Does Trump know about the haar?

I love Aberdeenshire, its beautiful and varied countryside, its gentle hills and sizeable mountains, its neat small towns, each so individual in character. And the City, too.

It is in this light that I consider Donald Trump’s grandiose plans.

Two golf courses, an eight-storey hotel with tower, two golf lodges with towers, 500 houses, 900 holiday flats, and staff quarters will, it is true, provide a lot of – poorly paid – jobs for the local or immigrant population, and some well-paid ones for his executives (mostly American).

It will also involve a great increase in road traffic – especially in the summer, and air traffic for his visiting overseas ‘guests’. These golf facilities will not be for the benefit of locals, who are well catered for already by the dozen or so courses in or near Aberdeen.

Then we come to the most controversial part of the plan – the conversion of a section of countryside of sufficient ecological importance to warrant the designation of ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’ into something else, with irreversible consequences. Consequences which cannot be corrected by the proposed tree plantings.

Do we really think that tourism justifies the destruction of valuable habitat, when we should be doing everything to mitigate the results of global warming? And has anyone told Mr Trump that this piece of coastline is particularly liable to the local sea fogs that we know as haar?

Please, planners, throw this out! It’s not needed, its dubious benefits are offset by its disadvantages; it ignores the local structure plan, and it is on too big a scale for a predominantly rural area.

Viv Bowser,
Buchan Countryside Group,
High Street, New Pitsligo

  1. Hit the nail on the head there Viv. Good letter.


    — Ewan    16 August 2007    #