2013年12月14日 星期六
Nelson Mandela to be laid to rest at family home
Guests arrive for Nelson Mandela's funeral in the rural village of Qunu, where he spent his early childhood, bringing to an end 10 days of national mourning for South Africa's first back president
Troops from all of South Africa’s services had by dawn assembled on the wide road outside the Mandela family farm, to give South Africa’s first black president the young democracy’s first State Funeral.
They paraded up and down in red, white, blue and green uniforms. The Honourable State President’s Guard stood to attention with bayonets to the sky, with air force, infantry, medical corps, navy and intelligence corps close by. The Scots Band marched past, complete with kilts and bagpipes.
Security was tight outside the house, with both military police, beefy security servicemen and civilian police checking passes carefully. Most were dressed in suits and black dresses but some arrived in traditional outfits, the men with leopard skins draped over their shoulders to denote their senior status in their respective clans.
As guests arrived and were ushered past the guardhouse and through the spike-topped metal gates. President Jacob Zuma and his spokesman Mac Maharaj, both former detainees from Robben Island with Mr Mandela, arrived in a fleet of BMW 4x4s bristling with armed protection officers.
The Prince of Wales was yet to arrive at 7.15am.
Mandela’s coffin was carried slowly past the gates of his home by soldiers, led by a purple-gowned churchman. Ahead of them marched the presidential guard, their bayonets raised.
Despite predictions of a return of the rain which marred his memorial service, the morning sun beat down.
On the hill at the corner of his property, a 21-gun salute was fired as a brass band played.
On the road outside, locals in ANC T-shirts joined soldiers to watch him go.
Derrick Grootboom, 47, drove his wife Marika and two daughters, aged nine and five, for 15 hours from the Northern Cape to see how close they could get to the funeral.
Mr Grootboom, a lawyer, was detained in four Western Cape prisons, including Robben Island, during apartheid for taking part in Mr Mandela’s infrastructure sabotage campaign.
He later won a Mandela Foundation scholarship to study law at Southampton University in the UK.
“All of the things I have achieved are because of the influence of this man,” he said. “Just to be close to the place he is being put to rest is enough. We have been telling our daughters about his life on the journey.
Last night was the first night they have ever spent in a hotel. This is a special trip for all of us.”
Source: the Telegraph
Scottish government approves windfarm
The US businessman's Trump International golf course at Menie Estate also caused controversy, not least for building on an area of protected dunes.
Scottish ministers have given the go-ahead to an experimental offshore windfarm site near Aberdeen after ignoring Donald Trump's angry threats of legal action to block the project.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the European offshore wind deployment centre (EOWDC) proposal, alleging the turbines will ruin the view from his £750m golf resort, which overlooks the North Sea and sits several kilometres north of the site's boundary.
The billionaire property magnate again threatened to use his financial muscle to oppose the 11-turbine project in the courts using "every legal means" to defeat it. Despite recently announcing plans to build a second 18-hole golf course at his resort, he repeated his threat to put his entire project on hold because the windfarm threatened the financial viability of his resort.
In a statement, the developer attacked his former friend and ally Alex Salmond, the first minister. "This was a purely political decision," Trump said.
"As dictated by Alex Salmond, a man whose obsession with obsolete wind technology will destroy the magnificence and beauty of Scotland. Likewise, tourism, Scotland's biggest industry, will be ruined. We will spend whatever monies are necessary to see to it that these huge and unsightly industrial wind turbines are never constructed.
"All over the world they are being abandoned, but in Scotland they are being built. We will put our future plans in Aberdeen on hold, as will many others, until this ridiculous proposal is defeated. Likewise, we will be bringing a lawsuit within the allocated period of time to stop what will definitely be the destruction of Aberdeen and Scotland itself."
Fergus Ewing, the Scottish energy minister, said the £230m project would be capable of generating up to 100MW of power, enough for nearly half of Aberdeen's homes.
But he added that the project was chiefly designed to test and evaluate advanced new offshore wind power designs, potentially helping to find new breakthrough technologies. Scottish and UK ministers, who also support the project, believe it could be crucial to helping the UK exploit the £100bn offshore wind industry.
The 11 turbines, which have been reduced in number and location after objections from fisheries and aviation interests, are expected to be of different heights and designs. The project, owned by the Swedish power giant Vattenfall and a local business and university consortium, still needs marine consents and planning consent for an onshore sub-station.
Ewing said: "Offshore renewables represent a huge opportunity for Scotland; an opportunity to build up new industries and to deliver on our ambitious renewable energy and carbon reduction targets.
"The proposed European offshore wind deployment centre will give the industry the ability to test and demonstrate new technologies in order to accelerate its growth. [It] secures Aberdeen's place as the energy capital of Europe."
