Author Jude Collins

The view from Dublin

Strewth – will this never end? They’re still up in Hillsborough – or is it Stormont? – locked in verbal battle. Which unfortunately encourages the simple-minded to say ‘They’re just like a bunch of children! Why can’t they get their act together?’ In fact, of course, there are those, particularly south of the border, who […]

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The dog with the Orange tail

As I write, I’m listening to the voice of Alex Attwood of the SDLP speaking on the radio. He’s saying he figures that a deal is near and likely. When someone as obscure in his phrasing as little Alex can come out and say that, the end must indeed be nigh…Oh, hold that. He’s just […]

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The dog with the Orange tail

As I write, I’m listening to the voice of Alex Attwood of the SDLP speaking on the radio. He’s saying he figures that a deal is near and likely. When someone as obscure in his phrasing as little Alex can come out and say that, the end must indeed be nigh…Oh, hold that. He’s just […]

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We Are The People

‘We are the people’: I used to think that was a football chant but it’s not. It’s the by-word of unionism and it was on display yesterday. Peter Robinson warned that if any party ( read ‘Sinn Fein’) walked away from its obligations under power-sharing, ‘it would experience the full wrath of the community’. What […]

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We Are The People

‘We are the people’: I used to think that was a football chant but it’s not. It’s the by-word of unionism and it was on display yesterday. Peter Robinson warned that if any party ( read ‘Sinn Fein’) walked away from its obligations under power-sharing, ‘it would experience the full wrath of the community’. What […]

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Power-sharing my posterior

Well. That’s it, then. No deal. Hard to believe, given the investment of time and energy and personal reputation Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen put into it. Both men were clearly sleep-deprived, satisfaction-deprived and sign-off-deprived. And Sinn Fein weren’t looking too thrilled either. So now what? It looks as though Brown and Cowen are hoping […]

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Power-sharing my posterior

Well. That’s it, then. No deal. Hard to believe, given the investment of time and energy and personal reputation Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen put into it. Both men were clearly sleep-deprived, satisfaction-deprived and sign-off-deprived. And Sinn Fein weren’t looking too thrilled either. So now what? It looks as though Brown and Cowen are hoping […]

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Not in their name?

It’s amazing how, if you look at them for more than two minutes, the issues that are being debated noon, night and morning up at Stormont become simple and straightforward. The devolution of policing and justice was agreed at St Andrew’s (despite what the supple-brained Edwin Poots claimed this morning) but the DUP don’t want […]

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Not in their name?

It’s amazing how, if you look at them for more than two minutes, the issues that are being debated noon, night and morning up at Stormont become simple and straightforward. The devolution of policing and justice was agreed at St Andrew’s (despite what the supple-brained Edwin Poots claimed this morning) but the DUP don’t want […]

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D- (for Democracy) Day

Today is decision-day at Stormont, we’re told, and I for one am glad. If I have a fear, it’s that Sinn Fein will do some sort of back-pedal and we’ll be in for more of the same: the DUP failing to play their part on agreed matters like cross-border bodies, an Irish Language Act, and […]

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