Author Jude Collins

  The responses to Mary Lou McDonald using the word ‘Londonderry’ the other day have been predictable. The Rev David Latimer, a friend of Martin McGuinness and a unionist clergyman, is full of praise for such gestures and wishes unionist politicians would respond. Nelson McCausland, no friend of Martin McGuinness but a dear friend of […]

Here’s what the UK and the EU agreed last December regarding the British border in Ireland:  They agreed that there would be no hard border in Ireland and that they would uphold the Good Friday Agreement. They remained unclear how an open border would be possible, but agreed that in the absence of a later […]

You want the optimistic view of the future? OK. In a year from now, the present state of the border – the British border, not the Irish border, as Martina Anderson MEP pointed out the other day – will be maintained. People and goods will flow without a hint of turbulence between north and south. […]

  It’s just 8.30 am as I write, and already I’ve stumbled over two statements by important people about Brexit and Ireland. The first was Kenneth Clarke, the Tory MP and open Remainer. He was on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, and he was listing the reasons for Britain staying in the customs union. He […]

A civil war is about to break out in Ireland. Over the next five weeks, people will be swearing at their TV sets, sometimes swearing at each other, shouting insults, waving placards. We will show every sign of being adults who haven’t managed to grow up. I’m talking, of course, about abortion. Or more strictly, […]

Know what? I’m fed up hearing about Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding. They were tried for rape and whatever you may think, the jury found them innocent. You may not like what you heard about the sexual attitudes of these two rugger chappies, you may not like the two rugger chappies themselves, but legally they […]

What manner of man is Andrew Crawford? Well, he was a prominent DUP adviser and I’ve read somewhere he has a doctorate in agriculture, though I can’t vouch for that. But I can vouch for the fact that he passed on information to his cousin Richard Crawford, who happens to be a poultry farmer. So […]

The head of the civil service here, David Sterling, has said  that a practice had grown among civil servants of not taking notes at ministerial meetings, thus avoiding awkward situations should future Freedom of Information requests occur. He said this non-note-taking practice was prevalent owing to the sensitivities of the DUP and Sinn Féin. Yesterday […]