Ministerial reshuffles are great fun. Especially when no one knows they’re coming. This week Alex Salmond sacked three ministers while saying, of course, they hadn’t been failures. They were allocated new responsibilities such as, like . . . like . . . well new responsibilities. The media love ministerial changes. Who is up, down or…

In one of my columns late last year, I predicted that Tuesday would not just be the day of Lerwick’s Up-Helly-A’, it would also be the day when the Prime Minister called a UK General Election.

Well, I have been proved wrong, the polls have moved on and the Prime Minister is currently showing no…

What would you presume when someone declares a problem to be “resolved”? Maybe sorted? Fixed? Over? Or dealt with? All of the above I would assume.

Last week Alex Salmond told me at First Minister’s questions in the Scottish Parliament that a problem with the delay to the funding of a particular body was “resolved”.…

I HATE to say this … but there will be an election. I think it will be on 26th February or, as we would say in Bressay, the day before Up-Helly-A’.

Gordon Brown has been in Afghan­istan and Iraq this week. British troops, he announced in Baghdad, will be home in the “first half of…

THE PARLIAMENTARY shop was in full sales mode this week. A Christmas shopping night was held on Wednesday night, complete with mulled wine and mince pies. Staff and MSPs rushed in to buy Christ­mas presents such as mints and Scottish Parliament tea towels, for family and friends. I was dragged there under duress you understand.…

IT’S BEEN a somewhat terrifying week. A while back the BBC phoned up and asked me to join the BBC Question Time programme chaired by David Dimbleby.

I said “yes”, thinking it was another TV show that was important for airing the political issues of the day. But, as I write this, the true nature…

THE year I was elected to Shetland Islands Council, South Africans queued around the clock, for hours and hours, to vote for Nelson Mandela.

In 1994 I was taken aback by their hunger to make a difference. After the years of apartheid, black Africans and people of all ethnic background had the vote and they…

I’M writing this from Bressay, and having checked online the business numbers today it’s petrol that once again seems top of the inbox. Crude oil is today below $65 a barrel. Earlier this year it peaked at $146. It’s hard to imagine such a fall.

But wherever the hard pressed Shetlander buys petrol – the…

THIS WEEK students lobbied Parliament. Nothing new in that you may argue. Students have long marched on the political capitals of the world on issues from Vietnam to grants.

This week they are furious about drink. The SNP is proposing to ban 18-21 year olds from buying alcohol in supermarkets, off-licences or any other type…

I AM sitting in Southampton airport waiting for a Flybe plane back to Edinburgh as I write this. I’ve been at the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference in Bournemouth. The last time I came here for a federal conference was as Jim Wallace’s research assistant so it wasn’t yesterday.

Bournemouth is a sleepy town known by…