November, 2016

Arlene Foster is a conflicted woman. I don’t mean that she isn’t interested in conflict – as leader of the DUP, Conflict is her middle name. Her predecessors took a similar line. Ian Paisley promoted conflict with the same zeal he brought to denouncing the Catholic faith; and who could forget Peter Robinson’s remarks about […]

  http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/ode-to-cuban-flag-by-bonifacio-byrne.html

I conducted this interview immediately before the TalkBack debate (the abridged version) with David McNarry. There is no connection between the two events, but the tone of the first struck me as being markedly different from the second. Judge for yourselves…

  What is Ulster Unionism?   Basically it is the opposition of Ireland having independence from being governed by Westminster by a section of the Irish people who were based mainly in the Province of Ulster.   Within this opposition there were and still are a range of deeply divided groupings, which make unifying unionism […]

‘Respect existence or expect resistance’. This slogan is written on a wall in Warsaw where I visited last year. It seemed like it was written there during the protests against Communist rule. It looks like the slogan has been repainted year after year as a reminder to those in power. It could have been written on any […]

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/jude-collins-on-the-talkback-row-the-orange-order-has-been-divisive-1-7699408

I’ve just come from listening to the lovely Mishal Husain interviewing Ken Livingstone about the death and achievements of Fidel Castro. If you ever had some deluded notion about impartiality on the BBC, a listen to it should straighten your head. Mishal wanted to know what Livingstone’s views were on the fact that Cuba was […]

Pics 1-3 are by John Patton (phototilly.eu) Pic 1                                                                    Pic 2                       […]

Bob Dylan, whose career commenced under an Irish influence (the Clancy Brothers in Greenwich Village) seems intent on winding it down under a different Irish influence (Sam Beckett in Selmun Palace). Certainly, if his refusal to allow an invitation to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature interfere with his busy schedule, is anything […]

Death has been on my mind these past few weeks. Sometimes ,in life , we are assaulted by death and ask ourselves will there be no let -up .There have been many deaths of iconic, cultural, populist figures in this past year ,but closer to home I have also been touched by too many departures […]