Author Jude Collins

It’s  a fascinating subject, the balance between strong leadership and responsiveness to grassroots concerns. People like to mock de Valera’s belief that when he needed to know what the Irish people were thinking, he went off and looked into his own heart; but sometimes the people  dismissive of Dev are equally critical of politicians  (early […]

Sometimes I feel ashamed of Gaelic football.  Somebody will kick somebody, somebody will give someone else an elbow, and next you know two-thirds of both teams are falling over themselves to beat the bejaysus out of anyone they can get their hands on. Not exactly a lovely advertisement for Gaelic sport. And I haven’t even […]

Sometimes I feel ashamed of Gaelic football.  Somebody will kick somebody, somebody will give someone else an elbow, and next you know two-thirds of both teams are falling over themselves to beat the bejaysus out of anyone they can get their hands on. Not exactly a lovely advertisement for Gaelic sport. And I haven’t even […]

It seems not many politicians in the north of Ireland have a good word to say about the Tony Blair that emerges in his so-fresh-they’re-hot memoirs. That bit about how he sometimes stretched truth to bring about agreement here –  uh-uh. Deceptive. Devious.  Not what our straight-talking, good-living politicians here like at all. The DUP […]

It seems not many politicians in the north of Ireland have a good word to say about the Tony Blair that emerges in his so-fresh-they’re-hot memoirs. That bit about how he sometimes stretched truth to bring about agreement here –  uh-uh. Deceptive. Devious.  Not what our straight-talking, good-living politicians here like at all. The DUP […]

So anyway, I’m in a Barcelona hotel lobby on a brief stop-over before returning to the corner of Ireland that time but not Britain has forgotten. And  since I haven’t read a newspaper in nearly two weeks I pick up a copy of the global edition of the New York Times and I read this […]

So anyway, I’m in a Barcelona hotel lobby on a brief stop-over before returning to the corner of Ireland that time but not Britain has forgotten. And  since I haven’t read a newspaper in nearly two weeks I pick up a copy of the global edition of the New York Times and I read this […]

You’d think that with our history of injustice, from discrimination to internment to Diplock courts to the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four,  we’d be careful about declaring someone guilty without clear evidence. Well, you’d think wrong, then.  I’ve just finished reading an extended assault on Cardinal Sean Brady by Malachi O’Doherty, and in the […]

You’d think that with our history of injustice, from discrimination to internment to Diplock courts to the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four,  we’d be careful about declaring someone guilty without clear evidence. Well, you’d think wrong, then.  I’ve just finished reading an extended assault on Cardinal Sean Brady by Malachi O’Doherty, and in the […]

Is stealing morally wrong? As I child I was taught it was. You couldn’t even get forgiveness in Confession if you didn’t first give back whatever you’d stolen, which in my book made it a seriously-stupid sin. After an experience in Figueres yesterday, I’m not so sure it’s a sin and I’m certain it’s not […]