Trump Stinks - Literally!

[PeterRS]

20 years ago when Trump had decided he would build a links golf course north of the Scottish city of Aberdeen, he was going to do it come hell or high water. He promised the authorities US$1 bilion in investment that would include not only the course but a 450 room hotel  850 holiday villa apartments, 36 golf villas and 500 hundred houses for sale. Many hundreds of new jobs would be created. Alhough the local council threw out the appication on the grounds of potential environmental damage, Trump persuaded many politicians to overturn that decision given the economic benefits the course would bring.

Apart from the hotel, none of the other investments materialised. In the latest set of accounts, the book value of the investments is US$45 million and there are just 81 employees. The courses (a second one was later added) have never shown a profit.

But to the stink of corruption around the acquisition is now added the stink of sewage emanating from the site. The site has its own treatment plant for sewage before it is released back into the ground. Documents released by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and an investigative journalist group show that contamination levels have breached regulations 14 times since 2019 including 4 times last year.

"The agency categorised eight of the 14 incidents as “upper tier”, which it describes as “extreme events which have the potential to cause immediate and serious environmental harm” and can trigger enforcement action."

Trump's comment? Well, who would have guessed? For a man who sues at every turn - Silence!

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68069245

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/17/trump-golf-course-in-scotland-accused-of-breaching-sewage-limits

[BjornAgain]

When it comes to Scotland and sewage, they don't have a good reputation. Currently Scotland is only serviced by the monopolistic utility company, Scottish Water. Interestingly enough, the Scottish Parliament has only mandated that Scottish Water need only report on 4% of it's own infrastructure. Unlike England which has 100% reporting.

From a recent independent report by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), which reported on 6.7% of the Scottish network, they concluded there were 23,498 spills over 208,377 hours for 2024. Which when extrapolated over the whole network equates to 350,716 spills over 3,110,104 hours. Given that the 2024 Scottish population was 5,546,900, this gives a discharge figure of 6323 hours per 100k of population. 

Compare that to England, which had 3.6m hours and 445k spills with a perceived population of 56.6m, then this equates to 787 discharge hours per 100k of population. A big difference!

Agree, all figures are disgusting, but Donald's little problem (if it exists) and the reporting of which, sounds more like selective journalism than putting it into context within the bigger picture.

As to downsizing his investment, this was in the main, due to hostile local objection. His priority was the course, which happened, the rest in investment was Aberdeenshire's loss.

 

[PeterRS]

4 hours ago, BjornAgain said:

When it comes to Scotland and sewage, they don't have a good reputation. Currently Scotland is only serviced by the monopolistic utility company, Scottish Water. Interestingly enough, the Scottish Parliament has only mandated that Scottish Water need only report on 4% of it's own infrastructure. Unlike England which has 100% reporting.

From a recent independent report by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), which reported on 6.7% of the Scottish network, they concluded there were 23,498 spills over 208,377 hours for 2024. Which when extrapolated over the whole network equates to 350,716 spills over 3,110,104 hours. Given that the 2024 Scottish population was 5,546,900, this gives a discharge figure of 6323 hours per 100k of population. 

Compare that to England, which had 3.6m hours and 445k spills with a perceived population of 56.6m, then this equates to 787 discharge hours per 100k of population. A big difference!

Agree, all figures are disgusting, but Donald's little problem (if it exists) and the reporting of which, sounds more like selective journalism than putting it into context within the bigger picture.

As to downsizing his investment, this was in the main, due to hostile local objection. His priority was the course, which happened, the rest in investment was Aberdeenshire's loss.

 

I know nothing about Scottish water although I drink tap water when I'm there. As for the downsizing of his investment, I cannot agree with you at all, and I believe that that is an opinion with a very large majority. He never intended to build anything like that infrastructure. The climate in that part of Scotland could not fill anything like the number of hotel rooms and villa aparments. I know he resorted to very much underhand tactics to get some local residents to move who refused to do so. That was their right. I believe you would need a mini-Disneyland-type venuture to achive occupancy levels Trump promised. Look at other hotels in that area and how small they are.