‘The man lives in a pig sty. He lives in garbage. He’s a pig.’
– Donald Trump on a local objector to his Scottish golf course
I love everything about Local Hero. The story, the Knopfler soundtrack, the landscape, the people – everything. So I might be slightly biased towards a documentary portrayed as a real life Local Hero and which features clips from the classic.
Tonight at 22:35 RTE One are showing the 2011 documentary ‘You’ve Been Trumped‘, a David and Goliath story about Trump’s construction of a luxury golf course on an environmentally protected site in Aberdeenshire amidst local opposition.
The only pity is that it wasn’t shown the day he arrived in Shannon to a fawning welcome recently after he bought Doonbeg golf resort. ‘You’ve Been Trumped’ follows the local residents as they make their last stand in the face of security harassments, legal threats and the cutting off of their water and electricity.
The Donald (as Sean O’Rourke cringingly referred to him in a sycophantic interview at the time of his Shannon stopover) doesn’t like the documentary. If that’s not enough to make you like it, I don’t know what will.
More accessible and engaging in my view than the equally significant ‘The Pipe’ on the Shell to Sea campaign, things have moved on further since ‘You’ve Been Trumped’.
The Scottish Government supported the construction of the Aberdeenshire golf course despite objections but Trump halted work on a planned hotel, housing and a second course on the site when plans for an offshore windfarm close to the links course emerged and were upheld by the Scottish courts. Trump then announced that they would instead be focusing ‘all of our investment and energy’ on Doonbeg (lucky us). He had alleged in court that Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, had secretly interfered in the decision to approve the 11-turbine site and there had been clear bias in favour of the windfarm.
As captured in this Scotsman cartoon, the key lesson for Michael Noonan et al (and the Doonbeg community) is that Trump can turn.
P.S. For a good account of Trump’s US presidential election will he/won’t he ridiculousness read the BuzzFeed article he didn’t like.
The Donald
Organising Commonsense 