Author Jude Collins

For most of us, today is just another gusty Autumn Monday, our main concern maybe the approaching Hurricane Ophelia. But for one group of people, today is a day that cannot be other than sad and dark. For on this day twenty-five years ago, Sheena Campbell, then a 29-year-old law student at Queen’s University, was […]

One of the funniest phrases you’ll come across if you’re studying the history of colonialism is the term “the white man’s burden”. This is funny because it depicts colonization as a moral duty which the white man carries out because it is the right thing to do even though it’s tough work. It’s almost as […]

It is always impressive to watch a section of a community lather itself into a state of moral outrage.  Over recent days,  the Hollywood people have been tripping over each other to denounce  the producer Harvey Weinstein. There’s even talk that the queen may take back the honorary CBE  she gave him some time ago. Dozens of women, […]

Aw here. We let ourselves down last night. There was any number of players on the Ireland team who were really English – did you not hear their accents when interviewed? And how many of them sing our national anthem? Plus the manager Martin O’Neill is from Northern Ireland AND has an MBE. So what am I […]

There’s a scene in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 where the Welsh magician Glendower declares “I can call spirits from the vasty deep”, to which the hard-headed Hotspur replies “Why, so can I, or so can any man;/But will they come when you do call for them?” That exchange often pops into my head when I […]

Endorphins – is there a cheaper and more effective way to get a high? They are created when you put your body through a serious physical work-out. As your groans and gasps grow quieter, a feeling of acute well-being creeps over you and you feel you have just acted in a highly commendable fashion and are now ready […]

    It’s breath-taking, the precise balance we get in the reporting of our North-East Nest politics. If you were to put two people on a seesaw (remember see-saws?), invariably one person would be a little lighter or a little heavier than the other. Or a lot. I’ve never seen a see-saw where both ends […]

Pics 1-4 are by Antrim Lens   Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3   Pic 4    “Spent another evening down with my local Barn owl and thought your followers would like a few more photos of her. This is a new Barn owl unknown to Ulster Wildlife Trust or myself until two weeks ago. […]

Sometimes events here hit the bull’s-eye of craziness, that point where you want to just throw up your hands, lock yourself in the bathroom and put your head down the toilet bowl. You think I exaggerate? Then consider the case of the Catholics and the Flags. Several UVF flags were erected in a mixed area of […]

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies /But in battalions” Had Glenn Hoddle been in attendance at the Tory leader’s speech yesterday, he would probably have judged that Theresa May was paying for some terrible misdeeds in a previous incarnation. Was it the hunger for publicity that sent the comedian with the P45 up […]