Despite being a local councillor now I don't want to make my blog entries too parochial so I will try to balance highly ward-specific posts with my usual topics.

However there is a local matter I do want to raise today… and it's Post Offices. At the end of last year the local Green Party hosted a meeting to discuss proposed Post Office closures for Brighton & Hove. Representatives from the Post Office were not particularly convincing arguing that long queues currently experienced were simply the Christmas rush. They also admitted that the usage figures their closure plans were worked from predated the closure of our Crown Post Office in Ship Street, a large facility that was relocated to WH Smith.

This relocation was a poor idea and seem obvious to me and so many others at the time. A wonderful building with a long history as a Post Office was vacated, and is still empty, and another service was pulled into the private space of the ghastly Churchill Square shopping centre.

Additionally the skilled and experienced staff were offered jobs at 'shelf-stacker' wages by WH Smith. Understandably they took their redundancy packages instead. We have ended up the city's main Post Office being in the drab basement of WH Smith, with low-paid inexperienced staff and huge queues – which are not a symptom on Christmas.

I've been trying to post two packages for a week. Last Friday at 2.30pm there were 28 people in the queue and I saw six or seven others turn away when they saw the queue before I too gave up having seen the queue not move an inch. On Monday at 5.20pm there were 15 people in the queue, again unmoving. Even at it's busiest times the old office had a queue that always moved.

We're in a position where our current Post Office facilities are insufficient and they want to close more – it's absurd.

Hello and happy holidays from Lublin, Poland where I’m spending Christmas with my wife’s family. We’ve a dusting of snow to keep things looking festive.

Today we popped into a new mall which didn’t exist last time I was here, about 18 months ago. The Lublin Plaza is a giant temple to consumerism with a good helping of chain shops, a seven screen cinemaplex and bowling alley. The prices seemed fairly high for what is a poorer area of Poland and so the place wasn’t busy even though it’s the last Saturday before Christmas.

The mall reinforced my continued sense that Poland, like many other countries, confuses imitation of Anglo-Saxons (Americans, Canadians, British etc.) with socio-economic development. I find the ensuing loss of identity and distinctiveness depressing. Such imitation also results in reduced locality of services, manufacturing and trade with all that implies – dependence on multi-nationals for goods and employment, increased vulnerability to world markets (particularly in the race to the bottom for wages) and longer distances travelled for goods.

I wonder how much these malls, their foreign chain stores and the giant supermarkets from Tesco, Leclerc, Real etc really offer the Polish economy or society. Seeing the Christmas decorations in the Lublin Plaza I had to take a picture. Is there a catalogue for mall decorations somewhere? I felt that I’d seen the same decorations in Canada, USA, UK, Dubai… wherever I’ve been.

Enjoy your holidays wherever you may be and see you all soon.

We won. Thank you.

It's an incredible testament to the hard work of party activists and the trust of Regency residents that not only did we win but that we increased our vote share when compared to the election in May. This bodes extremely well for Caroline Lucas' chances of being elected at the next General Election.

The big disappointment of election night was turnout which was about 23%. Given the amount of leafleting and canvassing that went on, I wonder how many people were turned off from voting by the appalling tone some took, particularly the Labour party. I'm also sure that given the low amount of media coverage many just didn't realise it was election day – this is the perennial challenge of a by-election, particularly in winter.

I recognise that despite a convincing win there are large numbers of residents who didn't vote for me and even more who didn't vote at all – still I will work hard to representing them all as best I can.

Thanks again, and Merry Christmas!

At hustings the other night I was struck how the other candidates didn’t even try to explain what their parties stood for. What do the grey parties believe in these days? Not even the Tories are sure of themselves anymore.

As a Green Party candidate I was able to explain that our party stands for peace, social justice, equality and respect for the environment. A clear set of values which we apply to everything we do as candidates or elected representatives and when developing policy.

In the final day before polls open, with the sun shining on a chilly Brighton, I feel proud of the campaign we’ve run. Voting Green is such a positive statement of wanting a better city and greater respect for the environment, but also showing support for a group of people who are genuinely trying to forge a new form of politics whilst remaining electorally successful.

We’re not giving up on politics or disconnecting from society – those are the easy options – Green Party members are trying to participate in our political society with fresh approaches whilst holding themselves to higher standards.

Whatever the result tomorrow, nobody can deny the need for new ways of doing politics. I hope the voters of Regency will re-confirm their May result by voting Green again.

Regency Ward is incredibly rich in wonderful architecture, much of it protected. Indeed the old Royal Alex childrens' hospital is in a conservation area itself. Which was why the developers who bought the land it sits on need separate permission to demolish as well as permission to build.

The original plans submitted by the developers were ghastly and completely lacking in imagination. They were the same old recycled designs for blocky flats with the sweetener of a doctor's surgery. The drawings showed a total lack of respect for the surrounding area and no attempt whatsoever to reflect the unique history and character of the area. Frankly the plans added insult to the injury of their desire to flatten the old King Alex.

