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December 17, 2015

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Trump ties with Scotland elite turn sour

US Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump clashed with Scotland鈥檚 political leaders yesterday after Britain鈥檚 supreme court threw out his bid to stop a wind farm being built near his Scottish golf course.

A day after battling with rival candidates in a Republican national security debate, the business tycoon entered a war of words with lawmakers in his mother鈥檚 homeland after losing his fight to block the building of 11 offshore turbines near his multi-million dollar resort.

In a statement, the Trump Organization flayed the Scottish government as 鈥渇oolish, small minded and parochial,鈥 while the Scottish National Party鈥檚 foreign affairs spokesman Alex Salmond replied that Trump was 鈥渢hree times a loser.鈥

The spat comes after a week when Trump鈥檚 call to deny Muslims entry to the United States was major news across the Atlantic, and led to his being stripped of two Scottish honorary positions and prompted a record petition calling for him to be banned from Britain.

The row centers on plans to build a wind farm off Blackdog in Aberdeenshire on Scotland鈥檚 northeastern coast, which Trump believes will spoil the view from his golf complex just 3.5 kilometers away.

Scotland鈥檚 SNP-run government overturned environmental and other objections to approve the golf course in 2010, the first phase of a 750 million pound (US$1.13 billion) project.

But three years later it approved the turbines, saying the US$350 million scheme would boost the local economy and power thousands of homes.

Since then, the once-harmonious relations between Trump, who speaks proudly of being half-Scottish and whose Gaelic-speaking mother hailed from Stornoway on the northern Isle of Lewis, and Scotland鈥檚 political elite have turned sour.


 

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