The scheme has been made subject to a series of fresh conditions, to protect defence and civil aviation radar systems, avoid a military firing range at Black Dog, on environmental management and on protecting shipping and fishing in the area.
Trump's opposition to the project led to open hostilities between him and Salmond, who had originally been a prominent cheerleader for Trump's golf resort and hotel development and played a crucial role in it securing planning approval.
Trump's attacks on Salmond's vigorous support for wind power have put the two men in direct conflict and also soured Trump's relationships with some of his most influential supporters in Aberdeen.
Several major figures and institutions who supported Trump's resort – the North Sea engineering millionaire Sir Ian Wood, Robert Gordon University and Aberdeenshire council – are also directly involved in the EOWDC project.
They believe it could substantially support Aberdeen's attempts to benefit from the billions of pounds being spent on renewable energy investment, particularly as an alternative to North Sea oil and gas.
Iain Todd, a spokesman for the project, made this clear, stating: "The Scottish government's most welcome approval for the EOWDC is extremely positive news for both Scotland and the UK's offshore wind industry as it helps position Scotland, the UK and Europe at the global vanguard of the sector.
"The decision also confirms Aberdeen city and shire's status as a world-class energy hub, bringing with it significant economic benefits which will be pivotal to ensuring the region's long-term prosperity."
Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Offshore wind will be a huge part of our energy future and this scheme is a big step forward.
"Well done to the Scottish government for standing up to Donald Trump's threats and bluster."
Source: the Guardian
A memorab; visit to Donald's mother cottage on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland
Donald Trump pays a flying visit to his mother's birthplace in Tong, on the island of Lewis, Scotland.
Donald Trump may have the world's most famous comb-over, but it wasn't built for the stiff Hebridean wind that bowled down the runway at Stornoway airport today.
As the US tycoon stepped off his personalised Boeing 727 and onto the tarmac on the isle of Lewis, a playful gust undid his artfully contrived hairdo, blowing long wisps of his trademark ducktail skywards.
It briefly hung in the air like an impromptu halo, and was the only misstep in a minutely choreographed homecoming for the world's most famous property developer. His mother's modest birthplace - a pebble-dashed croft house in the straggling township of Tong - sits just across the bay.
Trump was travelling from an Elton John concert in Boston to the oil-rich city of Aberdeen, where he will give evidence tomorrow at a public inquiry into his plans to spend £1bn on creating the "greatest golf course anywhere in the world". This was a day when a rich slice of New York bling landed in the Western Isles.
From the 727 - the block capitals "TRUMP" gleaming in gold on its black fuselage - assistants unloaded several boxes of his own autographed homilies to wealth-creation as gifts for the first and second cousins, who had assembled for a brief audience in the airport's nearby air traffic control building.
Cases stamped "Trump: How to get rich" and "Never give up" were carefully loaded into the boot of the island's only Porsche Cayenne 4x4 - a gleaming black vehicle requisitioned for the day from a local millionaire by the Trump Organisation.
Ever since he first unveiled his proposals in 2006 to create his exclusive golf resort, complete with an eight-storey five-star hotel, 950 timeshare apartments and a Trump Boulevard at the Menie estate, north of Aberdeen, Trump has boasted repeatedly of his Scottish roots.
His mother Mary Anne - who left Tong in 1930 aged 18 for a holiday in New York, met a local builder named Trump and stayed - was his inspiration, he said today. She was a "wonderful" and "beautiful" woman, he said. "I think this land is special, I think Scotland is special, and I wanted to do something special for my mother," he told a press conference in Stornoway.
Yet this homecoming has been a long time in the making. His older sister Maryanne Trump Barry has visited 24 times; he has done so only once, when he was aged in his "threes or fours". He explained: "I haven't been back since because I was busy having some fun in New York, let's put it that way."
The timing of Trump's visit has been met by wry amusement on Lewis - one of the UK's poorest economies. After ignoring several previous requests from the local council to help restore the ailing wreck of Lews castle in Stornoway, the man rated by Forbes magazine as worth $3bn agreed today to consider funding their £10m restoration plans.
He protested that there was "zero" truth to the suggestion his visit was motivated by a cheap quest for publicity. Sensing the drift of questions about his motives, his sister, a federal appeal court judge in New York, leapt smartly to his defence.
"My mother would be so proud to see Donald here today. She would be so proud to see what he's done, all the good he's done and the TV star that he is," she said. "But I'm here, not because of these things, but because he's my brother, I love him. He's never forgotten where he comes from and he comes from here. This is a man I revere. He's a nice guy and he's funny too."
