Letters / Condign punishment
I see that Alastair Carmichael has just stepped in it, presumably because he was depending on a repeat of his previous almost-10,000 majority to win him forgiveness with the voters if his little sabotage manoeuvre against the SNP ever saw the light of day.
The SNP don’t really need any help in that direction, showing themselves as they have done since 7 May of being quite incapable of keeping their infantile fingers off the self-destruct button.
The loss of most of the LibDem votes to other parties on 7 May this year must have come as a bit of a shock to him; particularly as the well-deserved national near-extinction of the LibDems at the recent general election has effectively blown away his protective shield.
I don’t see him as a cause of anything though, but merely an effect: more as a sly denizen of a corrupt and shoddy system who arrogantly thought that he could break the 11th Commandment (‘thou shalt not get found out’), rather than a clumsy fool…a typical politician in fact.
Having said that, I don’t see that kicking Carmichael out of office over his childish attempt to undermine the SNP will actually achieve anything.
I certainly don’t see why Orkney and Shetland should be saddled with the cost of yet another by-election, and have even more ear-ache of the ‘hoorah’ and ‘mine is bigger and better than yours’ variety inflicted on us all.
What I would like to see happen instead would be for Carmichael to be stripped of his assets (to recover the cost of the inquiry he caused to be set in motion); and then be forced to face his critics’ sneers and barbs on a daily basis by being made to soldier on in office.
That way, he couldn’t simply slither away and hide and duck it all – he’d be in a position to have to face the public every working day until he retires from office in 2020, knowing that they know exactly what he is – and that they’d have a right without fear of prosecution to express their disgust with him in fairly robust language.
He’d be in a modern pillory, and would have no choice other than to just smile and take it.
That, in my opinion, would be condign punishment for someone so shifty.
Philip Andrews
Unst
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