Author Jude Collins

Abortion: time to face a central question

Here we go again. Like the Troubles, abortion in Ireland is a topic that practically everyone is happy to pile into but which virtually no one likes to  look at.  Let me explain. This week in the south of Ireland, three women who took cases to the European Court of Human Rights got a judgement. […]

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Abortion: time to face a central question

Here we go again. Like the Troubles, abortion in Ireland is a topic that practically everyone is happy to pile into but which virtually no one likes to  look at.  Let me explain. This week in the south of Ireland, three women who took cases to the European Court of Human Rights got a judgement. […]

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Peter Robinson Redux?

So  – is Peter Robinson the Bill Clinton of the north?  Now I’m not suggesting that Peter has any of Bill’s  appetite for interns. For a start,  he doesn’t quite have Bill’s personality or pulling power. In fact a year ago Robinson looked like a dead man walking: those suspect deals about the sale of […]

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Peter Robinson Redux?

So  – is Peter Robinson the Bill Clinton of the north?  Now I’m not suggesting that Peter has any of Bill’s  appetite for interns. For a start,  he doesn’t quite have Bill’s personality or pulling power. In fact a year ago Robinson looked like a dead man walking: those suspect deals about the sale of […]

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‘Kitchen unit narrowly misses politician’

Any day now I’m expecting to see a headline saying ‘Kitchen sink narrowly misses Gerry Adams’. That’s about the only thing the media, north and south, haven’t thrown at him. Bloody Friday, Robert McCartney, the Hunger Strike, the Disappeared, his brother, the Northern Bank robbery, economic illiteracy…It’s been going on for so long, it makes […]

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‘Kitchen unit narrowly misses politician’

Any day now I’m expecting to see a headline saying ‘Kitchen sink narrowly misses Gerry Adams’. That’s about the only thing the media, north and south, haven’t thrown at him. Bloody Friday, Robert McCartney, the Hunger Strike, the Disappeared, his brother, the Northern Bank robbery, economic illiteracy…It’s been going on for so long, it makes […]

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God, sex and missing the point

‘Sexual relationships’ are two words I seldom use without thinking…No, sorry, that’s an old Donovan song, isn’t it? ‘Sexual relationships’ are two words that helped form the motion for a debate I was involved in on Monday night at Queen’s University: ‘That belief in God brings order and discipline to sexual relationships’. It was run […]

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God, sex and missing the point

‘Sexual relationships’ are two words I seldom use without thinking…No, sorry, that’s an old Donovan song, isn’t it? ‘Sexual relationships’ are two words that helped form the motion for a debate I was involved in on Monday night at Queen’s University: ‘That belief in God brings order and discipline to sexual relationships’. It was run […]

Continue Reading

I confess and make a firm purpose of amendment

So I attended my Driver Awareness course today. They’re very tactful really: it seems I wasn’t so much speeding when they clocked me a few weeks back doing 39 mph in a 30 mph zone – I was just unaware. Mmm. I certainly wasn’t aware there was a cop van stopped at the bottom of […]

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I confess and make a firm purpose of amendment

So I attended my Driver Awareness course today. They’re very tactful really: it seems I wasn’t so much speeding when they clocked me a few weeks back doing 39 mph in a 30 mph zone – I was just unaware. Mmm. I certainly wasn’t aware there was a cop van stopped at the bottom of […]

Continue Reading