But while his sister delighted their relatives with a few rusty phrases in Gaelic, Trump spoke of his fame and success as a property magnate with 73 projects worldwide and as host of the US version of the ratings topper The Apprentice. "If you get ratings, you're king, like me, I'm a king. If you don't get ratings, you're thrown off air like a dog," he explained.
"They all want Trump because I do the highest level of work, and I'm known for that. People know that our level of work is the best and when a project is finished, it's going to be the best, and that's why government's call me. They've a piece of land in a certain country, they call me."
His cousins the Murrays, several of whom still live in his mother's croft and two neighbouring bungalows, were amused and slightly cynical about their relative's motives. "Donald is just Donald," said one with a smile.
That cynicism is widespread on Lewis, but he protested there was no connection between his visit to Stornoway and his struggle to build his resort. "We were flying in. I said this was the right time to come... we could control the time a lot better."
And, he said, he would be back again later this year. "I like it. I feel very comfortable here. It's interesting when your mother, who was such a terrific woman, comes from a specific location, you tend to like that location. I think I do feel Scottish."
Even so, this was the briefest of stopovers. He spent 97 seconds inside his mother's birthplace, a croft called 5 Tong, and his stay on Lewis lasted a little over 180 minutes. Shortly after lunch, his jet hit the runway at Aberdeen, to oversee a month-long quest to secure the "finest" golf course in the world
Fr: the Guardian
The Mcleod Course in Aberdeen
'I wanted to create a lasting legacy for her': Donald Trump dedicates second Scottish golf course to beloved mother Mary
- Mr Trump says second course will be a tribute to his Scottish mother
- Mary McLeod was born in Stornoway and emigrated to Manhattan at 20
- However, he will not build the course if a planned wind farm is built nearby
DONALD Trump is planning to name the second championship course at his Aberdeenshire golf resort in honour of his mother who was born and raised on the island of Lewis. And yesterday, speaking from Trump Tower in New York, the American billionaire told The Scotsman: “I know that if I called it The Donald Course I would be ridiculed out of Scotland. Who better to name it after than my mother. “She was a proud Scot. She loved this country so much and I think she would be very proud to have the course named after her.” Mr Trump has already named the mansion he has made his home on the Menie Estate McLeod House as a tribute to his late mother, Mary Anne, the seventh child of fisherman and crofter Malcolm MacLeod and his wife Mary Smith And he is now planning to submit a planning application for the second 18 holes at the Menie golf resort - The MacLeod Course - to Aberdeenshire Council within the next few weeks.
The new course, designed by acclaimed golf architect Martin Hawtree, the designer of the main championship course at Menie, will be a par 72 course of over 7.500 yards and will be laid out on 350 acres of land to the south of the main championship course at Menie. The site is outside the designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which was at the centre of the controversy over the development of the first 18 holes.
Mr Trump said his decision to name it The MacLeod Course, as a lasting legacy to his mother, had been a “very easy decision to make.” He continued: “I always felt the MacLeod Course would be great name for the second - there is such a great history with the MacLeods and Scotland and my mother was a Macleod. She would go to back to Scotland religiously and she loved everything about it.” The tycoon explained that he had originally believed it would be between five to ten years before he began planning a second course at the Menie estate. But 10,000 rounds had already been played at the championship course since it opened last July. Said Mr Trump: “This week we have over 11,000 bookings already - double what we had last year at this time. People are coming from all over the world. It has been incredible for Scotland and Aberdeen in particular and every hotel owner in Aberdeen loves me. They are packed. “We have had such tremendous demand to get on the course and such an amazing second site that a second course is now being planned.” And he continued: “The course is fully designed and it is magnificent. We are going to do our best to make this course as good as the championship course - I don’t know if that’s possible but we are going to do our best. It is very, very hard to compete with what we did.
“The beautiful thing is that it is not in the SSSI so we don’t have to go through that long process again.” But he again warned that he will not go ahead with plans to build a luxury hotel and homes on the Menie estate if plans for a controversial offshore windfarm in Aberdeen Bay are given the go-ahead. Scottish Government Ministers have still to announce their decision on the proposals for the £230 million European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre off the Aberdeenshire coast.
Mrs Trump was born in Stornoway on 10 May, 1912, and met the tycoon’s father, Fred Trump, during a visit to New York. They married in 1936 before Fred Trump became one of the city’s biggest real estate developers. The couple had five children - MaryAnne, a federal judge, Fred Jun, who died in 1981, Elizabeth, who became an executive with Chase Manhattan Bank, Donald who was born in 1946, and Robert, who now runs his late father’s property management company. Mr and Mrs Trump were active in supporting a huge range of charities, including the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America and the Lighthouse for the Blind. Fred Trump died of pneumonia in June 1999, a year before Mary Trump died at the age of 88.
Source: mailonline
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