Not Quite Yet

Filed in archive Golf Courses on January 2, 2008

There were some highly misleading headlines just before Christmas regarding Donald Trump's star-crossed mega-golf project for northeast Scotland.

I have blogged about the project at some length but here's the nut of it: the project involves two 18-hole championship courses, a high rise hotel, luxury homes and roughly a thousand residential homes to be built in an environmentally sensitive area. Total estimated value: 2 billion dollars.

The Aberdeenshire Council approved the project and sent it along to its infrastructure and planning committee for further approval but it was narrowly rejected. The matter was then taken over by the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh where a group of Scottish MPs is reviewing the project and plans to report by mid-January.

Trump hit the roof, tempers flared on Council and the chairman of the infrastructure committee was fired (although 29 councilors abstained from that vote). The Aberdeenshire Council then reversed its own committee's decision and declared the project a go.

Trump was now delighted. "The people of Aberdeenshire so loved the project that the Council voted for it unanimously", he proclaimed like a proud papa.

And so headlines read, "Donald Trump wins Scotland Golf Course Battle".

In fact, he has won nothing. Yet.

The Scottish parliament now owns the final say on the project. A spokesman for the Aberdeenshire Council said as much. "Support for the plans will be put forward by the council as an enhanced consultee as it is now no longer the planning authority."

So, Trump has at least one more hoop to jump through. But, as was reported in mid-December, he seems to have most of the key government leaders in his pocket.

Fortunately, the opposition parties in Scotland are all over this like a dog at dinner time.

They may not stop the project from happening but their constant digging will demonstrate that all-too-familiar pattern between Big Business and politics once more.

That's why I wrote that it always surprises me the common folk still believe their politicians are forthright and honest.