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Tom Collins

Tom Collins

The Irish News

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Fleadh 2026 will beat the bodhrán for Belfast – and I might have time to right a few wrongs too

previous day 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Worried about World War Three? The truth is it has already begun

05.03.2025 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Europe must wake up and choose – Trump or Zelensky

26.02.2025 7

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Scotland has a chance to finally knock sectarianism off its throne

19.02.2025 7

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Tom Collins: Genocide? What genocide? Come and soak up the sun on the Riviera of Blood

11.02.2025 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Starmer’s failure to lead means Britain is doomed

05.02.2025 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Trump declares war on his allies and woos his foes

28.01.2025 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Britain must finally admit its malign role in Troubles

21.01.2025 8

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Tom Collins: We tolerate shocking levels of drug deaths because we do not value these lives

15.01.2025 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

The Seanad is a rest home for failed politicians - it’s not the place for Conor Murphy to push for Irish unity

On the face of it, Conor Murphy’s ambition to pursue his political career in Seanad Éireann fits Sinn Féin’s island-view of politics. There is no...

08.01.2025 20

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Will 2025 be the year of the tyrant?

Most times I approach the new year with a mixture of high hopes and low expectations. I am rarely disappointed. This year, expectations are lower...

01.01.2025 5

The Irish News

Tom Collins

We got the pope we needed at the time we needed it

When I was a kid I coveted a small plaster bust that had pride of place in my granny’s display cabinet alongside souvenirs of holidays in Bray and...

24.12.2024 5

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Spotlight on ‘race science’ professor long overdue

We called him ‘Dicky’. In the 1970s and early 80s, the short form of ‘Richard’ was pejorative. President Richard Nixon, fallen from grace over...

18.12.2024 9

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Time to stop the rot and give Derry the university it needs and deserves

It’s an in-joke among academics that while history never repeats itself, historians often do. Much the same could be said for newspaper columnists....

10.12.2024 5

The Irish News

Tom Collins

UU award cannot disguise its neglect of north-west

It would be churlish not to applaud Ulster University which has been named ‘University of the Year’ by the Times Higher Education magazine. So...

04.12.2024 5

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Joe Biden on wrong side of history again over Netanyahu support

Once again Joe Biden is on the wrong side of history. His continued support for Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the imponderables of modern times....

27.11.2024 20

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Trump represents a clear threat to Ukraine’s freedom

To some extent it has become the forgotten war. Russia’s outrageous attack on Ukraine almost three years ago dominated the headlines for the first...

19.11.2024 3

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Trump win brings end to the American Dream

It was midnight and the polls on the east coast of the United States were about to close. By then I’d had enough of the idle chatter that passes...

12.11.2024 2

The Irish News

Tom Collins

If Trump wins, the United States as we know it is lost

Two things are certain about today’s general election in the United States: if Kamala Harris loses, she will concede gracefully; if Donald Trump...

05.11.2024 4

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Tech oligarchs are making a mockery of the news

Somewhere in The Irish News archive is an article I wrote in the 1990s criticising the media treatment of loyalist protests and questioning the...

29.10.2024 4

The Irish News

Tom Collins

America on a precipice as election day looms

In any normal society there would be no doubt about the outcome of the tussle for the United States presidency between Kamala Harris and Donald...

22.10.2024 2

The Irish News

Tom Collins

We need to have a grown-up debate about assisted dying

When I Googled ‘assisted dying’, a link to the Samaritans was top of the list of websites presented to me by the computer algorithm. “Help is...

16.10.2024 2

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Claire Hanna and the lightbulb moment for the SDLP

You are about to hear a ‘dad joke’. How many folk musicians does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: Five. One to change the bulb, and four to...

08.10.2024 3

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Unshackled Netanyahu playing Biden for a fool

The empty seats said it all. When Benjamin Netanyahu turned up to address the world at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week,...

01.10.2024 5

The Irish News

Tom Collins

All-Ireland solutions needed for neglected Derry to realise potential

Comedy can often reveal unspeakable truths. There’s an exchange in Derry Girls where Orla asks: “Will we need our passports, Gerry?” “For Belfast?”...

24.09.2024 10

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Hilary Benn joins long list of useless UK overlords

Let’s not beat around the bush. It’s pretty clear now that the British government has little or no interest in Northern Ireland; never has, never...

18.09.2024 20

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Translink needs to mind its language

One of my favourites on the BBC series Dragons’ Den was Hilary Devey, a no-nonsense, plain-speaking businesswoman from Bolton. She rarely missed...

10.09.2024 4

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Claire Hanna must help make us ‘a nation once again’

Mike Nesbitt must be wondering what he has done to deserve his fate, condemned once more to take on the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party. He...

03.09.2024 3

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Vote Labour, get Tory

There is a reason why the line ‘Vote Labour, get Tory’ resonates. It’s true. One of the frustrations of British politics is the Labour Party’s...

27.08.2024 7

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Allies must not turn their back as Ukraine brings war to Putin

Sometimes a line of poetry shocks you out of your complacency. A Ukrainian friend, with family living still in the war zone, recently gave me a...

20.08.2024 2

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Biden must act now to stop Netanyahu’s war

If ever you are seeking an example of the inadequacies of proportional representation, you need only look at Israel where a fragmented parliament...

13.08.2024 3

The Irish News

Tom Collins

The fight against fascism starts with social media

This is a sentence I could have written today: “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces...

07.08.2024 4

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Revenge of the ‘childless cat ladies’ is overdue

What a week it’s been for Kamala Harris, propelled towards the US presidency by Joe Biden’s decision to accept the inevitable and withdraw from the...

30.07.2024 1

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Bullet-defying Trump and the world’s ‘push the button’ moment

It’s known as ‘the button scene’. At the climax of the misogynistic comedy How to Murder Your Wife, Jack Lemon’s character draws a button in...

24.07.2024 2

The Irish News

Tom Collins

Labour’s election victory disguises forces that will destroy the union

While the loyal sons of Ulster were setting fire to their sectarian pyres on Thursday, Scots were celebrating the 750th birthday of Robert the...

16.07.2024 3

The Irish News

Tom Collins