Jude Collins

  5 July 2024 Dear Friends, You may like to know that the final volume, No. 38, of historian and political activist Desmond Greaves’s important two-million-word Journal has now been put on the internet at www.desmondgreavesarchive.com   My Greaves School Committee colleague Eddie Cowman and I would like  to send you a copy in the accompanying  Attachment in the hope […]

I used to wonder at the sheer delight displayed by Westminster candidates when they won. Big grins, cheering supporters, passionate acceptance speeches. No more. Now I know why elected MPs act as if they’ve swallowed a fistful of uppers. They’ve just had news that they’ve got a job which pays £91,346 per year. And all […]

          With the British general election taking place on Thursday July 4th 2024, as Americans celebrate Independence Day, it’s ironic that Sinn Fein’s visit to Washington for the Irish St Patrick’s Day celebrations in 2023 should hang like a spectre over their electoral prospects. Their recent political failures in the Free […]

Whose side are the PSNI on? It would be reasonable to assume they are on the side of their employer – to wit, the public. But if we’re to believe recent reports, it would appear that the PSNI are more intent on attacking those representing the public than those opposed to the public. Latest reports […]

I was listening to a radio discussion t’other day about voting  and non-voting.Non-voting, it was emphasised, was a matter of choice.  You were free to vote or not vote – it was a democratic option. I beg to differ. I used to work in an office with a woman who made a point of not […]

    “There’s something happening here” some pop singer from the 1960s used to warble. We could say the same thing about next Thursday – election day  – especially if you are a DUP supporter. Pat and I look at three constituencies – East Belfast, South Antrim and Lagan Valley. In all three, we think, […]

    About twenty years ago I was given a present of a BBC Diary.   It listed Holy Days and Feast Days for Christians, Jews, Moslems and other denominations, and the countries where they were public days of rest. Virtually all Western Europeans had public days of rest which coincided with Catholic Holidays of […]

  The first female cabinet minister in Europe was not appointed in Moscow or Paris or London but inDublin. She was appointed in Dublin by Eamon  de Valera in April1919 on his first appearance in Dail Eireann. Like Dev she was an Insurgent in 1916, but unlike the Irish Volunteer Dev, she belonged to the […]

It would appear that Joe Biden really got the audience attention in his debate with Trump last night – accept not in a good way.But is a staged debate a sensible way to decide who’d make a good president? We also had a debate of the people in NEI running for Westminster. Pat thinks Colm […]

I     When, in 1921 Ireland’s President Eamon de Valera met Britain’s Prime Minister,  David Lloyd George failed to impress him.   The latter pointed to a map of the world, much of it painted red to overawe him with the might of the British Empire.   The mathematician de Valera pointed out that […]