Letters / ‘Mouthlessness’
Very interesting to see your recent articles based on, I assume, news releases from party candidates pertaining to the coming SIC by-election in Shetland West.
Shetland does not do politics, never mind party politics; it is too insulated, aloof and generally – for most – wealthy enough not to need to bother. Westminster and Holyrood are largely an irrelevance.
Why three previously failed candidates should stand again so soon after the May election is a mystery to me, and somewhat farcical, given the fallacy that any form of democracy operates within Shetland.
With one or two exceptions, none of the SIC councillors get anywhere near 50 per cent of the registered votes, never mind actual voters. It is an irrelevance to their daily, affordable and comfortable lives.
What is of significant mystery, given the SNP/Greens are in coalition at Holyrood, you would have thought the Green and SNP candidates would have formed a local electoral pact, instead of dividing their almost identical ‘manifestos’ and gender-obsessed politics.
But it seems yet again perhaps that ego is operating in place of smart, grown-up politics!
The failed independent candidate in May, may well win this time around, but has he anything new or important to say? If he is elected, and by how many, I wonder what does it say about the largely apathetic Westside registered voters.
Historically a very strong area for the Lib Dems, they seem to be well used to meaningless, if not vacuous politics.
Mr Tinkler has clearly seen the light, knowing he will never have a following. He is now targeting his political antennae on da toon – cars, parking and transport – with suggestion that have no chance of being realised and fails to see or grasp the bigger strategic picture.
Mr Simmins of Ollaberry, to whom I have previously had some empathy on another matter, clearly doesn’t ‘get it’ either in posing questions about ‘park and ride’.
Ho hum! As my grandfather once said to me about ongoing and endless Shetland ‘moothlessness’ and apathy – ‘Dey’re no hungry enough!’
James J Paton
Lerwick
Note from the editor: Assumption is not knowledge, James. All three stories on the Westside candidates were produced in house by our local democracy reporter Chris Cope. It’s called journalism.
