Advertisements run by U.S. billionaire Donald Trump’s Scottish golf resort attacking government plans to build offshore wind farms have been declared misleading and banned by government officials.
Trump threatened legal action against plans by Scottish ministers that he claims will ruin the view of his multimillion-dollar golf resort.
The Guardian reports that the Trump International Golf Club ran newspaper ads featuring wind turbines overlooking a highway, with an ominous warning: “Tourism will suffer and the beauty of your country is in jeopardy!”
The ad also featured a picture of Scottish first minister Alex Salmond smiling with accompanying text reading, “This is the same mind that backed the release of terrorist al-Megrahi, ‘for humane reasons’ – after he ruthlessly killed 270 people on Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie. Take action. Write, demonstrate and protest Alex Salmond.”
However, the Advertising Standards Authority said that the golf resort’s claim that “tourism will suffer” was unsubstantiated.
“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” said the ASA. “We told Trump International Golf Club Scotland Ltd not to make claims unless they could be substantiated with robust evidence and not to use misleading imagery.”
The Authority received 21 complaints about the ad, including one from a member of Scottish parliament and a pro-wind development group. The complainants argued the ad could substantiate the claim that tourism would be hurt by the windfarm, and that the image used was misleading because it was an image of a U.S. highway.
The ASA dismissed complaints about the complaints regarding the Lockerbie bombings, saying that readers were likely to find it distasteful rather than offensive.
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