Jude Collins

JUDE COLLINS: Are bonfires the perfect metaphor for loyalist culture?

"WHEN I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun." These words were first spoken by a character in a play written by Hanns Johst, who was a Nazi supporter. Some people say it was Goering or Goebbels who said it, but some people don’t know what they’re talking about.

JUDE COLLINS: Let's not gloss over the Orange past at this time of year

LOOK out – here it comes again! The Orange Order, banners aloft, drums thumping, out to celebrate the Twelfth. And to make it a proper celebration, the Ligoniel lodges applied for a ‘homeward return parade’ on the Crumlin Road on the morning after the Twelfth. The Parades Commission have turned them down, which was very churlish of them. Talk about spoilsports! The Twelfth is just a happy annual affair for all the family.

JUDE COLLINS: Will DUP pay the price for their serial incompetence?

FEELING stressed? Sweating, trouble getting to sleep? Don’t worry, it’s the election. Or rather elections – there’s the one bubbling up in the US, one happening in Britain, and, most importantly, the prickly little affair we’re having here in NEI.

JUDE COLLINS: Broken clock Farage is right on Russia-Ukraine

THE temptation to put people in a box is intense. This person is right-wing, therefore I reject everything they may say or do about anything. This other person is left-wing, and so all of their views on everything are good and I readily support them. Which is a bit stupid of me.

JUDE COLLINS: Two events share a common direction

OVER the past week I’ve been at two political events, both of them nationalist in tone. The first was a Shared Island event (think Micheál Martin) and the second an Ireland’s Future event. The Shared Island event had one main speaker, the Ireland’s Future event had a whole range of speakers.

JUDE COLLINS: Can nationalism learn from the Ulster Covenant of 1912?

HISTORICAL events sometimes produce an echo. The civil rights movement in the US was echoed a short time after by the civil rights movement here. The peaceful agitation of Martin Luther King gave way to the violence of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers; here, the civil rights movement dissolved into violence and thirty years of conflict.

JUDE COLLINS: Still stunned DUP bewildered by Cullen candidacy

THINGS have not been going well in recent times for your 100 per cent, full-fat unionist. In April 2021 Arlene Foster announced she was stepping down as First Minister and DUP party leader.

JUDE COLLINS: Why should Israel stop when it faces no consequences?

A MAN called Tim Montgomerie was on the BBC’s Question Time last week. If you were to slice Tim, you’d find the word ‘Conservative’ running through him to his innermost core.

JUDE COLLINS: The DUP stone is turned over – and it's not pretty

IF you knew that nobody else was listening, would you say things you wouldn’t say into a live microphone? As the beer advertisement says, Probably. There’s an exhilaration in taking off the safety catch and letting go with both barrels.

JUDE COLLINS: We need to look at migrants in a different way

AH, the border. Over 100 years old and still creating bother.

JUDE COLLINS: Irish bigotry is painful to admit – but let's not pretend it doesn't exist

HELEN McEntee, the South’s Justice Minister, chanced her arm last week. She said that 80 per cent of immigrants presenting themselves for registration in Dublin had arrived there via the North, even though there were no reliable figures to support her claim.

JUDE COLLINS: Health and war budgets tell the story of a nation

FIRST, let me plead a special interest: I have a daughter in London who works in the NHS. Okay? So, yes, I am biased in favour of governments who give as much money as possible to keeping their citizens alive and healthy. The thing is, if you do a bit of burrowing, you start coming up with some depressing statistics.

JUDE COLLINS: Geography knowledge dependent on... geography

ON July 21, 2000, the then Tánaiste and leader of the Progressive Democrats party, Mary Harney, addressed the American Bar Association in Dublin. In the course of that speech she made a claim that still resonates decades later: “Geographically we are closer to Berlin than Boston. Spiritually we are probably a lot closer to Boston than Berlin."

JUDE COLLINS: United Ireland debate inevitably brings different analyses

WHEN you’re assessing the worth of a political claim, it’s generally smart to factor in the person making the claim.

JUDE COLLINS: Differing analyses on Irish unity converge on the same conclusion

THERE'S good news and bad news. First, the good: all of the political parties in the South aspire to a reunited Ireland (Hooray!). The bad news: the past century and more has seen those same parties mouthing platitudes, presenting the Northern Troubles as sectarian blood-lust, and since the Good Friday Agreement focusing on the need to win unionists over to the notion of a reunited Ireland before holding any border poll.

Gallery: Hannahstown a hive of fun and energy

Boxing: Quinn to fight for Commonwealth honours on the June 28 'Belfast Brawl'

Gaelic Games: Vital fixtures for clubs as hurling heads towards the split

Gaelic Games: Gleeson to take time before deciding his future with Antrim

THE WEEK IN VIEW: Lies, damned lies and stupidity

SQUINTER: Live and dangerous! Not any more as GB News pull the plug

DÚLRA: We’re going raven bonkers in the city centre

HEALTHWISE: Spread it around: Margarine gets the nod over butter

Jude Collins

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