Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Meet “truthful hyperbole”.

All sorts of advertising slogans from my childhood fell foul of accuracy laws.

The one which changed the most (long past the point, in my opinion, that it should have simply been abandoned) was Whiskas cat food. “Eight out of ten cats prefer Whiskas!” became, eventually “In tests, eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference said that their cats preferred Whiskas!” Not exactly snappy, eh?

EU laws are very protective of consumers. Subway have fallen foul of them quite recently, when they lost their case to continue to call their rolls ‘bread’. They contain too much sugar – they are officially cake.

I wonder if they’ll ever come down on European estate agents, landlords, and the like, for the exaggerations and blatant lies they tell.

Another one.

Iran has been tripped up by the women.

The eruption of nationwide protests in Iran following the death in police custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman detained for allegedly failing to adhere to hijab (headscarf) rules is the most serious challenge Iran’s leadership has faced in years.

Oddly enough women don’t like being bullied and oppressed and muffled in yards of cloth.

Civil liberties groups continually spotlight the suppression of women in Iran, an entire part of society who have been the biggest losers of the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Half of society – the half without which there won’t be any more Iranians. (Men are required for that too, but in a pinch you can get by with far fewer of them.)

Iranian women were forced to wear hijab (headscarf) soon after the revolution and have lost many of their rights, including right to travel, right to work and right to child custody over the age of seven. There was little objection to these changes from men at the time.

“The fact that many men are joining the protests shows that the society has shifted to more progressive demands,” says Mehrdad Darvishpour, an Iranian sociologist based in Sweden.

The main slogan of protesters is “Woman, Life, Freedom”, a call for equality and a stance against religious fundamentalism.

The real problem is theocracy. Get the goddam religion (whatever religion it is) out of government. Woman, Life, Freedom, Secularism.

No.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi withdrew from a long-planned interview with CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, after she declined a last-minute demand to wear a head scarf.

I don’t suppose Amanpour sent Raisi a last-minute demand to wear underpants on his head. Why does he think he gets to tell her what to put on her head? She doesn’t go to his school, she doesn’t have to wear its uniform.

Amanpour, who grew up in the Iranian capital Tehran and is a fluent Farsi speaker, said that she wears a head scarf while reporting in Iran to comply with the local laws and customs, “otherwise you couldn’t operate as a journalist.” But she said that she would not cover her head to conduct an interview with an Iranian official outside a [in a different] country where it is not required.

“Here in New York, or anywhere else outside of Iran, I have never been asked by any Iranian president — and I have interviewed every single one of them since 1995 — either inside or outside of Iran, never been asked to wear a head scarf,” she said on CNN’s “New Day” program Thursday.

Iran is stuck on the down escalator.

Amanpour said that Raisi’s aide made clear that the interview — which would have been the Iranian president’s first on American soil — would not happen if she did not wear a head scarf. He referred to it as “a matter of respect,” given that it is the holy months of Muharram and Safar, and referred to “the situation in Iran,” alluding to the protests sweeping the country, she added.

Ah but that’s just it. We don’t respect sexist laws that treat women like Obscene Sexual Invitations on two legs. We have deep contempt for such laws.

Anti-government protests erupted across Iran last week over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in custody, after having been [she was] arrested by Iran’s morality police on an accusation of violating the law on head scarves.

Wearing a large piece of cloth over one’s head and neck should not be a police matter, let alone a custodial matter, let alone a death in police custody matter.

In Iran, the head scarf is a potent symbol of a set of personal rules imposed by the country’s clerical leaders, which govern what people can wear, watch and do. Over the past decade, protests have flared as many Iranians have grown resentful of those limitations.

Sigh. The habit is spreading. Those rules impinge on women far more strictly than they do on men, so at least say “people, especially women,” or better, in a piece on women and hijab, just say “women.” This really is about women, and the violent oppression of them by clerical men.

Wales says but we don’t want a prince thank you anyway.

The naming of William as the new Prince of Wales was “divisive”, according to a senior Plaid Cymru politician.

“Divisive” is a stupid word. Everything’s divisive. If you mean “bad” say “bad.”

Senedd member Cefin Campbell also asked whether, in today’s “more inclusive” and “egalitarian” society, whether “we need a monarchy at all”.

That’s the real question. Is there any point to this whole monarchy shtick other than demonstrations of inequality?

King Charles announced William and Catherine were Prince and Princess of Wales in his first address as monarch.

Then he got back to pitching fits at fountain pens and inkstands.

Is it lying or is it just colorful “hyperbole”?

A couple of days ago

Letitia James filed a 220-page lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court accusing Donald Trump and three of his children of using wildly inaccurate evaluations of Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago and multiple other properties to defraud lenders and cheat on taxes. The result, she said, was a “staggering” and “astounding” scheme that yielded an estimated $250 million in ill-gotten gains.

