Author Jude Collins

  “The business of America” said President Calvin Coolidge, “is Business.” And it was the boast of  Lina Lamont in “Singin’ In The Rain” that she was “as rich as Calv’n’Coolidge,combined.” I’m not joking when I suggest that the Business of Britain is Making a Killing. Mega Killings to be more accurate, and gleefully contemplating more. […]

As Dominic wrestled with the cap of the petrol tank in my car , I studied his appearance. He was a medium-sized young man, aged between twenty-five and thirty, with sleek black hair. He was obviously a non-national. So, after initial comments on the weather , I asked him where he was from . Poland […]

  I was raised in Omagh, ten miles from Dromore, Co Tyrone. When my brother learnt to drive, we would make frequent visits to Dromore, which had what was then the wonder of the townland, a new Cinema. Cowboy films were frequent, and some locals were said to be amazed and even nervous  that the […]

What year is this? Oh right – 2017. That means it’s nineteen years since the Good Friday Agreement and fifty years since the beginning of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement, you’ll remember, was sparked by an injustice in allocation of public housing. The Good Friday Agreement was built on the motion of […]

  It is understandable that most of the media attention has been focused upon the hocus pocus of what is quite possibly the Plight of the Century currently being played out in the circus tent at Ten, Downing Street. It is certainly the most lucrative P of the C as an extra few noughts seem […]

“Whom the gods would destroy, first they make mad.” Anyone watching the face of Tory leader Theresa May in recent weeks must be tempted to cast her as a classical tragic heroine, who a short few weeks ago was happily reading about the incompetence of her opposite number Jeremy Corbyn while she was presented as a […]

  (first published as a letter in the IRISH EXAMINER in September 2013) “Professor John A Murphy has called on the Government to honour Daniel O’Connell, whom he deems the father of democracy in Ireland, with a national holiday.  Now, when the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which attempted to strangle Irish democracy […]

  James Joyce: It is way past time for Ireland to have done once and all with failure. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images James Joyce became a convert to Arthur Griffith’s brand of Irish nationalism through reading Griffith’s United Irishman while living in self-imposed exile in Trieste. He wrote to his brother Stanislaus that it is […]

I’m not sure whether holding a professorial seat gives the holder the right to spout balderdash or whether spouting balderdash with great eloquence is a requirement for elevation to such Olympian heights.  In pre-democratic days and nights the big nobs enjoyed the “right” to use and abuse the daughters and wives of the common people. […]

Pics 1-3 are by John Patton:   Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3 “Pic 1 Grianan of Aileach:       Grianan was a good walk or a demanding cycle in my young days , although the return trip on a bike was a rare and sometimes dangerous thrill, given the condition of some of our carriers and […]