Over in the U.K. television personality Jeremy Paxman decided to take a swing at Belfast in a recent article. He wrote, in part, that the iceberg did Belfast a favor and they ought to rename Titanic Quarter as Iceberg Quarter. An uproar resulted from these comments but his thrust was that millions spent to revitalize Belfast were wasted before the city decided to become a tourist destination. Locals have a different view of the matter calling his comments offensive, wrong and misleading. He apparently was recently there and had a meal in Titanic Quarter and noted that the Christmas market “offered the odours of 40 varieties of food you could not think of eating.”

Okay we get the point, you are not a fan of Belfast, Northern Ireland, these days. Perhaps you have a point about the tax money spent when, if they had played their cards right earlier, they could have used lots of private capital to achieve better results. Belfast and Titanic were not that close until fairly recently. For a lot of years it was remembered as the place it was built, the workers who had by hand put the ship together, and the sadness over the loss. Sure there were people that kept it alive but Belfast moved on and had bigger problems to deal with. Then with the growing interest in Titanic and thanks to a very popular movie, the lights clicked about the opportunities Titanic offered them by becoming a major attraction for Titanic enthused travelers. And it worked from what the numbers reveal.

What he said was tacky trying to create a hypothetical that if Titanic had never existed or never sunk, Belfast would be just a backwater in the United Kingdom. Most people are smart enough to avoid the foot-in-mouth disease. He may have said it just to generate the controversy he wanted. After all it set off a firestorm in Belfast as locals raced to microphones to criticize his comments and point out what a dolt he was for saying them. Some television personalities like to do this sort of thing to attract viewers, At any rate we here at Titanic News Channel award him our oft imitated and never duplicated Fractured Finger Award. We usually award this to dummies who use Titanic cliches but we make an exception in this case. Award not suitable for framing.

Sources:
1. Jeremy Paxman: Titanic Iceberg Did Belfast A Huge Favour(3 Dec 2014,Belfast Telegraph)
2. Titanic Victim’s Relative Hits Out At ‘Insensitive, Insulting’ Jeremy Paxman(4 Dec 2014,Belfast Telegraph)