Voters play it cagey at Scotland's most northerly polling station
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Version 0 of 1. The North Unst Public Hall is a low, pebbledashed building set among a cluster of buildings in an otherwise vast, open moorland near Haroldswick on the Shetland island of Unst. It is also – for the time being at least – the most northerly polling station in the United Kingdom. Here, and at 41 other locations across Shetland, voters were making their determined way from the early hours of Thursday morning morning to cast their vote. It wasn't quite what one could call a stampede – just 632 people live on Unst – but despite the low, drizzling clouds that hugged Shetland's northern isles for much of the morning, they came in a steady trickle. Most voters, however, preferred not to talk. "Why is it important to vote? Are you having a laugh?" scoffed one man wearing a blue "Scotland" cap as he headed to the polling station with his wife. "This is the most important vote in our country's history." This is solid no territory, at least according to Karen Gray, working behind the till at the large Skibhoul Stores in Baltasound. "Here in the shop, because it's a big topic of conversation, most folk are saying no. That's the feeling from the community." Her father has raised a union jack outside his home, one of at least five along the main road north from the ferry quay at Belmont. Several are accompanied by the Shetland flag, a navy banner with white upright cross. The Scottish saltire, more closely associated with the pro-independence lobby on the islands, is conspicuous by its comparative absence. But customer Michael Malone said he was "leaning to yes", though he wouldn't finally make his mind up until he entered the booth and had the pencil in his hand. "If you don't take a chance you won't get anywhere." On Yell, the slightly larger island immediately to the south, emblems of the pro-independence campaign were more visible, with one large yes sign on a bus stop outside Mid Yell, the island's main settlement, and another on a nearby house. "This does feel like a different election to the normal ones," said Shirley Nicolson, dismantling cardboard boxes in the village shop. "More people are certainly going to participate. It's not just half a dozen politicians trying to get your vote. It's two sides, yes or no. You either believe yes, or you believe no." Would the dreich weather put people off, or was this normal for Yell? "I wouldn't say this is normal, but we are used to it like this." Nor did it seem to. By 1pm, according to the Shetland Islands council's counting officer, Jan Riise, more people had already voted in the islands than turned out in the entire day of polling for the European elections last May. "On that statistic alone, this looks like a record turnout for Shetland," he said. By 5.30pm Riise was predicting an 80% turnout in Shetland by the time polls closed. The comparable figure for the May European elections was 29.6%. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the council of the Western Isles, based in Stornoway on Lewis, reported a similar record turnout, with 87% of postal votes returned by mid afternoon, and others expected to hand theirs into polling stations. Almost a quarter of the 23,000 electorate had requested postal votes. Unlike Orkney, where only voters on the main island can vote on polling day, with those on outer islands reliant on postal votes, every inhabited island in the Western Isles has polling stations, said a council spokesman. This has required special arrangements for their collection, however; ballot boxes from Barra will travel by boat to Eriskay, where they will be driven across the causeway to South Uist and then on to North Uist. From there, votes from all four islands will travel by specially chartered plane to Stornoway, in Lewis. There were nervous moments this morning when heavy fog delayed all scheduled flights to Stornoway – "it was looking a bit dodgy earlier, certainly," said the spokesman, adding that the council had a boat on standby in case the chartered plane would be unable to fly. In that event, the islands' result would be delayed from an estimated 2am to 5am, he said, stressing that he was hopeful the weather would clear. Shetland's ballot boxes, from Unst, Yell and Whalsay, will be brought to the mainland on the islands' scheduled ferry services, and then driven to the count in Lerwick, where the result was expected around 1.30am. |