Author Jude Collins

I know that it’s an impertinent question, considering that the secrecy of the Parliamentary Ballot has been enshrined in law since 1872. The idea would never have occurred to me had I not recently come across an old Cumann na nGaedhael poster claiming that only gunmen and Communists voted for Fianna Fail. I never realised […]

It’s like watching a cat getting sick in slow motion – not something you particularly enjoy acting as audience to, but difficult not to keep looking once it starts. I’m talking, as you’ve guessed, about the RHI inquiry. As-it-happens inquiries, where we get to see big shots squirming and stewing in their own juices, do […]

  “First they came for the Communists, and I said nothing because I was not a Communist, Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I said nothing because I was not a Trade Unionist Then they came for the Jews” Thus wrote the German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller of the moral cowardice which he […]

Look. I’d be one of the first to engage in a thigh-slapping round of  schadenfreude, particularly when it involves a British prime minister stalking ashen-faced around a garden in Salzburg looking like a wounded giraffe, while all the other (almost all male) prime ministers turn their back on her. I’d not be beyond punching the air and yelling […]

  Benjamin Richard Pierce MacIntyre, confidant of Britain’s Secret Services and admirer of her SAS assassins is himself a cunning warrior. With great fanfare he has accused Michael Foot of being a traitor. There was a time when gentlemen making the slightest aspersions on another gentleman’s character would go to great pains to meet a […]

Here’s a frightening thought: you’re going to base your views on what’s going to happen with Brexit on the views of someone else. Or several someones. Take the prospects for agreement. In the online Independent, there’s an encouraging article today headed “Theresa May to accept checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain in major concession […]

  According to the paper, the late Michael Foot was a paid Soviet agent and, when he was made leader of the British Labour Party, the Cabinet Secretary was briefed by British secret agents, who had in turn been informed by a British paid, Soviet traitor that he was a security risk. Sir Robert, the […]

On Hitler’s accession to power THE IRISH TIMES, in an Editorial, “Herr Hitler’s Way” welcomed him, particularly for his rough treatment of Communists, on the principle that “you can’t make an omelette without breaking an egg.” It actually cited that expression. A few weeks earlier it had warned of the dire consequences of voting for […]

One of the great strengths the pigs had in George Orwell’s Animal Farm was that the other animals so easily forgot what things were said in the past. In the early days of taking over the farm, the animal chant had been “Four legs good, two legs bad!” But with the passage of time animals […]

These are dangerous times. There are a number of dangers but most of them are rooted in Brexit, which for Ireland (and I do mean Ireland, not the 26-county state) is a crisis and an opportunity point. The crisis part is becoming more obvious every day. Last December Theresa May committed Britain to the famous […]