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发帖数: 897 | 1 BALMEDIE, Scotland — President-elect Donald J. Trump has already built a
wall — not on the border with Mexico, but on the border of his exclusive
golf course in northeastern Scotland, blocking the sea view of local
residents who refused to sell their homes.
And then he sent them the bill.
David and Moira Milne had already been threatened with legal action by Mr.
Trump’s lawyers, who claimed a corner of their garage belonged to him, when
they came home from work one day to find his staff building a fence around
their garden. Two rows of grown trees went up next, blocking the view. Their
water and electricity lines were temporarily cut. And then a bill for about
$3,500 arrived in the mail, which, Mr. Milne said, went straight into the
trash.
“You watch, Mexico won’t pay either,” said Mr. Milne, a health and safety
consultant and part-time novelist, referring to Mr. Trump’s campaign
promise to build a “beautiful, impenetrable wall” along the border and
force the Mexicans to pay for it.
The Milnes now fly a Mexican flag from their hilltop house, a former coast
guard station that overlooks the clubhouse of Trump International Golf Links
whenever Mr. Trump visits.
So do Susan and John Munro, who also refused to sell and now face an almost
15-foot-high earthen wall built by Mr. Trump’s people on two sides of their
property.
Michael Forbes, a quarry worker whose home sits on the opposite side of the
Trump property, added a second flag — “Hillary for President” — perhaps
because Mr. Trump publicly accused him of living “like a pig” and called
him a “disgrace” for not selling his “disgusting” and “slumlike” home.
As many Americans are trying to figure out what kind of president they have
just elected, the people of Balmedie, a small village outside the once oil-
rich city of Aberdeen, say they have a pretty good idea. In the 10 years
since Mr. Trump first visited, vowing to build “the world’s greatest golf
course” on an environmentally protected site featuring 4,000-year-old sand
dunes, they have seen him lash out at anyone standing in his way. They say
they watched him win public support for his golf course with grand promises,
then watched him break them one by one.
A promised $1.25 billion investment has shrunk to what his opponents say is
at most $50 million. Six thousand jobs have dwindled to 95. Two golf courses
to one. An eight-story, 450-room luxury hotel never materialized, nor did
950 time-share apartments. Instead, an existing manor house was converted
into a 16-room boutique hotel. Trump International Golf Links, which opened
in 2012, lost $1.36 million last year, according to public accounts.
Photo
From their kitchen window, John and Susan Munro used to have a view of the
Scottish coastline, until it was blocked by an earthen berm built by Mr.
Trump’s people. Credit Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert for The New York Times
“If America wants to know what is coming, it should study what happened
here. It’s predictive,” said Martin Ford, a local government
representative. “I have just seen him do in America, on a grander scale,
precisely what he did here. He suckered the people and he suckered the
politicians until he got what he wanted, and then he went back on pretty
much everything he promised.”
Alex Salmond, a former first minister of Scotland whose government granted
Mr. Trump planning permission in 2008, overruling local officials, now
concedes the point, saying, “Balmedie got 10 cents on the dollar.”
Sarah Malone, who came to Mr. Trump’s attention after winning a local
beauty pageant and is now a vice president of Trump International, disputed
some of the figures publicly discussed about the project, saying that Mr.
Trump invested about $125 million and that the golf course now employed 150
people.
“While other golf and leisure projects were shelved due to lack of funds,”
she said, “Mr. Trump continued to forge ahead with his plans and has put
the region on the global tourism map, and this resort plays a vital role in
the economic prosperity of northeast Scotland.”
Mr. Salmond said that Mr. Trump’s impact on business in Scotland might
actually be a net negative because his xenophobic comments have appalled the
Scottish establishment so much that the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St.
Andrews, known simply as the R&A, is unlikely to award his other Scottish
golf course, the world-renowned Trump Turnberry, another prestigious golf
tournament like the Open anytime soon.
“I don’t see the R&A going back to Turnberry, which is a tragedy in itself
,” Mr. Salmond said. “But it’s also a huge economic blow: Several hundred
million pounds lost — or, in Trump terms, billions.”
Mr. Trump, whose mother emigrated from Scotland to New York in 1930, never
showed any great interest in her place of birth. But in 2008, the same year
he applied for planning permission in Balmedie, he visited the pebble-dashed
cottage on the Isle of Lewis in Western Scotland where she grew up.
After emerging from his private jet and handing out copies of his book “How
to Get Rich,” he reportedly told locals how Scottish he felt. “I feel
very comfortable here,” Mr. Trump said before spending less than two
minutes with his cousins in his mother’s homestead, The Guardian reported
at the time. Within about three hours his jet had taken off.
