Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Vanessa: I was hurt by columnist’s ‘horrifying racism’ in newspaper
Feltz blasts sacked writer Myers
BBC presenter Vanessa Feltz has described a column in the Irish Sunday Times suggesting she and Claudia Winkleman are well paid because they are Jewish as “horrifying racism”.
She said the piece by Kevin Myers, who was sacked after its publication, was “every vile stereotype about what Jewish people have ever been deemed to be by racists”.
Speaking on BBC Radio
London, the 55-year-old questioned how something “so blatantly racist” was allowed in the paper.
She said: “When someone alerted me to it I couldn’t believe such a thing had been printed. It is absolutely gratuitous, not cleverly done, it’s blatant racism.
“When you see it like that it’s very horrifying.
“The editor personally rang me to apologise. He said he was horrified.”
Ms Feltz added she could not understand how something so blatantly racist had made it to print.
The Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens said the piece, which was in the Irish edition and online, should not have been published.
The newspaper removed an online version on Sunday morning amid a wave of outrage, but it appeared in printed editions across the country.
The column, with the headline: “Sorry, ladies – equal pay has to be earned”, follows criticism of the BBC, after it was revealed two-thirds of its stars earning more than £150,000 are male.
Commenting that two of the best-paid female presenters, Winkleman and Feltz, were Jewish, Mr Myers wrote: “Good for them.
“Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-allhands stupidity.
“I wonder, who are their agents?”
Frank Fitzgibbon, editor of the Sunday Times Ireland, said he took “full responsibility”, adding: “This newspaper abhors anti-semitism and did not intend to cause offence.” BY
A PROPOSED new apartment complex soaring 19 storeys high in Belfast city centre will be available for rental only, developers said.
The £12million investment on the site of a car park on Academy Street in the Cathedral Quarter will include communal spaces and cafes and will feature secure longterm tenancies.
Those behind the building said millennials had been forced by high mortgage deposits to increasingly choose rented space over home ownership.
Anthony Best, director of Lacuna Developments, said: “We are looking forward to working again with Belfast city council to make sure this exciting and ground-breaking scheme happens for the city.” In rental-only arrangements ownership of individual units is retained by the building owner and typically a management company provides additional services to long-term tenants. It is part of a global trend in housing that is popular with professionals under the age of 35, added Mr Best who claims that Belfast needs to encourage a resident population of young economically mobile professionals.
The city has some of the highest levels of foreign direct investment outside London and young people aged under 21 make up nearly a third of its population. Mr Best said: “The legacy of the Troubles, however, has left the city centre with one of the lowest city centre populations in Europe.”