Archive | Jude Collins RSS feed for this section
Online January 13, 2012

Thatcher’s tale unquestioned but Dugdale’s another story

It’s funny the way people react to TV and film. Print? For most people now, much print requires too much effort – they prefer to watch the movie rather than read the book.

Read More 0 Comments
Online January 5, 2012

Empire building on daft paddys

It’s a striking fact and a source of pride to some: the number of Irish comics who make it big in Britain. It’s been that way for decades at least: Frank Carson, Dave Allen, Jimmy Cricket, Dermot Morgan, Dara O Brian, Brendan O’Carroll – and, of course that old perennial, Sir Terry Wogan. They’ve all made the British laugh.

Read More 0 Comments
Online December 22, 2011

Totting up the tots provides a glimpse of all our futures

Funny how religion and politics can criss-cross. Here we are in the mouth of Christmas which celebrates the birth of Jesus with all its implications, and within days of that feast the Economic and Social Research Institute in the south has come up with some new and slightly startling research about babies.

Read More 0 Comments
Online December 19, 2011

British megalomania remains a terrible disease

I like the way Alex Salmond looks. And the way he talks. He’s overweight, he has the wide-eyed face of a panda in search of banana shoots, and he’s supremely unflappable. Besides which he has this idea that Scotland is an adult nation and should have independence from Britain within Europe.

Read More 0 Comments
Andersonstown News December 8, 2011

Go on and get your Granny a goat for Christmas

What a world, eh? People being laid off, shops shutting up shop, the air thick with the crunch of bankruptcy. Even the Christmas trees are looking smaller and sadder this year. But if it’s bad here in the North it’s worse in the South. When a government has to break the budget bad news into bite-size chunks and feed it to the public in instalments, you know things are bad, bad, bad.

Read More 0 Comments
Online December 8, 2011

Get Granny a new goat for Christmas in the name of social justice

What a world, eh? People being laid off, shops shutting up shop, the air thick with the crunch of bankruptcy. Even the Christmas trees are looking smaller and sadder this year. But if it’s bad here in the north it’s worse in the south. When a government has to break the budget bad news into bite-size chunks and feed it to the public in instalments, you know things are bad, bad, bad.

Read More 0 Comments
Liam Murphy May 14, 2012

Big man of GAA celebrates in style

Veni, Vidi, Vinci . I came, I saw, I conquered, was the powerful message sent back to Rome by Julius Caesar when he won a war in Zela (currently known as Zile in Turkey. After spending two days with the Gaels of Glengormley, Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh might well have sent a similar message back to headquarters. Throughout the two days he won the hearts of all who met him as he demonstrated his love and passion for the Irish language and Gaelic games.

Columnists May 13, 2012

That’s not the way to do it as summer nears

THERE’S nothing funnier for children to watch than a long-suffering wife getting battered with a cudgel by a short-tempered violent husband – or so you’d think if you watched a seaside Punch and Judy show.

Colin Millar May 12, 2012

Blues make it a double

Linfield replicated their end of season celebrations from 12 months ago as they lifted their second trophy in the space of a week, defeating Crusaders 4-1 in Saturday’s Irish Cup final.

Andersonstown News May 11, 2012

My marathon highs and lows

HIGHLIGHTS 1. Sheltering in City Hall with marathon veteran from New York Fr Brian Jordan — chaplain to the trade unions of the Big Apple — before the 9am start while thousands were getting drenched outside waiting for the Lord Mayor Niall Óg to sound the starting horn (gun for off apparently decommissioned).

Columnists May 11, 2012

Who calls the shots in Europe?

I enjoy elections. I enjoy them so much, I was delighted when the Fianna Fáil wheeze of introducing electronic voting machines backfired, leaving them (and the taxpayer, of course) with machinery that couldn’t be used and cost a packet to store.

Andersonstown News May 4, 2012

Taking the needle

THERE’S that drip again. It’s like a malfunctioning tap only the drops aren’t falling into a cold, hard sink – they’re falling into Squinter’s head. Again. Perhaps he should explain. For more years than he cares to remember, Squinter has been plagued with sinusitis, which we won’t go into too deeply here, except to say it is the blockage of a series of passages inside the head and surrounding the nose.