Author Jude Collins

Paul Ryan.  You don’t get a name much more Irish than that. And by all accounts Ryan could be the kind of guy you’d have a pint with, go to Croke Park with – he’s a young guy proud of his Irish roots. His great-great-grandfather emigrated to America, with hundreds of thousands of others, to […]

Now that the fever of the London Olympic Games has passed, maybe we can draw breath and a few reasonable conclusions about the event. 1.    Britain did superbly well – both in terms of organizing the Games and collecting medals.  The sheer scale of the venture makes me weak at the knees but it was […]

Now that the fever of the London Olympic Games has passed, maybe we can draw breath and a few reasonable conclusions about the event. 1.    Britain did superbly well – both in terms of organizing the Games and collecting medals.  The sheer scale of the venture makes me weak at the knees but it was […]

 Those Pussy Riot women –  what do you think? Two years in jail, all for  singing a two-minute song.  Admittedly it was performed with some leg-kicking in front of the altar of a Moscow church and it was  denouncing the still-hugely-popular  Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. But hey –  what ever happened to free speech? Mind […]

 Those Pussy Riot women –  what do you think? Two years in jail, all for  singing a two-minute song.  Admittedly it was performed with some leg-kicking in front of the altar of a Moscow church and it was  denouncing the still-hugely-popular  Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. But hey –  what ever happened to free speech? Mind […]

Easily the most interesting article – and most read, according to the online listing – in today’s Irish Times  is one by John Waters. For some people, the mention of Waters’s name is sufficient to turn them off, because they feel his assertions of the rights of fathers somehow makes him anti-feminist.  I don’t know […]

Easily the most interesting article – and most read, according to the online listing – in today’s Irish Times  is one by John Waters. For some people, the mention of Waters’s name is sufficient to turn them off, because they feel his assertions of the rights of fathers somehow makes him anti-feminist.  I don’t know […]

Are the Irish people a gullible race? I’d like to think not, especially since I’m one of them, but there are times when it’s hard not to conclude that we’d swallow anything if it was rammed down our throats skilfully enough and often enough. Take Syria. We all know what’s happening in Syria. A group […]

Are the Irish people a gullible race? I’d like to think not, especially since I’m one of them, but there are times when it’s hard not to conclude that we’d swallow anything if it was rammed down our throats skilfully enough and often enough. Take Syria. We all know what’s happening in Syria. A group […]

Well, I note where the British Secretary of State is doing what he does best: pretending to act as an enlightening influence on the two benighted tribes in the north of Ireland. Nudge us towards being as normal as Finchley. It’s important work, because it makes him look as if he has a function here. […]