Jude Collins

When news broke that Pegeen O’Sullivan, daughter of novelist Liam O’Flaherty, had left hundreds of thousands of pounds to Sinn Féin, you could almost hear the collective intake of breath from unionist benches — somewhere between a gasp of outrage and the noise a vacuum cleaner makes when it swallows a sock. For Sinn Féin, […]

The Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, Eamon Martin, has given an interview to the Daily Mail.  Why he would choose that rag in order to voice his views I don’t know. Maybe he’s trying to reach the sub-zero IQs out there.  At the same time, he has some interesting things to say […]

The German police are reported as attacking a young Irishwoman, punching her in the face several times and then breaking her arm.Why is Germany so eager to crack down on any Palestinian protests?  Meanwhile, it looks as if Fianna Fail, Fine Gael   and Labour have selected their presidential candidate. Did Labour pull a fast one […]

Netanyahu is a war criminal- but is he also a conviction politician? Does he have a vision for Israel, as distinct from a desire to save his own skin?    Robert F Kennedy Jr has fired his deputy and recruited a man called Jim O’Neill (no,seriously)who knows as much about medicine as RFK Jr himself. […]

  In North(east)ern Ireland, we pride ourselves on talking. We talk in shops, in taxis, at funerals, and in long winding queues outside the chippy. We talk so much that it often seems the talking is the real end, not any agreement that might follow. Yet there is one subject that still, somehow, brings on […]

Pat and I were very happy and grateful to have Niall Murphy as a guest interviewee  today. As most people know, Niall is the Secretary of the group Ireland’s Future. We covered a range of points relating to a border poll. Here’s the interview for you to look at, and on Friday Pat and I […]

Today,  Israel bombed another Gaza hospital. In fact it bombed it twice, the second time killing several doctors and journalists. Is there nowhere or no institution or state that’ll stand up and denounce Israel and take action?  A man called Richard Wolff was on Youtube – he’s probably still there. He’s American, and he was […]

What about that new political party that Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana are forming? Corbyn has said he’s getting some 500 people a minute wanting to know more about it. It’s called ‘Your Party’ but that might be just a provisional name. The thing is, can Your Party replace the governing (and promise-breaking ) Labour […]

  In a thriving democracy with an engaged electorate, politicians always need to be mindful of their actions, otherwise they face the possibility of electoral defeat. In Ireland, I’m particularly concerned not only with what some politicians can get away with, but how their political career can sometimes thrive afterwards. One can accept that there’ll […]

I didn’t stick around long enough last night to see Katelyn Cummins crowned as this year’s  Rose of Tralee. At least one newspaper is hailing the fact that as an apprentice electrician, she breaks away from the usual I’m-not-dumb-I-have-a-Master’s and am the way to getting my Ph D. All that was an effort to emphasise […]