ANOTHER year, another chance to stay at home when a few diehards go down to the polls and try "to make a difference".

Yes, it's election year again in Bristol. Some wards in the city, at any rate, get a chance to throw out their local councillors or keep them in for another term.

There are no polls scheduled for North Somerset, South Gloucestershire or Bath and North-East Somerset in 2009.

But everyone – wherever they live – will have an opportunity to vote in the European elections.

These will be held on the same day as the Bristol City Council polls, Thursday, June 4.

If you're not pencilling that in your diary straightaway, I won't be surprised.

When it comes to choosing councillors or members of the European Parliament, most voters sit on their hands.

They'll turn out – grudgingly, perhaps – for a general election. (My guess is there won't be one of those this year. Gordon Brown had his chance in 2007 and blew it!)

But local politics – still less, what goes on in Brussels – leaves a majority of people cold.

Which is a pity because a good few local politicians really are trying to do their best for Bristol.

The phrase some of them trot out at every opportunity is "making a difference". Why are we doing such and such? We're trying to make a difference, they say.

The trouble is that much of what councillors do is not colourful. It's the colour that grabs the headlines – the row, the whiff of scandal, sometimes (not always) the clash of personalities.

Less colourfully, Bristol City Council is quietly getting on with the greatest transformation it has ever experienced.

Hundreds of jobs will go over the next few years, office buildings will be sold off, leases will be allowed to expire and millions of pounds should be saved.

The aim is to improve services and the public's access to them. And the programme of change got under way earlier this year, with the arrival from Hull of new chief executive Jan Ormondroyd.

The modernisers' revolution continued with the appointment of a 37-year-old police chief, Jon House, as Mrs Ormondroyd's deputy.

Other faces at the top changed in a shake-up of first-tier officers. Second-tier staff are now going through the same sort of review. And this is just the start.

Modernisation is affecting frontline services, too. Take care homes, for instance.

The city council this year announced a number of closures in order to upgrade remaining stock and switch its limited resources towards home care services.

There is some anger about this and it does not come just from the unions or what you might call "old Labour" types.

There are real concerns about how we treat our elderly and what might become of us when we are too old to care for ourselves.

The fact is, however, that where Bristol goes other cities in this country have gone before them – long ago.

Giving older folk more care in their own homes, where they can continue to live independently ... it's just a no-brainer as far as the government is concerned. Councils are expected to toe the line.