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![]() Tom CollinsThe Irish News |
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...
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...
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...
We called him ‘Dicky’. In the 1970s and early 80s, the short form of ‘Richard’ was pejorative. President Richard Nixon, fallen from grace over...
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....
It would be churlish not to applaud Ulster University which has been named ‘University of the Year’ by the Times Higher Education magazine. So...
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....
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...
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...
Two things are certain about today’s general election in the United States: if Kamala Harris loses, she will concede gracefully; if Donald Trump...
Somewhere in The Irish News archive is an article I wrote in the 1990s criticising the media treatment of loyalist protests and questioning the...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
Comedy can often reveal unspeakable truths. There’s an exchange in Derry Girls where Orla asks: “Will we need our passports, Gerry?” “For Belfast?”...
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...
One of my favourites on the BBC series Dragons’ Den was Hilary Devey, a no-nonsense, plain-speaking businesswoman from Bolton. She rarely missed...
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...
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...
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...
If ever you are seeking an example of the inadequacies of proportional representation, you need only look at Israel where a fragmented parliament...
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...
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...
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...
While the loyal sons of Ulster were setting fire to their sectarian pyres on Thursday, Scots were celebrating the 750th birthday of Robert the...