Author Jude Collins

Every so often in life you meet people who leave a real and lasting impression. Last year, I travelled to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon with Norway’s largest trade union – Fagforbundet – and Norwegian Peoples Aid. There we met Ahed Baar. Ahed’s first memories are from the narrow alleyways of Shatila refugee camp in […]

Below are two short videos chopped ( no, I DON’T know why they chopped, Virginia, but I assure you it was technological incompetence, not hawk-eyed censorship) from my interview with John Finucane yesterday. John is an immensely important acquisition by Sinn Féin, and I would rate his campaign in North Belfast up there with the […]

I always think it’s right to be respectful in politics, particularly towards women, who are our sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters and grandparents. As a child, I remember a grey era in politics, which was dominated by figures like Anne Widdecombe and Edwina Currie; where women could only go far in political parties if they towed […]

    Leo Vee, on the verge of emerging simuntaneously as the leader of Fine Gee and the Big Tee of the Free Southern Stateen, has done so by majoring in a rhyming 3: the exoitc, the erotic and – the pyschotic: -Sinn Féin continues to be the biggest threat to our Democracy. This is […]

So Jim Wells has been tweeting. Or warning might be more accurate. Some people have professed to be shocked by Jim’s tweet. It’s not clear why. There have always been areas where Sinn Féin candidates are not welcome and I’m sure the same could be said of DUP candidates. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs […]

The Good Friday Agreement, quipped the former teacher Seamus Mallon, was “Sunningdale for Slow-Learners.”. He’s probably still proud of his quip. But it seems to me that he has as much of an appreciation of realpolitik as a maiden aunt has of the positions described in the Kama Sutra. He was scandalised when Tony Blair […]

  It would be outside my character to offer my counsel or services to members, let alone leaders, of other political parties, particularly for free. I’m a republican, and I want to see the destruction of all these pseudo-nationalist groups which have obstructed the full establishment of the Republic that was proclaimed a century ago. […]

The six counties voted by 56% to 44% to Remain in the EU. People believed that apart from the economic advantages of belonging to the EU there were many advantages for the creating of a peaceful and reconciled Ireland. That is, and will be for many years, a work in progress. There was also the […]

Once, when Harry S Truman was President of the United States, he was conducting a party of mature ladies around the White House and environs. When he got to the Rose Garden he displayed an enthusiasm for cultivation of the flowers and expounded on the virtues of manure, or, as he pronounced it, “manoor.”  This […]

  A visible theme of the Tory’s British general election campaign that intensified over the weekend before the Manchester Arena bombing was the attempts to associated Jeremy Corbyn with the IRA in the public’s eye. This involved hysterical allusions to him meeting the IRA (usually meaning Sinn Féin) at various times. Clearly the strategy was […]