Clean-shaven Irish Times cultural critic Donald Clarke has called for a ban on beards

When Donald admitted he feared
The sight or the feel of a beard
Was he being sardonic
Or merely ironic?
I don’t care. He’s wrong and he’s weird.

John Moynes

Pic: Irish Times

Scenes from this year’s Amsterdam Light Festival, featuring 29 light-based installations around the city’s canals and historic centre created by artists, designers and architects.

Above (from top): Gali May Lucas, “Absorbed by Light”; “Michela Bonzi, “Antenna Sud”; Peter Vink, “Mr. J.J. van der Veldebrug”; Jeroen Henneman, “Two Lamps”; OGE Group, “Light a Wish,”; Ivana Jelić & Pavle Petrović, “Starry Night” and Alicia Eggert, “All the Light You See”.

designboom

Tonight.

Following a vote in the Seanad, The Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Bil will now go to President Higgins to sign into law having passed all stages of the Oireachtas.

Deirdre Duffy, Campaign Manager for Together for Yes, said:

“This is a truly momentous day for women in Ireland. Today, the final hurdle for Together for Yes has been crossed.

For the first time ever since the establishment of the state, women who become pregnant in Ireland are now safe and protected by compassionate legislation.

The harm and suffering the Eighth has caused for women is now only a memory and as a nation we will ensure that women are never treated this way again in Ireland.

2018 will be recognised as a turning point in how this country respects and treats women.

This year has unleashed a new women’s movement across the generations who are now determined to overcome all remaining challenges to achieve real and lasting gender equality.”

Abortion legislation passes all stages of Oireachtas (RTÉ)

This afternoon.

In the Dáil.

The government has been defeated as an anti-eviction bill sponsored by People Before Profit preventing landlords from evicting people into homelessness has passed 46-39 and will now go to the committee stage.

Fine Gael voted against the bill while Fianna Fáil abstained.

The Solidarity-People Before Profit bill would:

– Abolish the sale of a property as a ground for ending a tenancy.

– Require landlords terminating a tenancy to allow for a family member live in the property instead to pay six months’ rent to the tenant.

– Abolish ‘refurbishment’ or ‘renovation’ as grounds for terminating a tenancy.

Last year the bill didn’t pass after the Dáil vote was 51-51 and Ceann Comhairle Fianna Fáil’s Seán Ó Fearghaíl used his casting vote to vote against it.

People Before Profit

Update:

There you go now.

This afternoon.

Spar, Ballybough, Dublin 1

Georgina writes:

The sweet jar contains donations for a local 93-year-old lady who last week was robbed of her Xmas rent money.

The shopkeeper told us she is loved and known by everybody in the area as a seamstress, with people always knocking at her door for alterations.

Two men pretending to be there to clean gutters took her double Xmas rent money she had just collected & some extra cash….

Georgina Hickey/Rollingnews

fancy a little pot?

At the Dublin Flea Christmas Market, Point Square, Dublin 1

Luke Brennan, of ‘Broadsheet on the Telly‘ fame, writes:

My mother [potter] Helena Brennan has taken  a stand in the Dublin flea-market this week. She will be there from today until Sunday.

She has just opened up a kiln after 3 months of making through the Autumn, she sent me these photos (above) of a miniature teapot she will have on sale there, along with a lot else besides. She would of course be very happy to see any Broadsheet readers there.

Helena Brennan

Dublin Flea Christmas Market

Irish-made stocking fillers to Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘Irish-made Stocking Fillers’. No fee.

Broadsheet.ie