GlobalScots Day 2

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DAY 2

Donald Trump is still a GlobalScot (see my post of yesterday). Early days though. A motion lodged in Parliament today by Patrick Harvie seeking support for revoking Trump’s membership now has three signatories. And the past 24 hours have revealed new information about the GlobalScot network whose membership can be seen here.

Yesterday, my good friend Andrew Thompson had a good look at the 746 names on the list and spotted the name of George Sorial, Trump Organisations’s Vice-President and Legal Counsel. The other name on the list was Donald Trump Jun.

Now, I knew that Donald Trump Sr. had been invited and had accepted an invitation to join by Jack McConnell. But his name was not on the list. I did not know that Trump Jr was a member nor George Sorial. We also know that Alex Salmond had invited Rupert Murdoch who, according to Salmond’s letter, accepted the invitation. His name is not on the list though. But for the moment, let’s stick to the Trumps.

I phoned Scottish Development International and asked them whether Donald Trump (jun. or sr.) and George Sorial were still members. A spokesperson from Scottish Enterprise said,

“We have over 750 GlobalScots – all of whom are respected and successful business leaders around the world. Not all of them will agree on every single aspect of what we do. Donald Trump was asked by the previous First Minister to become a GlobalScot due to his passion and we have no intention of altering Mr Trump or Mr Sorial’s position as GlobalScots.”

I then asked why Donald Trump Sr’s name did not appear on the list but Junior’s did and whether either or both were members. I was told,

Donald Trump Senior and Donald Trump Junior are both GlobalScots.

and

George Sorial is Trump Sr’s representative on the list.

Which is strange because GlobalScot makes very clear on its website that “Membership of GlobalScot is by invitation only, personal and non-transferable.”

That means that Trump Sr’s membership is personal to him and non-transferable and thus Mr Sorial cannot be his “representative”. How many others are “representatives” of other persons unknown?

Scottish Enterprise has not yet responded to this point.

The campaign goes on.

UPDATE 13 November 2013

According to an FoI request submitted to Scottish Enterprise in July 2013, George Sorial is a full GlobalScot – not merely Trump Senior’s representative as Scottish Enterprise claim above. Here is the text of the FoI which includes the information recorded by the assessors as to why Donald Trump Jnr and George Sorial were qualified to be GlobalScots.