog?"

To answer Kitcat’s question with another: why not? I’m following him. I read his blog posts. He is soliciting readers via his blog. And seeking followers on Flickr and YouTube. He is also seeking our votes. So why not proactively sign up to read and enjoy Brighton’s bloggers? This city is blessed with many brilliant talents, voices and characters he might enjoy. This city is home to a myriad businesses (many in his ward) who blog and tweet and converse. He may enjoy that too. I certainly do. I learn so much.

Councillor Kitcat is recompensed and required to converse with his constituents via email, phone and letter. He sought that responsibility. He is not shy about making his views known in the local newspaper. But it would be ever so classy if he also proactively listened and responded rather than just waiting for us to come to him. Why not sign up to some RSS feeds? Enjoy the tweets of the people of Brighton!

This Internet social web 2.0 thing is a conversation. It’s so much more than 'the Kitcat Channel'. It’s about being a human and using your human voice. And if anyone doesn't like that, don’t do it. But, alas, to Councillor Kitcat, we’re just kids at the school disco chattering inanely. Maybe he sees himself as the teacher, keeping us all in check?

Some pictures taken last night, at about 11PM.

First Man: Seen that Andrew Lloyd-Webber programme with Graham Norton?

Second Man: The Eurovision one? Yeah. Bollocks innit.

First Man: Nah. I reckon Lloyd-Webber's the man. He knows his stuff. He might win it for us.

Second Man: Win it? All block-voting these days. Even Ireland can't win it. All East Europeans these days.

First Man: Lloyd-Webber gives us a fighting chance. (Taps temple with his finger). He's not just a pretty face.