Turn out for local by-election was very disappointing

It was extremely disappointing to see turnout of just 25.6 per cent at the recent Ward 21 (Fort William and Ardnamurchan) by-election and I hope people will be less apathetic when we have the full regional elections in May.

An SNP win is hardly surprising, since I was told repeatedly when campaigning in 2017 that you could put a yellow rosette on a stuffed teddy bear and they’d vote for it. Thankfully far more said they would vote for anyone other than an SNP, which seems to still be the case since the vast majority (60.3 per cent) of those who did vote, voted against Ms Fanet. At least Sarah Fanet lives in the area which is more than can be said for two of the candidates, the

Conservative and Lib-Dem. Not only do they not live here (although one attempted to imply that they did, in their Lochaber Times candidate statement), they clearly weren’t interested in doing the most basic of research about the area. Had they done so, they’d know that we make higher-than-average use of Facebook as a means of communication, presumably due to the large geographical area and small dispersed communities.

Both of these candidates have Facebook pages, but neither bothered to use it to communicate with their potential constituents. Whether you love or loathe Facebook, if they aren’t interested in doing basic research about the area, they really don’t deserve our vote.

It was excellent to see the Green candidate get so many votes, demonstrating how seriously we are all taking environmental issues these days, and Kate lives locally and knows the area well.

Too often I hear people complaining about Westminster, Holyrood or Inverness being completely out of touch with those of us living in small, or remote, or rural communities – the only way to fix that is to vote for people to represent you that do know and understand.

I sincerely hope that more people will vote in May, and that more people will vote for local residents in May.

Joanne Matheson, Acharacle.