Author Jude Collins

. It’s cold out there. Lower temperatures. Biting wind. Grey sky. And yet, it seems, Belfast city centre is bunged with different groups parading at different times. Perhaps there are lessons to be learn by the commitment – and number – of such hardy souls. If you were hoping to be part of the Ulster-Scots […]

Do you know a man called Browne?  Maybe a man called Wallace Browne, then? OK – if I tell you he’s a former DUP politician and has gone to that blessed  place where all DUP politicians go when their political life is over – to wit, the House of Lords – so the full title […]

It had to happen sooner or later. President Trump sent National Guards into several  US cities, on the grounds that crime in them was out of hand.What he really had in mind, of course, was to frighten the bejasus out of (to use a popular phrase) the people living in these cities and people throughout […]

Did you know that Belfast has an offshore wind terminal? Me neither, but apparently it has. And this really really matters  because the off-shore wind terminal is going to be turned into a major construction hub for two massive offshore wind farms in the Irish Sea. The plan is to deliver enough clean energy to […]

What would happen, I wonder, if Michael Healy-Rae went to Europe? As an MEP? The comic possibilities would be endless – but would it change the bould Michael? Because rather than Irish MEPs changing anything in Brussels,the time  Irish MEPs spend there definitely has an impact on said MEPs. They may arrive in tweed jackets […]

I feel sorry for rich people. If you’ve more money than you need (not the same thing as more money than you want), that means you don’t need to go out to work. Yet there must be a nagging feeling that chasing your next million (or billion) is really just putting in the time. Whether […]

I’ve just received by email an electronic booklet from Declan Kearney of Sinn Féin. I’ve had quite a number of reports from Declan, but this is easily the most timely and important to date. It’s called Eire Nua. You can’t have missed that there are more speeches and books about a united Ireland around in […]

  It’s a long time ago now since I discovered the animosity of Free Staters towards northerners. They did not like anything that challenged the status quo. They were happy with Partition and did not care about what the British did in the six counties.  Over many years, I have received letters mostly anonymous from […]

  When we were young and the sun shone on a Sunday, my father would pile as many of us as would fit into an old Morris 8 and head for Bundoran. We were joyful from the start, but once we crossed the border we would yell and cheer. Nobody told us to do that, […]