Jude Collins

  Dáil Éireann has recently passed a bill that seeks to penalise ‘hate speech.’ On the surface this might seem appealing. After all, hate is ugly and there is no shortage of it, so perhaps there should be measures in place to curb this. However, this should not be a question of whether ‘hate speech’ […]

  The day that’s in it had me thinking about just how much we have changed as a people in this country.  By “country” I’m speaking generally as those people living on the island of Ireland and just how far we’ve come rather than just how far we still have to go.   From waging an […]

In the course of my working week, I drive the length and breadth of NEI and parts of the South.  From Lifford to Larne, from Ballintoy to Cullaville and beyond.  I drive through nationalist and Loyalist areas, Republican and Unionist areas and while one might not know one from the other if they weren’t from […]

Sharp-eared  viewers of this podcast/vlog will note that I introduce it as happening on Friday morning when in fact it’s Thursday. This of course was a deliberate error, to test Editor McArt’s comradeship. Did he gently correct me? Did he ****…   The topics we cover are the notion of voting in Irish elections ‘from […]

  There is a cycle of love and death that shapes the lives of those who choose to travel in the company of animals. It is a journey unlike any other . To those who have never lived through its turnings or walked its rocky path, our willingness to give our lives with full knowledge […]

  Fintan O’Toole, whose GAA footballing skills have delighted so many of us down the years, along with his tireless devotion to club management and the coaching of youngsters in GAA skills, has an article in today Irish Times.  It’s headed ‘Honouring this fanatical racist by naming clubs after him shames our GAA’. The fanatical […]

  An American Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, never demanded that all his fellow-citizens grovel in his adoration.  His test of loyalty for his partisan Texas supporters was that they kiss his posterior in the window of the Neiman Marcus Department Store in Dallas and swear that it smelt of roses. The (Protestant) Archbishop of Canterbury and […]

      “REMEMBER THE MAINE” was the slogan used as a pretext for the seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico  and the “Philippines” from the weakening Spanish Empire by the United States.   An American warship blew up in Havana  and Spain was the presumed culprit. It is now believed it was a spontaneous eruption, […]

      A FAR FROM EXHAUSTIVE LIST   MALAYA, which was subjected to a major war from 1948 to 1960, massive bombing, including with Agent Orange,the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people from their lands into “protected villages”  a euphemism for prison camps, mass murders, headhunting by British forces who were happy […]

    “Oh look – over there – a unicorn standing on its hind legs!” That’s not a direct quotation from Ian Paisley Jr, but it does indicate what Paisley and the DUP generally are seriously anxious to do: get the spotlight away from them as they scurry around in circles, bumping into each other, […]