A couple of weeks ago I had had it with moaners.

I had had it up to here (I am pointing at my cheek).

And now somebody's written to me, in response to the column, to say that "moaning" about things - the Government, the litter, New Year's Eve, the Dome, the council and The Place To Be . . . his list was pretty long - was people expressing their opinion and, he said, "it's called democracy".

Well, no sir, it isn't called democracy. Getting involved and changing things is democracy.

Agreed, often that comes from complaining. Complaining you can deal with.

But moaning just goes on and on. Moaning is for couch potatoes. Those who can do. Those who can't be bothered, moan.

I was reminded just how true this was this week at a national conference I was invited to in Brighton and Hove.

The Government has put large amounts of cash into schemes called New Deal for Communities.

There are thousands of people up and down the country trying to bring to their areas what the residents want.

There is a New Deal project in East Brighton and they hosted the conference.

The Government minister responsible, Hilary Armstrong, came and at the beginning one of the introducers told a story from Scotland.

Outside the project where he worked, day after day, acne-faced kids with moon crater skin would stand and throw stones at the windows and occasionally a brick through them.

One of the workers, more in anger and frustration than out of any generosity of spirit, went out to shout at the kids.

But her community work instincts overcame her and she ended up explaining to them what the project was doing. She told them that they were working with local people to improve the area.

The kids departed, she assumed pessimistically, to throw stones somewhere else and return within days to the office.

But then something odd happened. One of the other workers ran out of petrol on his way to work and, to cut a long story short, ended up standing outside the New Deal office carrying a petrol can.

Cue re-appearance of the kids. "Please don't burn it down," they said.

"They're here to help."

What it made me think was that ultimately you can get almost anybody involved in improving this town and making it more prosperous as long as people feel that they're involved and understand what's going on.

It might sound a bit Pollyanna but, I don't know about you, it's optimism that keep me going.

And moaners just don't help, if only because they put off people who would get involved but don't because they're not sure if the Place to Be campaign belongs to them.

And one of the frustrating things about The Place To Be is that while it's a campaign that's here to help, a hook to hang things on, a way of gathering energy towards projects that people in Brighton and Hove want to do, I encounter people quite often who feel that, despite what we're trying to do, it's not about them.

It's just for the establishment, they say, like the Argus and the estate agents and the council.

The trouble is that all the flash things, like the city bid, get lots of attention.

They create a lot of noise. And certainly they do get Brighton and Hove into the national newspapers to wave the flag for the local economy and raise the profile to attract investment.

So it looks like business and the local authority seem to be the only players on the field.

But actually there are many things going on at a local level in the town as part of the Place to Be but they just don't attract the heat of publicity.

What we've done once and will do again in April is to invite the 100 neighbourhood groups together and ask them how we can help them to celebrate the town.

The ideas whizzed around the room and will flower as the year goes on.

There will be microparks, maybe a summer celebration and . . . but the plans aren't finalised yet and the groups need to say more abot what they want.

But the exciting thing is that the city bid, the bit that appears to be out of people's reach, is levering energy to do things that are absolutely within their control.

So to the moaners I say: Please don't burn us down - we're here to help.

And to help everybody.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.