The south and east-facing facade of the main building, in particular, are full of character and history. These are the minimum the Green Party would want to see preserved from the existing building. Regency residents want to keep the building and its green space (currently hidden by horrible hoardings) – it's a familiar and well loved old character.

Thanks to the lobbying of residents working with Green councillors the developers were forced to withdraw their applications. Of course we expect them to submit again. If they once again show a lack of regard for the Regency's unique architectural character and want to flatten the building, we'll fight their every step.

I think elections are fantastic, and I love the opportunity they provide to meet people. Over the past few weeks I have been out in Regency ward daily knocking on doors and meeting people all over the place. The Green Party has such a positive message, so many good things we want to achieve for Brighton & Hove, that it's a pleasure to be out there.

So many people appreciate the opportunity to engage with real politicians and political activists. Politics becomes real when you talk about it on someone's doorstep, when they challenge your views or ask for your help. It's wonderful, energising and very grounding. I also love the physicality of it – being outside, shaking hands and reminding yourself how every single street is unique.

Sometimes people are out or they are busy — perhaps giving their baby a bath or in the middle of a telephone call — that's all fine. What I do find challenging are those who answer the door with “Sorry, not interested.” When pressed it's not that they're not interested in the Green Party but that they're not interested in the election or politics.

Of course there's more to life than local politics, but everyone notices when the bins aren't emptied, hospital service is poor or police non-existent. If you're busy, say so and I'll move on; if you don't wish to discuss your politics in public, I respect that choice; and if you wish to vote for another party, let's chat about it! But if you think you have no interest at all in how your city is run and the direction it sets itself for the future… well then I'm not sure I believe you. I think actually you're saying you don't believe in politicians to set those directions. If so then I think talking is exactly what we need to do.

While I'm out on the streets of Regency asking for your votes in the up-coming by-election, back in the world of the web I can also ask for your votes. I'm absolutely delighted that this site has been nominated to the blogs shortlist for the Brighton & Hove Web Awards 07.

You can vote for this site online now. Please vote!

This week has absolutely zipped past. On Monday I learnt the sad news that Dr Hermione Roy, a Green Councillor for Brighton's Regency ward had been forced to step-down due to ill-health. We're all wishing Hermione a swift recovery and offer our thanks for her many contributions.

On Tuesday Brighton & Hove Green Party counted the votes for our local executive and I was delighted to be declared the new Chair. Earlier that day a selection process had been begun to choose a candidate for the by-election Hermione's resignation has triggered.

I'm deeply honoured to have been selected by the local party at a very well attended special meeting last night. I'm looking forward to campaigning in the wonderful Regency area over the coming weeks and to working with the ward's other Green Councillor, Sven Rufus. I absolutely love canvassing, though this will be my first winter election so gloves and hat will certainly be needed!

Now that my work observing the May 2007 elections is done, I can look forward to what the future will bring.

I still have a number of committments relating to my ORG work, specifically speaking at the main party conferences and at an e-voting workshop. However it was the election observation work itself that required my maintaining strict political neutrality.

Now that the obersvation is over and our report has been published, I can return to party politics. I'm a passionate member of the Green Party and believe we're entering a critical time for Green politics and the Green agenda as a whole.

So I've decided to put myself forward for the South East region European Parliamentary list. The regional Green Party will be having hustings and a vote over the next couple of months at the end of which I hope to be high up our list. There are so many issues I care deeply about ranging from transport policy to peace and human rights to organic farming and slow food. Now that I'm free to speak and committing more time to political life, I'm keen to do more writing about these topics, online of course!

Looking around the web many people opt for maintaining lots of different blogs. I can see how this might be easier as it lets you keep various topics in their own silos. But I've learnt, the hard way, how much energy it takes keeping many different sites running. So, rather than set something new up, I have re-organised this site to simplify and make space for some more political posts. (Details on changes to the site at the end of this post) I'm also very excited that in Brighton Pavilion constituency my local Green Party have already conducted our candidate selection and the extremely impressive Caroline Lucas MEP has been picked in the Greenest constituency in the land.

It's now or never for making a difference that will protect our planet for future generations. I'm getting stuck in…

Changes to the site

For existing readers a few pointers on blog category changes:

• Postal and e-voting are now under voting
• Geekery and Online Communities are now under technology
• Site news and other are now under notes from JK
• e-democracy and e-government have been merged into e-democ / e-gov

Additionally I have decided to stop allowing comments to be posted against blog posts, however all existing non-spam comments will be kept online. This is nothing to do with spam however. I've just found that comments just aren't really very useful. I'm decreasingly inclined to read them on other sites and anyone can reply to a blog post in their own blog (which are free and easy to setup) or by email. So adieu comments, John Gruber sums up my view:

No, I don’t have comments, but if you write something smart about something I wrote, there’s a good chance I’ll link to it.

I've been meaning to make this change for a long time. The rather obscure j-dom.org address I was using has been replaced with the blindingly obvious jasonkitcat.com.

Nothing else has changed, no links will be broken and you don't need to update your address book. Thanks for reading.