Photo
Mr. Trump with bagpipers during a ceremony in 2010 at the site of his
proposed golf course in northeastern Scotland. Credit David Moir/Reuters
The visit clearly did not impress Mr. Ford, then the chairman of the
planning committee at Aberdeenshire Council, which refused Mr. Trump
permission for his golf course on environmental grounds. The ancient dunes,
the committee concluded, were a “site of special scientific interest,” or
as Mr. Ford put it, “Scotland’s equivalent of the Amazonian rain forest.”
In the end, it was Mr. Salmond, a self-described golf fanatic whose
constituency includes Balmedie, who came to Mr. Trump’s defense, granting
permission to proceed in the “national economic interest.”
Independent journalism.
More essential than ever.
“Six thousand jobs across Scotland, 1,400 local and permanent jobs in the
northeast of Scotland,” Mr. Salmond said at the time. “That outweighs the
environmental concerns.”
Eight years later he contends that Mr. Trump took him in: “If, knowing what
I know now, I had the ability to go back, I would rewrite that page,” Mr.
Salmond said in an interview this week. “Most developments balance economic
against environmental issues. The problem, and it’s a big problem, is that
Donald Trump didn’t do what he promised.”
Mr. Trump later fell out badly with Mr. Salmond (whom he now calls “mad
Alex” and a “has-been”), first because he refused to evict residents by
eminent domain and then over his plans to install offshore wind turbines a
couple of miles from Mr. Trump’s golf course.
“If Scotland doesn’t stop insane policy of obsolete, bird-killing wind
turbines, country will be destroyed,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter in 2014.
At a parliamentary inquiry about renewable energy in 2012, Mr. Trump warned
that Scotland would get into “serious trouble” if it continued to build
wind turbines. Asked what evidence he had, he said, “I am the evidence.”
He then made a formal complaint about a Green Party politician who had made
fun of the statement with a still from the Monty Python film “The Life of
Brian,” accusing him of blasphemy and threatening to take him to court.
Michael Forbes, a quarry worker whose home sits on the opposite side of the
Trump property. Mr. Forbes, whom Mr. Trump called a “disgrace” for
refusing to sell his home, flies a “Hillary for President” flag near the
property line. Credit Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert for The New York Times
The wind turbines, whose foundations are expected to be laid next year,
still seem to rankle Mr. Trump. In a meeting right after his election
victory, Mr. Trump urged Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist U.K.
Independence Party — which has failed to win a single seat in Scotland —
to fight offshore wind farms in Scotland on his behalf.
“To actually believe that having a conversation with Nigel Farage and his
henchmen about wind energy is going to change Scottish government policy is
on the outer limits of possibility,” Mr. Salmond said.
As a presidential candidate who was caught on a hot microphone bragging
about sexually assaulting women, Mr. Trump found little sympathy among
Scotland’s political leaders, most of whom happen to be women.
Nicola Sturgeon, Mr. Salmond’s successor, has called Mr. Trump’s comments
“deeply abhorrent” and stripped Mr. Trump of his membership in the Global
Scot business network. Kezia Dugdale, who runs the Scottish Labour Party,
commented after Mr. Trump’s election that a “misogynist” would move into
the White House, while Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish
Conservatives, described him as a “clay-brained guts, a knotty-pated fool.”
And in Aberdeen, where 10 years ago public opinion was overwhelmingly in
favor of Mr. Trump and his golf course, Robert Gordon University annulled Mr
. Trump’s honorary degree after his comments about barring Muslims from
entering the United States.
Some local residents remain fiercely loyal to him. Stewart Spence, owner of
the exclusive Marcliffe hotel, has a photo of Mr. Trump and himself on
display in the lobby as well as his own honorary membership of the Balmedie
golf course.
“How many tourists have the dunes brought in? Zero,” he said. “What he
has done is build a beautiful golf course and made the northeast of Scotland
an amazing destination.”
As for the American election campaign, Mr. Spence said, “He has done a
fantastic selling job to the American people.”
Until six years ago, the Munros could look out their kitchen window and see
10 miles across open land all the way to the Girdleness lighthouse on the
other side of Aberdeen. Now they look out onto the nearly 15-foot-high
earthen berm built by Mr. Trump’s people.
“He has a thing about walls, that Mr. Trump,” Ms. Munro said. “I hope
America has a better experience than Balmedie.” |
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