Jude Collins

    Every July, the Orange Order attends a church service in Drumcree and then faces the great question of our age: how to get home. It’s a mile-long walk, and the Orangemen have had roughly thirty years to work out an alternative route. They have declined to use any of them. The logic is […]

It must be said that the Taoiseach’s policy of dilly–dallying with regard to the Border referendum has led to the standoff at Drumcree in Portadown. His pursuit of the silly Shared Ireland project has given the loyalist Orange Order time to regroup and organise this attempt to walk the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of […]

  The Ireland team will today play Israel. Only one team member – goalie Gavin Bazunu – has refused. He says “My decision is based purely on my personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong.” What does that make the rest of the team and the manager?   The Orange Order,an anti-Catholic […]

      Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a New Ireland is evolving and political attitudes are changing.  There is a growing momentum for Irish reunification. All political parties especially in Dublin should be preparing for the referendum that will decide the future constitutional arrangements on the island of Ireland.    In a […]

Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that this contested march down the Garvaghy Road on 27 September 2026 is a march through the East End of London exactly 90 years ago. Those insisting on marching are not the Orange Order but  Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts, and they insist on their right to march along Cable Street. They are […]

I’m in shock. I’ve just been listening to a ‘balanced’ discussion on Talkback about the plans of Portadown Orangemen, sixty of them complete with Orange collarettes, to march down the Garvaghy Road. All sorts of talk about redressing the balance (EH?) and tolerance between all communities, and please let me kneel before you so I […]

  The DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the choice is clear for the Parades Commission – whether to apply the law and restore confidence or “succumb”. Portadown Orangemen should be allowed complete the parade which has been in existence since the 1800s, he said. I’m tempted to utter several profanities but I’ll confine myself to […]

Does it strike you that EU countries are getting ready to wage war? Eighteen of them, including Germany, Poland, France and Belgium have “activated the special fiscal flexibility”- in other words, they’re allowed to spend more on weapons than would normally be permitted in EU countries. Poland is spending about 4.7% of GDP on armaments. […]

The FAI makes  Ed Sheeran look like a fearsome opponent of Israel. Sheeran has failed to follow the lead of his band and supporting acts, who have spoken out at gigs against the genocide in Gaza. He finally has come up with a milk-and-water complaint about how  October 7, 2023 was a terrible atrocity but […]

  It is often said that clericalism is the enemy of the church and of Christianity. The Church founded by Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles was a community of men and women who set out to restore human dignity in a world where many were treated as less than human. In that society women […]