Author Jude Collins

Tom Elliott, UUP Leader We had our last book-club meeting of the season last night  (Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, and very good it was too) and after we got to discussing politics. All those present, I’d feel safe in saying, were nationalists, but not everybody in the room saw things, post-election, the […]

Tom Elliott, UUP Leader We had our last book-club meeting of the season last night  (Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, and very good it was too) and after we got to discussing politics. All those present, I’d feel safe in saying, were nationalists, but not everybody in the room saw things, post-election, the […]

Pat Sheehan MLA “What will people think of us?” the BBC presenter asked, and when he said it he reminded me of my Auntie Maggie. “What will people think of you?” she would say “with your elbows on the table and you chewing with your mouth open?” The BBC man – I think it was […]

Pat Sheehan MLA “What will people think of us?” the BBC presenter asked, and when he said it he reminded me of my Auntie Maggie. “What will people think of you?” she would say “with your elbows on the table and you chewing with your mouth open?” The BBC man – I think it was […]

Maybe it was the lack of gouge and head-butt during the campaign or the failure of the media to treat the election with half-decent attention. (RTÉ on its nine o’clock news bulletin the day before the election had an item on AV in Britain, nothing on the North.)  Either way, there’s a noticeable quickening of […]

Maybe it was the lack of gouge and head-butt during the campaign or the failure of the media to treat the election with half-decent attention. (RTÉ on its nine o’clock news bulletin the day before the election had an item on AV in Britain, nothing on the North.)  Either way, there’s a noticeable quickening of […]

There’s a story told about James II as he was fleeing from the Battle of the Boyne.  He needed to get across the river at a particularly wide point, and quick, so he hired this ferryman.  After a while the ferryman looked over his shoulder and said “Here – I know you. You’re James II! […]

There’s a story told about James II as he was fleeing from the Battle of the Boyne.  He needed to get across the river at a particularly wide point, and quick, so he hired this ferryman.  After a while the ferryman looked over his shoulder and said “Here – I know you. You’re James II! […]

Five things we know after the Leaders’ Debate last night: 1.    Maggie Ritchie has reverted. For a while she had gone a bit Thatcher – the naturally grinding voice transformed overnight into a near-whisper. It mustn’t have worked because last night she was back at her biting-the-big-Halloween-apple best.  As for other features of her speaking […]

Five things we know after the Leaders’ Debate last night: 1.    Maggie Ritchie has reverted. For a while she had gone a bit Thatcher – the naturally grinding voice transformed overnight into a near-whisper. It mustn’t have worked because last night she was back at her biting-the-big-Halloween-apple best.  As for other features of her speaking […]