Why Showing Up Still Matters

Community, democracy, and the value of participation

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried“

People sometimes ask why I do it.

If they know me through my main career, the question often carries a kind of polite disbelief: why take on something so public, so time-consuming, so exposed, alongside a demanding professional career?

If they know me as an elected Councillor, the question sometimes runs the other way: how do you balance this with a full-time career that has nothing to do with politics? Where on earth do you find the time?

Both versions assume a tension between the two roles. From the outside, that makes sense. From the inside, I’ve come to see them as deeply complementary and it’s hard to imagine life with one but not the other. Here’s why.

I work as a Communications Consultant in the Pharmaceutical Industry, a career I have been building from the moment I finished my PhD in Biochemistry 11 years ago. I’ve been proud to work for the organisations and teams I have done and continue to do, and to still be building towards something bigger.

Without being too reductive, my job is to help organisations explain complex ideas clearly, understand their audiences, and communicate honestly under pressure. It involves working in teams, writing, speaking, persuasion, listening, and judgement - often in imperfect conditions, with limited information and high expectations.

Being a councillor relies on many of the same skills.

Explaining why a decision has been made - or why it hasn’t - to residents with very different priorities is not that different from professional communications work. You learn quickly that clarity matters more than cleverness, and that tone often matters more than content. You learn to adapt how you speak and write without losing integrity. And you learn, very quickly, that being technically right is not the same as being understood. Most of all, you learn to listen.

That’s not to pretend the visibility is easy.

Being a Councillor can feel like living in a goldfish bowl. Your words travel further than you expect (and to national ‘newspapers’ searching for outrage clicks). Silences are noticed. Decisions are interpreted, sometimes uncharitably. There’s a level of exposure that’s unfamiliar if most of your career has involved advising rather than standing in front.

You can - somewhat unexpectedly - build up huge numbers of followers who see you as a Leader and someone duty-bound to opine on the difficult societal issues of the day. Even if it’s not what you knew you were signing up for when standing for election.

You accept that every time you go into town that people are going to come up to you in the street - sometimes to complain - but more often just to say they appreciate what you do. It’s incredibly humbling even if it takes a bit of getting used to.

And what makes it hard? It’s because it all happens against a difficult financial backdrop where you wish you had something more positive to say

People are paying more council tax than ever, yet many only see services getting worse. That isn’t because councils have suddenly become careless or complacent. It’s because government funding has been steadily reduced, while unavoidable costs - particularly adult social care in an ageing population - consume a larger and larger share of local budgets that the average person doesn’t grasp.

The result is a grinding squeeze: higher bills, fewer visible improvements, and very little room to manoeuvre. It’s a perfect environment for frustration, distrust, and the feeling that the system simply isn’t working.

Trying to practise local democracy in those conditions is hard. Explaining limits without sounding defensive is hard. Being honest without sounding like you’re making excuses is hard.

But that honesty matters.

In a political climate increasingly shaped by easy answers and performative outrage, part of how I see my role is as a small, local effort to hold back the tide of populism from reaching my town.

Not with grand speeches, but by insisting on reality. By saying, sometimes unfashionably, that there are trade-offs, constraints, and no pain-free solutions. By showing that democracy isn’t about promising everything, but about making choices openly and being accountable for them.

Populism and extremism thrives when people stop believing that ordinary democratic processes can deliver anything meaningful. The only effective counter to that isn’t rhetoric - it’s example.

I still think of my role as a councillor primarily as community payback.

I’ve benefited enormously from living where I live - from public services, yes, but also from the quieter civic infrastructure that only exists because other people have shown up over time. That inheritance isn’t automatic. It only continues if people decide to contribute back into it.

For me, that hasn’t meant stepping away from my main career. It’s meant bringing the skills I already have into a different setting - one where the feedback is immediate, the stakes are human, and the consequences are impossible to ignore.

If people like me (or you) decide it’s not for people like us, a swathe or essential perspectives beyond the regular Councillor demographic of the comfortably well-off retired cohort is lost, and decision making would be all the weaker because of it.

There’s a personal dimension to this too.

Moving to a new area as an adult and forging something which resembles ‘community’ isn’t easy. Building new networks doesn’t happen automatically, especially once you have a family and a career already pulling in multiple directions. Modern life is efficient and comfortable - and often surprisingly isolating.

Public service accelerates belonging. It forces you into community, into disagreement, into responsibility. You stop relating to where you live as a consumer and start relating to it as a participant.

They say there’s nothing like the ‘zeal of a convert’. Following this logic, in my case, it’s accelerated my friendship forming, network building, and plain love for Abingdon.

That responsibility is heavy, but it’s also grounding.

I’m in my mid-thirties, with a family, knowing I’ll need to work for decades yet. Like most people, I constantly weigh where to invest my time: in my career, in my family, and in my community, with both eyes firmly on what the future will look like. That balance is never static, and it’s never perfect.

But I don’t see public service as a detour from professional life. I see it as part of a broader commitment to taking responsibility - for how ideas are communicated, how decisions are made, and how communities hold together when things are under strain.

That’s why this is how I choose to spend any spare time I have (and sleep is for the weak….)

Not because it replaces my main career, and not despite it - but because the two inform each other. Both are, in their own ways, about making sense of complexity, communicating honestly, and showing that democratic systems only work if people are willing to engage with them.

And I don’t think that responsibility belongs to a special class of people.

If anything, democracy works best when ordinary, busy, imperfect people decide - at some point in their lives - to step forward.

To give something back. To resist easy answers by doing the harder work of participation.

That’s a hopeful thought, I think. Because it means the future of our communities isn’t fixed or abstract. It’s shaped by people choosing to show up, even when the backdrop is difficult.

This simple line of logic applies to any other Councillor you know who quietly goes about their duties, whatever colour rosette they wear.

And it’s something any of us can do, including you, if you’ve got this far through the post ;-)

Here’s to a happy 2026 for all of us.