Well, do we deserve to be a city or not?

I return to this theme only because as the success of the campaign is generally accepted by the majority of people, the honeymoon inevitably recedes.

The simple joys of summer give way as the hard slog to get the recognition this town deserves continues into what the chill in the air now sadly confirms is the autumn.

People with genuine - though many of us think misguided - reservations who fear growth in business and are suspicious of the effect of the increases in tourism and in our international reputation express their views cogently and with care.

Even if many of us disagree with them, the debate about the future of the town only proves its health and vitality.

Sadly, of course, also the letters from cynics - you know who you are - maintain a small but steady flow, their enervating negativity making opening every envelope like a visit to the dentist.

Every benefit of the increasing public and private investment in the town flows to these people as it does to the rest of us, yet they still refuse to acknowledge any progress or advantage.

These are the people, in the words of the old Jewish joke, who moan about how awful the food is and then complain that the portions are too small. They will never be satisfied and that is apparently how they like it.

The thousands of people who were involved in Place to Be Events over the spring and summer celebrating their neighbourhood show that Brighton and Hove is throbbing with activity.

Only last week it was grand to be a part of the opening of the revived Whitehawk Festival, co-ordinated day by the wiry and, as somebody called him, Jimmy Saville soundalike Eddie Cope.

Max Vaughan and Fred Netley were both there, with whom I had worked on my first job as a community worker in town 20 years ago, putting together the original Whitehawk Newsletter.

How wonderful that things are so different now.

Then we had to shout into deaf Westminster ears that parts of our town were poor enough to deserve extra government support. Thankfully, this government has responded with £47 million through the New Deal for the whole of East Brighton, including Moulsecoomb.

Let's hope that in the next year we can get similar investment for Hangleton and Knoll, which still seem to be a little off the radar.

The celebrated seafront development, more firms in town, the growth of media here (the Big Brother website is designed and edited on North Road by Victoria Real), developments in bio-tech, the Dome, the new library are just a few examples of what Norman Lamont called, in a different context, "the green shoots of recovery".

As it turned out Lamont was ruinously wrong and we were all plunged into a recession which hit this town particularly badly. We must protect ourselves from this happening again. It is the dogged and imaginative recovery from those terrible troughs of the Nineties that is a major part of why we are so justified in advocating our city status to Her Majesty.

Our bid is based on the fact that in building on our strengths we are championing Brighton and Hove as a different kind of city, one where respect for our heritage is combined with a dynamic attitude towards business.

But what quality of life when we read of Joyce Hailey, the 81-year-old who was tied to a chair and beaten and robbed last week, and of Ricardo Saroyan-James who, as the headline said, was "battered just for being gay"? Are people here so intolerant that our claim to be the most cosmopolitan place this side of San Francisco is baseless?

What kind of hatred makes the elderly and gays and lesbians fear for their lives? The police will do what they can to find these attackers but the rest of us might wonder what we can do.

Celebrating our town in order to become a city is just another way of saying that we want to make our home town a great example to others. Part of what makes it different is the diversity of its population. So let's make celebrating that fact one of our reasons to be a city. Meanwhile if you know who the criminals are, be proud to tell the police.