For the first nine years that I was in Parliament autumn statement and budget days were routinely an excuse for me and my colleagues from different parts of the Highlands and Islands to get to our feet and to demand a lower rate of duty paid on petrol and diesel to take some account of the higher prices that we pay at the pumps compared to people living in towns and cities on the mainland.

When the House of Commons is sitting it has been the practice in recent years to mark the two minutes silence on 11th November by standing in silence in the chamber and I have always been part of that.

One of the best things about being an MP is that after ten-and-a-half years it can still produce fresh chal­lenges.

One of the changes that this government has made to parliament which does not get a great deal of attention outside of Westminster has been to hand over control of a chunk of parliamentary time to a committee of backbenchers.

Early last week Jonathan Wills posed the question (in a fair and measured way) of how I could remain a minister in the coalition government while it was going to remove the emergency towing ves­sels (tugs) which have been stationed here and in the Western Isles since the Donaldson report into the grounding of the Braer.

Every year around this time MPs find themselves in the busy and slightly surreal environment that is the party conference.

The presentation of the SNP’s prog­ramme for government makes me think that Scottish politics is going to be many things for the next few years, but dull is not one of them.

There can be few places in the world like Shetland in the sunshine. That was the thought that lodged itself in my mind as I walked along the beach towards my lunch on Tuesday in Papa Stour. To say it was peaceful would have been an understatement – I felt like I could have been the last person alive on this earth.

It is not yet fully three weeks since parliament broke for the summer recess. I remember speculating with a colleague as I cleared my desk for the break away from Westminster about how long it would be until there was a demand for us to be recalled, if not actually a recall.

It is difficult to find the right word to describe life in Westminster this week. The journalists and broad­casters have all been working over­time with their thesauruses out. In fact, every time we thought that the story about the Murdochs, News International and the extent of their phone hacking practices had got as dramatic as it possibly could, some­thing else would happen to top it.