Author Jude Collins

I’m obsessive about a number of things, but one of those happens be the governance of Europe’s economic power-base: the Federal Republic of Germany. I feel most at ease in the company of German books; I love German music and German philosophy. They are the most industrious people on the continent, having invested in their […]

Last evening I was at the selection of John Finucane as the Sinn Féin candidate for the North Belfast constituency. I’ve never been to a Daniel O’Donnell concert, but I’m confident even the Mammies’ boy in Donegal would have struggled to keep up with the reception  Finucane got. The Lansdowne Hotel was lán go doras […]

  JP Morgan is planning to move hundreds of London-based staff to offices in Dublin, Frankfurt and Luxembourg in a move that will help secure its EU business after Brexit. The US banking giant confirmed comments made by Daniel Pinto, head of JPMorgan’s corporate and investment bank, who said a “substantial portion of the business” […]

As some of you may know, I don’t like the Scottish National Party. They have a clandestine history of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish sentiment, while deploying a mantra of talking “left” but acting “right”. There are people naive enough out there to believe that an independent Scotland could have Tommy Sheridan or Jim Sillars as Prime Minister, […]

I’ve just read Nigel Dodds’s reaction to the news that John Finucane will run for Sinn Féin in North Belfast, and I can’t help thinking of Billy Bunter. I didn’t eat the cake ‘cos I didn’t know it was hidden in the pantry and anyway I left half of it, even though I didn’t eat […]

I know, Virginia – I have blogged on this same subject and person. But I thought I’d let people know that if you keep writing for long enough, you may eventually penetrate to the Letters Page of the  Irish Times. This appeared this morning and I’ve just two gripes: they replaced my term “the good Doctor” […]

  The former Tory Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, once opined that ”if the entire establishment is against something, it’s bound to be good.” For the past number of years, the Free State ruling clique have ran with the line that if Sinn Fein knifed in the back Gerry Adams as leader it would be a […]

It is fashionable nowadays to talk about ‘reuniting Ireland’. It was not always so. I notice another article in yesterday’s Irish Times by a professor in LSE called Christopher Kissane –‘Time to Start planning for a united Ireland.’ (IT1 May2017).That paper recently sent a reporter to me to ask me my views about a United Ireland. These […]

Political thinking is a bit like measles – once one party gets it, next they all have it. A decade or two back you wouldn’t have got a party north or south – with the obvious exception of Sinn Féin – to utter the words “United Ireland”. Now they are falling over themselves to talk […]

Shop Street is perhaps the most celebrated of streets in Galway City. If the truth were told and retailed. In recent times this thoroughfare has contributed greatly to the gaiety of the nation by the al fresco antics of the street-performance group known as Macnas. This group is instantly recognisable by the big, box-like heads […]