James termed these financial manipulations “the art of the steal,” a play on the title of Trump’s 1987 bestselling memoir The Art of the Deal. In that book, Trump (or, more likely, his co-author, journalist Tony Schwartz) called his aggressive salesmanship “truthful hyperbole,” which was explained as “an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”

Stop right there. There is no such thing as “truthful hyperbole.” It may sound cute, if you’re not paying attention, but it’s a contradiction in terms, and is itself dishonest.

And when it comes to marketing there is definitely no such thing as “an innocent form of exaggeration.” We know it’s not “innocent” because it’s done to trick people into giving you more money. You don’t get to call that “innocent.”

That of course is all the more true when we’re talking about Trump, who is the least “innocent” person most of us have ever seen.

The reason, Trump (or Schwartz) said, was that “people want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” and Trump was more than willing to oblige them.

That is, he was eager to “oblige them” by telling them his product was the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular so that they would give him more money than it was worth. That’s not obliging them, it’s tricking them into giving him money.

It’s maddening that Trump basically informed the world that he was tricking people into paying him more for his properties than they were worth and the world just chuckled and left him to get on with it.

Maybe, maybe, all this criminality will end up being an obstacle to Trump’s dream of returning to the White House dining room so that he can throw more catsup at it.

Donald Trump’s legal perils have become insurmountable and could snuff out the former US president’s hopes of an election-winning comeback, according to political analysts and legal experts.

Meanwhile Politico is arguing that the legal perils just make the base love him more, but even if they’re right about that it won’t do him much good if he’s being held without bail.

On Wednesday, Trump and three of his adult children were accused of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a “staggering” fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves.

The civil lawsuit, filed by New York’s attorney general, came as the FBI investigates Trump’s holding of sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and a special grand jury in Georgia considers whether he and others attempted to influence state election officials after his defeat there by Joe Biden.

One two three legal perils.

“He’s done,” said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, in Washington, who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984. “He’s got too many burdens, too much baggage to be able to run again even presuming he escapes jail, he escapes bankruptcy. I’m not sure he’s going to escape jail.”

How embarrassing is it that we elected a flagrant shameless prolific criminal president?

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, noted that the civil component “involves things of particular significance to Trump and his family and his organisation, namely their ability to defraud the public, to defraud banks, to defraud insurance companies, and to continue to subsist through corruption. Without all of that corruption, the entire Trump empire is involved in something like meltdown.”

The money is going to disappear, and the debt collectors are going to become all too visible.

No previous former president has faced investigations so numerous and so serious. 

No previous president has been quite such a hardened criminal, although there have been some ringers.

Asked by a conservative radio host what would happen if he [were] indicted over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump replied: “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”

Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: “If the best defence you have for your conduct is: if you hold me accountable, there will be violence, that sounds like someone who has no business being either in public service or being outside of jail.”

Or on tv.

The Telegraph:

Scottish rugby chiefs have been accused of putting women and girls in danger after the country became the only part of the UK to allow male-bodied transgender players to compete against females in full-contact matches.

Scotland really hates women, doesn’t it. I guess because they won’t wheesht?

Rugby’s governing bodies in England, Wales and Ireland have recently changed their transgender policies to state that only people born as women can play in women’s matches, after peer-reviewed evidence showed male-born athletes retained significant physical advantages.

Next up: governing bodies will say only adults can play in adult matches, after peer-reviewed evidence showed adult athletes have significant physical advantages over children.

Existing rules state that female players must not be told they will be competing against a male-bodied opponent, denying them the chance to opt out of matches if they have safety concerns. Clubs face disciplinary action if they break the strict confidentiality rule.

That’s sadistic and murderous.

Scottish Rugby is believed to be consulting with the two trans players about the impact of any change, but has left the door open to continuing to allow trans women to compete in female matches.

I wonder if they’re consulting with women at all.

The current policy states that trans women and girls can be cleared to participate in full-contact games, provided testosterone levels have been below a certain threshold for 12 months.

That is so breathtakingly stupid. As if testosterone were the only variable.

World Rugby, the international governing body, stated in October 2020 that trans women who had begun male puberty should not be allowed to compete in women’s games as dangers to female players were “unacceptably high”.

It found male players were significantly bigger, stronger, heavier and faster, and that suppressing testosterone levels “removes only a small proportion” of large physical advantages of male-born competitors.

As everybody knows. Of course males are significantly bigger, stronger, heavier and faster.

Scotland needs to wake up.

Lily Maynard has a brilliant long piece about the Brighton meetup and issues that flow from it:

Standing for Women holds various public meetings around the country, most famously at the Reformers Tree in London on the last Sunday of each month but increasingly in other cities. Recent meets have taken place in Nottingham, Manchester and Bristol as well as London, and in Washington DC and New York City in the States. At most of these meetings, held in public spaces, any woman who wishes to can speak to the group about issues that concern her and her sex. Sometimes, when the women are done, male allies get to speak too.

