Author Jude Collins

Has BBCNI changed? Once perceived as the bastion of British interests in the North of Ireland, its recent wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral they won’t let rest in peace has dogged the media for almost a week. The Nolan and Crawley shows seem intent on poring over every last aspect of the funeral and cremation of Bobby Storey. We […]

I’ve just listened to the B(ritish)BC’s Today  programme, featuring Fergal Keane. He was giving a report from his native Munster on the impact of Empire. He quoted the poet Edmund Spenser who was an enthusiastic imperialist but who described the awful effects of the Great Hunger on the Irish people – how emaciated creatures would […]

One of the most common (and lazy responses) I get when the issue of Irish unity is brought up is “The south don’t want us” or “We are better off as part of the UK”.  Generally the “free” healthcare system in the North is used to substantiate this lazy assertion that we are better off […]

Europe and indeed the world is witnessing a resurgence of Fascism from the elections in Ukraine to Brazil Israel and America far right racists have growing control over the military industrial and financial sectors of their nations to include domestic and foreign policy. Domestically in America we see black lives matter protesters beaten by police, […]

 I wonder does Michael McDowell own a gun.  I don’t mean an Armalite or, perish the thought, an AK47. I mean an old-fashioned shotgun that he discharges in the air when feeling particularly frustrated. If so, you may have heard the echo of such a blast drifting over the border which his grandfather Eoin MacNeill […]

I’m sure I’ve mentioned THE IRISH BULLETIN (1919-1921) in at least one of my blogs and suspect that many of my readers had never previously heard of it. It so frightened the British Army that, that it seized an innoffensive woman who was found to have two copies which she’d taken to read on a […]

Man: Well, I’d like to go for a walk, but I’d miss Stephen Nolan. Woman:  He’s coming here? Man: No, I mean I’d miss hearing him and his radio guests who phone in. Woman: What time is his show over at? Man: 10.30. Woman: OK, I’ll wait until then. I’m feeling in bad need of […]

 We thought we’d try to squeeze several topics onto the Zoom menu today –  the Noah Donohoe case (grossly under-reported by the mainstream media – and yes, I ‘m looking at you, Stephen Nolan, and you, William Crawley),  the disinterest of Fianna Fail in anything to do with a united Ireland, and finally whether Premier […]

“As the Republican Party, we must sell this message to all young people on the island” observed Fianna Fail’s Jim O’ Callaghan in an interview with the Irish Independent last week. The ‘message’ O’Callaghan was trying to sell big time is that his party should highlight the benefits of a united Ireland to young voters […]