Jude Collins

Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer are often portrayed as opposites inside the Labour Party, but there are important parallels between them. Both emerged from Labour’s soft-left tradition, both presented themselves as reformers of the party, and both relied heavily on grassroots support during their rise. Corbyn built a mass membership movement around anti-austerity politics and […]

This is the confirmation season – kids get all dressed up, parents kneel and watch, a  tear in their eye. Does this make sense, if the parents aren’t in fact active Catholics?   Learning Irish appears to have done a major turn-around. When Pat & I were at secondary school a million years ago, we […]

  I  wonder if northern unionists (as distinct from the southern type) were to call on Micheál Martin to paint his rear a deep purple, and then run up and down the steps of Stormont, would he do it? There certainly can be no overestimation of the Taoiseach’s desire to love-bomb the unionists. “The principles […]

                                                              Keir Starmer is very opposed to pro-Palestine marches  because he associates them with anti-Semitism. Is he right? In the head? Mark Carney joined an […]

“And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew” Oliver Goldsmith, ‘The Deserted Village’   Ireland owes a debt to Micheál Martin. In 2004 he introduced a smoking ban: the South was one of the first states to bring in this ban, and by now it […]

Brendan Behan thought the arrival of a policeman was one sure way to make a bad situation worse. It looks as if he was onto something in the case of the Golders Green stabbing of two Jewish men. The video taken at the time shows a man who has been tasered lying on the ground, […]

    Did you watch those banquet speeches by King Charles and King – oops – President Trump? And was there a certain word beginning with an E which both were desperate to avoid? Meanwhile, after campaigning for more than 50 years, the relatives of those massacred in Springhill got a verdict they were grateful […]

That was some shindig Donald Trump put on for his good mate King Charles, what? If they had moved to a couch and begun to fondle each other it couldn’t have been closer. But what impressed me was the way they skirted round, never mentioned, forgot all about two people not present. King Charles must […]

 by Joe McVeigh    Liberation theology’s main focus is the plight of the poor in a world of plenty, the oppression of indigenous peoples and the oppression of women. It is also concerned with the urgent need to Care for God’s Creation. That brings those who support liberation theology into conflict with the political establishment […]

The London Marathon – some sight, that, eh? But is running in a circle  really a sensible way to behave? What if some or all that talent and energy was directed at some of our many problems? Sinn Féin had their Árd Fheis in Belfast at the weekend. Some journalists have suggested her leadership may […]