Boycott Trumps

Bill Elliott, editor-at-large of Golf Monthly (readership around 500,000) and chairman of the Association of Golf Writers, is calling for a boycott of Donald Trump’s Scottish course.

Elliot explains " it was impossible not to be shocked by the tactics used to try to intimidate a few local residents who refused to sell their homes. This intimidation apparently goes on.”

Aberdeenshire farmer Michael Forbes, a neighbour and campaigner against the golf course, recently received the Top Scot prize at the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland ceremony.

Socialist Courier hopes that the vulture Trump gets a birdie, to use the golfing term, for his business venture - a dead duck.

They've been trumped, too

The story of Donald Trump's golf course development in Scotland was shown on BBC2 on Sunday - You've Been Trumped. He had "tremendous support from environmental groups," said Trump. Local planning was denied by the council on the grounds that it interfered with a Site of Special Scientific Interest and was opposed by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, World Wildlife Fund and the RSPB. So much for Trump's truth.

Of America's 25 largest cities, New York is now the most unequal. The median income for the bottom 20% last year was less than $9,000, while the top one percent of New Yorkers has an average annual income of $2.2 million.  One in five residents of the Bronx is living in poverty, and the borough is New York City’s poorest. In a city where economic inequality rivals that of a third-world country New York City have just awarded Donald Trump -- yes, that Donald Trump of Aberdeen golf course fame -- the right to run a golf course in the Bronx which taxpayers are spending at least $97 million to build in what seems to amounts to a public subsidy for a luxury golf course. Trump has signed a 20 year deal to run and operate the Ferry Point Park Golf Course smack in the middle of New York City. It is a former garbage dump.

Trump's firm will not be held responsible to pay anything to the city for the first four years of operation. Upon the fifth year, Trump will only have to provide the city a minimum of $300,000 or revenue equivalent to 7 percent of gross receipts. And by year 16, he pays just 10 percent, or $420,000, to the city. The 20-year deal requires Trump to finance a $10 million proposed clubhouse for the Ferry Points golf course, while city tax dollars pay up $97 million. Last year, Trump's net worth was reported to be $7 billion. As for it being a "public" golf course, the deal allows Trump to use the course privately for a full day, as long as the parks department okays it. Fees are also expected to be as much as $125, almost three times the price required by nearby golf courses. Many low-income residents living in housing projects northeast of the site say golf is too expensive a sport for them to take up and that they would be better off with a larger community park. However, homeowners who invested in gated riverfront communities southeast of the site, in anticipation of property values skyrocketing, desperately want the course completed. One in five residents of the Bronx is living in poverty, and the borough is New York City’s poorest

trumped by the capitalist

Donald Trump opened his new £100m golf course. Trump had flown into Aberdeen on a private jet emblazoned in gold with the Trump brand.

The course is built across a stretch of stunning land overlooking the North Sea, some of which had been designated a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) because of the way the dunes moved northwards over time. Trump claims to have stabilised the land to create the "greatest golf course in the world". The Golf Environment Organisation, which vets courses and is backed by the European Tour, complained of the course's "considerable negative impact on what was one of the UK's most valuable mobile sand dune systems".

Trump denying there were any protesters, declaring after the first nine holes: "The environmentalists love what I have done." A second question about the environmental impact saw the billionaire shepherded by an aide away from the media and towards the VIP refreshment tent.

Later Trump said "Nothing will ever be built around this course because I own all the land around it," he said with a smile. "It's nice to own land."

Susan Monro home is just 100 metres away from the course clubhouse and she refused to sell up so Trump  piled an 8 metre high sand berm around her house, blocking her sea views. Huge gates have been erected at the end of her lane and she complains Trump's security staff shine lights into her home at night.

Another local who resisted Trump's attempts to buy him out is now forced to live behind a row of tall spruce trees planted on Trump's orders at the edge of his property which screen off spectacular views of the dunes and the sea.

Trump once declared "It's our property, we can do what we want."

Scottish independence?

American billionaire Donald Trump is to throw the full might of the Trump organisation behind a Scottish anti-wind farm group.

The tycoon's staff, based at Trump Towers in New York, are to work on a daily basis with Communities Against Turbines Scotland (Cats). Trump is also sending his executive vice-president and legal counsel, George Sorial, to an anti-wind farm meeting to be held by the group in St Andrews, Fife, next Thursday. Sorial said the billionaire would use all of the resources at his disposal to do "whatever it takes" to prevent Scotland being "encircled by these monstrous turbines". He went on to state "We have agreed to provide financial support to Cats. We have agreed to assist them with marketing and PR. We have agreed to provide them with staff, with some of our team at our New York office working with them on a daily basis."Nothing to do with Trump's £750 million Balmedie golf resort, of course.

Work on the hotel has stopped while there is still a chance the offshore wind farm will be approved. Sorial added: "No sane developer would build a hotel that looks into what is essentially an industrial plant. Until this issue is resolved, as much as we would like to build the hotel, we will not."

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trump-to-bankroll-scots-wind-farm-war.16833920