Letters / Why not count Shetland votes in Lerwick?
Voted by post? Regretting your choice? Or still savouring the moment until 4th July. Prepared to be disappointed by the outcome, next week? Probably.
Well, what can you expect by trying to pick a winner out of six hopefuls and five (or maybe six) no hopers.
The present electoral systems for Westminster and Holyrood seemed to be designed to keep the population quiet for the next few years – Shetland’s votes for an MP are not even counted in Shetland (why?) and or declared there but amalgamated (supposedly anonymously?) with those from Orkney.
Why not count each of them separately in Lerwick and Kirkwall, so that the results are known locally for what they are, and to be subsequently added together thereafter.
An email between the returning officers at a keystroke on a computer, with some saving to the public purse would seem sufficient.
Shetland’s voters may not have the same needs or requirements (tunnels, ferries, freight/transport to Scotland etc) as those Orcadians.
That, of course, highlights, what surely is the underlying item of concern for Shetland to control its future: finance. Shetlanders might seem to agree that local control/autonomy is at the centre of gravity of political/economic concern – take back control, by the electorate and the SIC, but that isn’t the prime of most candidates who may be mostly obliged to dance to the tunes played by political parties headquartered elsewhere.
None of them seem to be advocating autonomy directly or indirectly because of political expediency or personal opportunities, within the present system.
So, vote for whom you choose, but be careful, because the result might be that you and successor generations could be obliged to leave Shetland because of lack of jobs and opportunity and add to the 30,000 diaspora vis a vis successful Faroe.
Cecil Robertson
Inverness
