Local Election Day.

Yes, it's local election day. Are you yawning already? After all, it's hard to get excited about voting for councillors. We all know that they spend most of their time playing power-games, demanding double yellow lines outside their own houses while potholes get deeper where you live. That they'll fritter money on new computers, office chairs, fancy bollards on the cycle path near their own houses, leaving nothing left to pay for care homes or refuse collections.

At least - that is the fantasy. In practise some work hard, others don't. Some listen to their electors while others get carried away with the politics. Some beaver away behind the scenes and we never know how much they do while others spout from their soapboxes to make sure we all know how wonderful they are.

We know all that - and I'll still trot off to the polling station and place my cross.

Because how can complain if a councillor doesn't do his or her bit if I haven't done mine? I want to whinge about rural transport (we now have no buses at all on a Sunday), but if I can't be bothered to make a detour to the polling station once every few years then how can I expect a councillor to make an effort on my behalf - or complain when he or she fails to do anything?

But it goes deeper than that. Women chained themselves to railings just so I could vote. They were sidelined, ridiculed. They marched through London and were beaten by policemen. They went to prison, had tubes pushed down their throats so they could be force-fed. One died under the hooves of a horse. What if they'd given up? It they'd returned to their firesides, cowed, defeated?

I owe it to them. So I'm off to the polling station this morning.