Don’t Fence Me In: Trump erects barrier on Scot’s property, sticks him with half the bill

        No one’s apprentice when it comes to negotiating a deal, Donald Trump has built a fence around a recalcitrant private property owner’s land in Scotland -– and sent him the bill for half its cost.  The stuntman, who recently left the U.S. political stage after his ill-conceived positioning as the birther of a nation, remains front and center in Scotland, where he is building a $1.5 billion golf resort over the objections of the local governing body and most of the local citizenry.

        Here is the outline of the project’s history.  Trump decided in the mid-2000s to build Trump International Golf Links – Scotland, a resort

adjacent to protected dunesland in Aberdeenshire, on the country’s northeast coast.  The local council, given the land’s designation as a “site of special scientific interest,” rejected Trump’s application.  A reported eight species of rare birds use the seaside location.  Under normal circumstances, the council’s decision would have been the end of it, but Donald Trump does not react well to rejection.  Scotland’s national legislature took up the Donald’s case and overrode the local objections, calling the project “a matter of national significance.”  In the process, the local council head was sacked for not seeing the benefits to the local economy (never mind that the majority of local citizens do not see the benefits either, according to local polls).  Trump began construction of the golf course in 2009, tearing down, local environmentalists say, some of the very sand formations that he himself had dubbed loudly as The Great Dunes of Scotland.

        Since the view to the sea from the future hotel was not to be entirely unimpeded, Trump also began buying additional land adjacent to the original site.  A few pesky landowners had not recognized the compelling reasons to abandon the homes they had lived in for the last few decades.  They decided not to sell. Trump first tried communicating with them in his own inimitable style, labeling the property of one “disgusting” and “a disgrace” which only served to harden the resolve of that landowner and make him something of a local hero.  Not one to shrink from a fight, especially against those with less resources than his own and no official political backing, Trump instructed his work crews to erect tall trees and fencing around the homes of some of the transgressors; to one of them, David Milne, he sent a bill for half the cost of the fence, $4,600.  You can read a story about that fence, with photos, by clicking here. 

        The story almost certainly will progress about as you would expect.

The Trump operation will “starve” the landowners in court costs they cannot afford to pay.  If that doesn’t work, the Scottish legislature could authorize the properties be taken by the Scottish version of eminent domain, known locally as a “compulsory purchase order.”  Although Trump announced recently he would not seek the CPOs and, instead, would build his resort and golf course around the “disgusting” home sites, it is hard to imagine him asking his future hotel guests to shell out hundreds of dollars a night to look down upon rusting backhoes and collapsing sheds.

        In following this story, we can’t help being reminded of the wonderful 1983 movie “Local Hero,” which starred Burt Lancaster as a rapacious oil billionaire named Felix Happer, who tries to buy a Scottish seaside town and its surrounding land as the base of his company’s drilling operations.  The movie has a happy ending, with an accommodation that settles everything satisfactorily, especially Happer’s ego.  But that was fiction, and Felix Happer is no Donald Trump.

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        Despite the controversy, the linksland near Aberdeen is spectacularly well suited to a golf course, and the respected designer, Martin Hawtree, is likely to design a world class layout.  A number of "YouTube" reports about the project are available; this one includes some nice shots of the dunes (click here to view).  It portrays Trump much less favorably than the landowners who are not likely to forgive him his trespasses.