I'd been privately advocating the Greens moving on from Brown for a while, not out of any disrespect for what the old fella has achieved but because it was clearly time to move the spotlight. This voluntary move only adds to his outstanding record of service to great causes.

But it the rest of the world, progressives are drifting from Green to groups more focused on the battle to keep open and enhance the cyber frontier. In a world where even Green is able to be vilified by bleating defenders of failing business models, naming a political entity Pirate or Sex is asking for marginalisation, yet they remain alongside Occupy the best vision we can muster beyond 2020.

My idea for moving on from the failed duopoly that is the natural end game of representative democracy remains too caught in old misconceptions to be an easy sell: a one party state with an unbreakable rule that nobody can be refused membership nor opportunity to present their case, though any audience retains the right not to listen by the imposition of rules requiring some measure of endorsement before a proposition is given a position of prominence/forced attention.

The Con made it clear that Atheist activism is just one more symptom of the need to move on from current governance models to something as unavoidably city-centric as the world is becoming, with resilience nurtured and tolerance tempered by the ever more pressing need to allow youngsters of all ages to grow open to possibilities as yet unrecognised.