Tilda Swinton takes aim at tycoon Donald Trump

Actress Tilda Swinton has weighed in against the billionaire Donald Trump's controversial plans to build a £1bn golf resort on a stretch of environmentally sensitive Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland.

The Oscar-winning actress has added her signature to the 15,000 who have already signed a petition in support of the four residents who live on the part of the Menie estate that Trump needs for his golf course. The homeowners face compulsory purchase orders after Aberdeenshire Council gave Trump planning permission for the resort. At a council meeting last week, a motion to rule out the use of compulsory purchase orders was voted down by
55 to six.

Swinton, who lives in the neighbouring county of Moray, remarked: "Surely this kind of industrial bullying has been discredited enough. I trust Aberdeenshire Council to know its Highland history and to resist giving in to this attempt at a 21st-century clearance."

George Sorial, the Trump executive in charge of golf course project, said Swinton had aligned herself with "extremists" who "shamelessly exploit" the "tragic history of the Highland clearances".

"I enjoyed her performance in Michael Clayton," he added, "but am disappointed that she would make such an ill-informed statement about a site she has not seen or a project she knows nothing about."

Sorial's reference to Michael Clayton is intriguing: Swinton plays a stop-at-nothing corporate lawyer who realises only in the final seconds of the film how much she she has underestimated her adversary. ·