UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Finally.

This afternoon.

Via RTÉ News:

Negotiations on finalising a Brexit trade deal are completed, with European European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen describing the agreement as fair, balanced and right.

Making a statement after negotiations were completed, she said with so much at stake it was a deal worth fighting for.

“Deal is done,” a Downing Street source said. “We have taken back control of our money, borders, laws, trade and our fishing waters.”

“The deal is fantastic news for families and businesses in every part of the UK. We have signed the first free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas that has ever been achieved with the EU.”

Fair and balanced Brexit deal reached – von der Leyen (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Arrivals hall at Dublin Airport last weekend 

The Happy Song of Us

Okay to buy your grandchild an ice-cream.
Illegal for them to lick it.
Fine to bake granny
a gleaming fruit cake,
as long as you only email her
a high resolution photo of it.
Okay to give your son or daughter
a bright new football.
Illegal for them to kick it.
Permissible to purchase for yourself
a new set of golf sticks or a tennis racket.
Illegal to hit anything with them
outside the confines of your own
downstairs bathroom.

You can’t have a friend around for a meal
unless both of you have been
fitted with gum shields.
And should you go for a socially distanced walk
with a lover
butt-plugs are now mandatory.

Every living room is its own flat-pack factory
singing the happy song of us,
hammering together our coffins.

Kevin Higgins

23-12-20

RollingNews

This morning.

Further to reports earlier this year that UCD was considering amending the definition of academic freedom to allow the university to ‘expand further into countries which do not share the same values as those in the western world’…

Via The Times:

Academics at the college have accused the university of attempting to trade academic freedom for profit with one staff member saying it should be “absolutely ashamed” of the proposal.

….A working group had proposed an addendum to the definition of academic freedom at the university. The group said that a university with a large international footprint needed to “consider and appraise the risk of tension arising between the obligations regarding academic freedom and the strategic imperative to internationalise higher education“….

UCD proposal to ease protection for academic freedom ‘shameful’ (Brian Mahon, The Times)

Related: UCD agrees 50 year ‘free’ lease for Confucius Institute (Irish Times, April 17, 2015)

RTÉ

Broadsheet.ie