Jude Collins worked for thirty years as a lecturer at the Ulster University/Ulster Polytechnic. Before that, he was a high school English teacher in Derry, Dublin, Edmonton and Winnipeg (Canada).
He is the author of eight books, including Booing the Bishop and other stories and Martin McGuinness: The man I knew. He has been a weekly columnist for The Irish News, Daily Ireland and currently writes for The Andersonstown News.
He has broadcast on TV and radio for the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Press TV and RTÉ. For the past thirteen years he has written a daily column on his blogsite www.judecollins.com
"DON'T shoot the messenger." You’ve probably warned yourself on more than one occasion not to focus on the person bringing you news, but to focus on the message itself. As with most things, Donald Trump makes that hard to do.
IT'S funny the way small events very often have a big brother. This happened over the past week or two, and both brothers – and their effect – are still reverberating.
DONALD Trump is such a lawless, reckless oaf: Taking over Canada, taking over Greenland, slapping on 200 per cent tariffs – it’s hard to keep up. But one area in particular has been targeted by him in recent days – universities and their students.
DOES the role of President of Ireland matter? As with much in politics, the answer is No. And Yes.
IS Donald J. Trump uniquely dangerous? If you were to ask Mahmoud Khalil, you’d get a definite Yes. But your chances of asking Mahmoud are remote.
WE humans like to think we live in a world where it’s possible to make clear decisions, to choose the road most travelled or choose the road overgrown and rarely taken. Time and again we underestimate how much the power of the prevailing atmosphere affects our choice.
CYNICS (some would say realists) insist that there’s not a cigarette paper’s worth of difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The words and actions of FF and FG TDs would seem to back that up.
THERE was a man in the BBC’s Question Time audience and he had a question: 'If British soldiers were on the ground in Ukraine and were fired at by the Russians, would that be the start of World War Three?'
HERE'S a starter for ten: What’s the link between the late Jack Profumo MP and the present Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD? Maybe none that immediately strikes you.
BECAUSE you’re reading this newspaper and this column, it’s a reasonably safe bet that you, like me, would welcome the day when, from Coleraine to Cork and Newport to Newry, the border in Ireland was permanently removed.
ON Friday past I awoke to apparent disaster. The fence between me and my next-door neighbour at the back had been blown down. It’s a wooden affair, which had always seemed upright and immovable. Now it lay flat on the grass.
THIS week the world holds its breath. That’s because this week saw the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the US. We are heading into uncharted waters, pundits warn. Who knows what Trump will do?
LATE at night on May 22 1997, the 61-year-old chairman of Bellaghy GAA club was locking up the clubhouse. It was after 11pm and Sean Brown’s son had gone home just five minutes earlier. A group of men emerged from the darkness, seized the 61-year-old, and after a struggle bundled him into the back of his red Sierra car. Then with one of the murderers’ cars in front and another behind, they drove to Randalstown, passing Toomebridge police station. There they shot Brown six times and set fire to his car. No-one has yet been charged with this murder.
LOOK out! There’s a New Year coming fast!