Author Jude Collins

Pretty ghastly, that killing of the eight-year-old American girl, wasn’t it? …No, not another crazy shooting in a US primary school. Nawar (sometimes known as Nora) al-Awiaki was the daughter of Anwar al-Awiaki, who was an al-Quaida propagandist and an American citizen. Nawar was one of at least fourteen people who died last Sunday, when […]

Sir, I’m bemused by the reported remarks (Nov 1) of Ireland’s Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Martin Cullen, during hi recent London visit – “Your first contact should be with an Irish person ……friendly and with an Irish voice.”   During recent years I’ve had many opportunities to compare the friendliness of Irish hospitality professionals […]

Whenever I read damned fool commentary on Daniel O’Connell I sigh for the time when every gentleman worthy of the name kept at least one brace of duelling pistols. But alas, I’m no gentleman,  nor even a scholar, and must rely on my laptop to secure satisfaction. Some years back Fintan O’Toole wrote in The Irish […]

Cheesh. I mean Holy God, cor stone the crows and blimey, guvnor. Watching the DUP at present is like watching an ostrich trying to swallow a piano. To say it’s exerting every fibre of its being would be an understatement. It’s thrashing around  in every direction in its frantic attempt to get off this gawdawful […]

Fifty years or so ago, W.A.W.A. was a mantra often heard on the lips of exasperated Ex-Pats in Nigeria, including Pats who were Ex-Pats at the time there. Examples of when one might hear said mantra: Like when one has just settled down of an evening to read a copy of ‘Mister Johnson’, by Joyce […]

  Joe McVeigh’s comment on this editorial from The Irish Times just twenty-nine years ago: ‘Our statement was published in the IT on the same day. I cannot find it -but I think it is not the issue. We were both priests ministering in the north and dealing with violence every day. We felt it was our […]

A few years ago, I was working in the Civil Service and can remember when I and my colleagues received the news of Tony Benn’s passing from this world to the next. Sitting next to many trade unionists, we were actually very emotional and I walked home to clear my head with tears running down […]

So will he, won’t he? At present Enda Kenny is standing firm: he’s going to Washington on Paddy’s Day. A word of consolation if you’re one of the many who oppose him travelling to meet the lesser yellow-headed President Crazy: past words are no indicator of future action. Why would Enda go? I mean, he’s […]

There comes a point in everyone’s life when you say “enough is enough”. It can come at anytime, usually after a period of stress or personal strain when you are at your wits end and can take no more. I am a young man of 30 years (maybe not that young) but what that means […]