Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, talks about the challenge of balancing the needs of family, party and his unique constituency in an interview with The House magazine.
In a typical week he travels some 500 miles, leaving his Orkney home on Monday for London, where he stays until Thursday afternoon. Friday and Saturday he spends on Orkney or Shetland, hopping between islands via flight or ferry depending on what the weather is doing.
Many of his fellow MPs simply do not understand how geographically broad his beat is. Lerwick, the main town on Shetland, is closer to Norway than it is to Edinburgh.
Much of his casework involves smoothing tensions between old ways and new, such as meeting with members of Shetland’s fishing community concerned that chunks of their fishing waters have been sold off to make way for renewables development.
"The sea bed is an increasingly crowded space and when electricity and telecoms cables, oil and gas pipelines and now renewable energy developments are all present, their protections can exclude fishermen from grounds they have worked for generations," Carmichael says.
Last October, damage caused to an underwater comms cable by a fishing boat caused chaos on Shetland, making it impossible for islanders to pay bills online, buy fuel or use ATMs for three days. "The initial loss of connection was catastrophic," the MP adds. "It affected mobiles and landlines alike."
The future of island farming is also a hot topic. "Some of the young farmers come to me and ask: “is this really an industry that has a future?"
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