As part of our top political bloggers series, Total Politics talks to Rupert Read, Green party city councillor in Norwich, academic at the University of East Anglia and enthusiastic blogger.

Why do you blog?

The blogosphere (at its best) encourages and nurtures intelligent debate. I like blogging best when it results in a wiki-like process of everyone, including the original author, learning from it.

What do you like best about your own blog?

I blog in a lot of different places. What I like best about my own blog is very simple — it’s that there I can say just whatever I want.

There is sometimes the perception that Greens are a bit anti-technology. How does digital media fit with the green philosophy?

We believe in the Precautionary Principle (so we are sceptical for instance about GM food, which, if it went wrong, could go so very horribly wrong); but we also passionately believe in the ability of appropriate technology to improve lives. Greens love digital media for many reasons, including that it allows bottom-up mobilisation, and that it can reduce quite drastically the need to travel.

How do you see the Green blogosphere developing?

I'd like to think that the Green blogosphere will develop globally but function locally, with a huge network of people always ready to fight the self-serving interests of big oil and big finance. What keeps me motivated is that the Greens are the only truly progressive party out there. Hopefully, with a couple of victories on 6 May, a hung Parliament and the ensuing electoral reform, we can take advantage of the huge level of support there has always been for the Greens amongst the country's youth and become one of the major political forces in the UK within the next ten years.

What are the key Green issues that you wish the big parties would take notice of?

In a country with almost zero manufacturing industry, a burgeoning carbon footprint and fast-dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, I would have thought that wholesale investment in low/zero-carbon technologies would be a no-brainer for any political party. The Green New Deal is essential — because wasting energy (and emitting excess carbon) means wasting money too.

If you could change one thing about politics what would it be?

We need democracy — rule by the demos, the people. We don’t have it at the moment. The place to start therefore is with electoral reform, an elected second chamber and legislation to ensure that any politician caught lining their pockets ends up doing six months staring at the top bunk waiting for 30 minutes exercise time.

Best news story of the last year?

Copenhagen was pretty disastrous. But some really great news that came from it was the emergence of the small island nations and of the left-leaning Latin-American nations as brave bastions of climate-action, setting out clearly and starkly what needs to be done to save the future. So, one specific good news story soon after Copenhagen was Evo Morales’s re-election.