Author Jude Collins

                  If Sinn Féin does well in the next election in the South, will It find a coalition parner in Fianna Fail? Fine Gael? Or will it be thwarted from being the lead party in government, just as it was last time?   The protests outside the Dail, while covered poorly by RTÉ, […]

REBRANDING Everywhere one looks, listens, or reads the allegations are being reported on the basis that Brand is guilty. Maybe he is. But guilt, or otherwise, is supposed to be determined in a properly constituted Court of Law. Not by the Court of public opinion which can be accurately described as the Lynch Mob. The […]

    Whatever became of that old cornerstone of British justice, innocent until proven guilty? I’ve read several accounts of the claims of sexual abuse against Russell Brand and in all of them they talk as though Brand had been found guilty on all claims. Stop it, guys. At least wait until there are court […]

The first Late Late Show since the departure of RyanTubridy took place last Friday. So – what did we think? Pat is by nature a kind man, I am by nature a cruel man. We have an interesting discussion of the show and its new host. Mary Lou McDonald was off ill but is now […]

    Sadly, for those voices, the Windsor Framework is done and dusted and as Steve Baker reiterated during the past week is closed and no longer open for negotiation.  You see, even the British government is sick and tired of the DUP and Brexit.  Even they know it was an unmitigated disaster that needs […]

  The Martello Tower at Sandycove, Dublin ,one of hundreds built by the British to deter French invasion in Napoleonic days, was still owned by the British War Office (or Admiralty?)in 1904 and was rented by Oliver St John Gogarty, who, as “Buck Mulligan” utters the first words in James Joyce’s much celebrated, though appreciably […]

The bookies are now offering odds on a border poll – is that significant or just a silly betting flutter? And how come it’s OK to talk about the UK and its precious Union, but talk about a united Ireland is always deemed disruptive?  Hardly seems fair.  And Peter Sheridan, late of the RUC/PSNI has […]

    Paragraph                             Shortcodes   The Garda Síochána and the PSNI  – the police South and North  – are united. Not literally, of course, but in discontent over the way their organisation is working. To say both are in an unsettled […]

      Hands up who didn’t know “hardline Unionist opinion formers” were holding the DUP back from getting back into Stormont and forming an Executive?  Let’s be honest, most people knew the DUP were at least being advised by these shadowy forces (oh the irony) as to what to say and what to do […]

  Alex Kane, the unionist commentator and columnist, is a most agreeable man. In discussion, he has a habit of beginning “I agree with X” before going on and sometimes clearly disagreeing with X. He was an adviser to the Ulster Unionists fado fado; now he writes for The Irish Times and The Irish News. […]