Author Jude Collins

History and her abuse

“History’s a whore. She rides the winners”.  That was the blunt assessment of one of Stewart Parker’s characters in Northern Star.  Is it a fair judgement? What is history anyway? When I was interviewing for my book Whose Past Is It Anyway?  Davy Adams made the point that he’d be happy to see  TV commemoration […]

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I read the news today, oh boy!

One of the marks of a civilized society is a free press. Free to print any headline they like. You’ll remember when Gerry Adams resigned his Westminster seat,  the press had great fun with headlines about how he now was a baron or something like that, because if you resigned a seat at Westminster they […]

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I read the news today, oh boy!

One of the marks of a civilized society is a free press. Free to print any headline they like. You’ll remember when Gerry Adams resigned his Westminster seat,  the press had great fun with headlines about how he now was a baron or something like that, because if you resigned a seat at Westminster they […]

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A can of worms? Leave it to Leo

Leo Varadkar , the south’s Transport Minister, is generally regarded as seriously right-wing. So I’m not sure what he was thinking of when he told journalists that he was in favour of votes for the Irish diaspora. “I like the idea of the President being the President of the Irish people and the Irish nation. […]

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A can of worms? Leave it to Leo

Leo Varadkar , the south’s Transport Minister, is generally regarded as seriously right-wing. So I’m not sure what he was thinking of when he told journalists that he was in favour of votes for the Irish diaspora. “I like the idea of the President being the President of the Irish people and the Irish nation. […]

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That Border poll: who’s right?

When I was interviewing Gregory Campbell for my book he made an interesting point regarding unionism. He said that when the south of Ireland was riding high ten years ago, unionists weren’t interested in a re-united Ireland; now that they are a bankrupt state  unionists still aren’t interested. In short, he said, economics had nothing […]

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That Border poll: who’s right?

When I was interviewing Gregory Campbell for my book he made an interesting point regarding unionism. He said that when the south of Ireland was riding high ten years ago, unionists weren’t interested in a re-united Ireland; now that they are a bankrupt state  unionists still aren’t interested. In short, he said, economics had nothing […]

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Nervous look over shoulder at 2012

OK, January 1. Time to look back at what was lost and what was won.  On second thoughts, the hell with that. Read back issues of the papers if you want that. I’ll give you what I see as the most significant event in the year: the census figures. Last time –  2001 – we […]

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Nervous look over shoulder at 2012

OK, January 1. Time to look back at what was lost and what was won.  On second thoughts, the hell with that. Read back issues of the papers if you want that. I’ll give you what I see as the most significant event in the year: the census figures. Last time –  2001 – we […]

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You murder, he kills, I clear the area

Either a number of commentators – notably from the Indo – are strangers to some of the grimmer facts of life,  or they are pretending to be shocked and horrified when they’re not. What am I talking about? I’m talking about Dessie Ellis. Mr Ellis is a Sinn Féin TD who has never, as far […]

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