WHY was the two-year closure of Walton Street such a mess?

Why are is council house waiting list in Oxford so long?

Why are these controversial Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods being rolled out in the way they are, and why are so many homes being built in the Oxford green belt?

These are all questions which can only be answered by your city and county councillors.

They are all political decisions which affect thousands of people’s lives; our lives, made by those councillors.

Today is your chance to vote for which councillors you want to put in charge of all of those decisions.

For many of these seats, there is a good choice of Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and often independent candidates vying for your vote.

The successful councillors will also be in charge of collecting your bins, disposing of the waste at the other end (although very weirdly those two jobs are split between the two different councils), running leisure centres, social care for the disabled and elderly and schools policy.

They can decide whether to fly flags to support the LGBT community, whether to tackle the gender pay gap at their council and whether to support the Rhodes Must Fall campaign.

What’s more, the way we all vote today will also send a message to Boris Johnson’s Government in Westminster about how the country feels about his party versus his opponents.

It is difficult to overstate how lucky we are in this country to have the democracy that we do.

In countries like North Korea and China, there is no democracy to speak of: in this country, we not only get to vote for our central leadership, we also get to vote for our county, city, district and even parish leadership.

Voting isn't fun or enjoyable, it's just sticking a bit of paper in a box – it's what comes after you do the voting that can get exciting.