I shall not be sorry if I never have another week like last week. The decision of the council to remove its chief executive with a payoff has caused a reaction among the Shet­land population of the sort that I have never encountered in my time as Member of Parliament.

Many and varied are the things that you get asked to do when you are a parliamentarian. Over the last nine years I have written thousands of letters and made hundreds of telephone calls about people’s problems with child support, tax credit, benefits, heating bills etc. I have also scrubbed pots after OAP lunches, painted walls for CLAN, eaten beans for Children in Need and even given away a bride on her wedding day.

So Lerwick’s Up-Helly-A’ has been and gone for another year. Congratulations to Guizer Jarl Rae Simpson and his family and squad on a first rate spectacle – especially that bill head and these banners!

Politics at Westminster has been a rather febrile business since the New Year but all the political sound and fury was put into some sort of perspective last week when the news hit our televisions and radios of the earthquake that had hit Haiti.

And they are off! No sooner were the last crumbs of shortbread brushed into the bin than the television news programmes were proclaiming the first shots of the election campaign.

There was a finance statement delivered this week and it was difficult not to feel some sympathy and admiration for the man deliver­ing. It takes some political courage to stand up and tell your fellow citizens just how bad things have got with your economy and to spell out how bad the cuts are going to be and where they are going to fall. That, however, was what was done – by the Irish Finance Minister in the Dail.

I wonder how many trees have been sacrificed over the years in the ongoing debate over Scotland’s constitutional future.

Remembrance Sunday this year was a particularly sombre affair as it start­ed with news of further casual­ties in Afghanistan.

Last Thursday night the nation was introduced to a new political hero on the BBC’s Question Time.

The Sunday papers this week were predicting a series of embarrassing exposures for MPs as they returned to Westminster on Monday.

Specially-built modules which will form the bulk of the new Mid Yell Junior High School will be shipped to the isle this week.

WEATHER OUTLOOK FOR SHETLAND

Tuesday, 16 March 2010 at 11:14

HEADLINES

TODAY: MOSTLY DRY THOUGH CLOUDY
TONIGHT: RAIN SPREADING NORTH
TOMORROW: BRIGHTER AFTER RAIN, BREEZY
DAYS 2-5: RAIN, SHOWERS AND CHANCE OF GALES
DAYS 6-10: MOSTLY DRY, COOL E’LY WINDS

Shetland MSP Tavish Scott will meet the transport minister tomorrow to discuss the impact the Scottish Government order for NorthLink to save fuel by lengthening its journey times without prior consultation will have on the isles.