Let’s be clear, we were not meeting in order to clash with transactivists. Currently there is still no law to stop a group of people gathering in a public park for a chat. We were not ‘organising a protest’ or deliberately provoking anyone – unless, like the protestors, you view women talking about their rights as provocation.

She took many photos, which she shares.

So what did these guardians of diversity have to say for themselves? Well a couple of them enjoyed shouting ‘fascist’ at a baby on the outskirts of the meeting – I know, right? It does seem unlikely- but you can see the clip here. The woman in blue dungarees, shouting at the baby, is Carly-May Kavanagh, policy advisor to the local MP.

“You’re raising a little fascist as well?” her companion asks the baby’s dad.

“Oh, you’ll get your poo on it?” Kavanagh raises her voice at the baby. “Wow, you fucking fascist!”

“You think that’s a good idea, do you, to raise a child who believes this filth? Who doesn’t accept trans people?” she moves closers and gesticulates suddenly in the baby’s direction, calling its father ‘disgusting’.

Fortunately, baby remains unmoved by the exchange.

I knew nothing of the incident at the time but I was speaking to the baby’s mum shortly after it happened. Indignantly, she told me, ‘someone just called my baby a fascist’. Awful. Baby was fab, adorable, totally cool and checking everything out.  Not displaying any fascist tendencies as far as I could tell in the two minutes I spent cooing at it.

Well that’s how they pull you in. They’re sneaky, babies are.

There was much repeating of mantras. Oh, the irony of men chanting ‘you’re not feminists’ at us because we won’t go along with their pretence that they’re women!

…

“Fuck off Karen” was popular for a few minutes.

And, of course, ‘trans-rights are human rights’ – which we all know to be true. I don’t know anyone who ewould deny that. Trans rights are indeed human rights. People who believe in gendered brains have the same sex-based rights as the rest of us. So when TRAs say ‘trans rights are human rights’ that isn’t what they mean. They mean that they should have the right to force us all to pretend you can change sex. That’s not a human right. It’s not a human right to force people to pretend they agree with you. It’s not a human right to silence and bully people who don’t share your unfounded and phantastical beliefs.

This is what I keep saying. We don’t oppose human rights for trans people. The issue is new, invented, ridiculous pseudo-rights that don’t even resemble real rights. There is no “right” to force people to believe your claims about yourself no matter how crazy they are.

It is interesting to note- although sacrilegious to point out- that trans activism is based entirely upon lies. Firstly the lie that you can change sex. Secondly the lie that hobbies, clothing & hairstyles are what make you a certain sex juxtaposed with the idea that actually no of course it isn’t that at all… but also yes it is… but also it isn’t… so it doesn’t matter how you look at all, your gender expression can be different to your gender identity, yet at the same time boobs and beards, or their absence, are essential for authentic-self-ness.

Read the whole thing.

Developments.

She’s locked her account AND she’s blocked me (and I assume a great many other critics of her venomous bullying). Belt AND braces.

She may be feeling unnerved because Allison Bailey, whom she casually called a lot of harsh names yesterday, has demanded a retraction.

And she wasn’t even elected.

I don’t know what that means exactly, except that nobody voted for her.

Sometimes the alibi just makes the crime worse. Trump on his “declassifying” prowess:

In his first TV appearance since a court-authorized search of his Florida home last month, Donald Trump reasserted Wednesday that any documents taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were declassified while he was in office, adding that a president can carry that out “even by thinking about it.”

“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Well, as he understands things isn’t a very good measure of the things. Also it’s the kind of thing he should have been very sure about, not the kind of thing he qualifies with a “could be wrong” disclaimer.

“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified,” the former president added.

“You’re the president — you make that decision.”

Yeeaahh no that’s not it. It’s not a perk, like you get to use the pool whenever you want to. It’s not something you get to do so that you can brag to your friends. It’s not something you get to do just because you want to take the documents with you in the golf cart.

The 11th Circuit ruled:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday freed the Justice Department to resume using documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald J. Trump, blocking for now a lower court’s order that had strictly limited the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of government materials.

In a strongly worded 29-page decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit set aside key parts of an order by a Florida federal judge that has kept the department from using about 100 files with classification markings in its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally retained national defense documents and obstructed repeated efforts to recover them.

By a Florida federal judge who was made a federal judge by Trump despite her striking lack of the usual experience or expertise, and who issued a ruling so bad that lawyers everywhere ran out of words to say how bad it was.

The appeals court also agreed with the Justice Department that Mr. Trump’s lawyers — and an independent arbiter recently appointed to review the seized materials — need not look at the classified documents that the F.B.I. carted away from Mr. Trump’s estate, Mar-a-Lago, on Aug. 8.

…

The decision by the Atlanta-based court was a repudiation of the decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, whom Mr. Trump appointed to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, to broadly intervene in the Justice Department’s investigation. The appellate ruling will permit the arbiter, known as a special master, to review most of the more than 11,000 files seized from Mar-a-Lago, but allow prosecutors unfettered access to the smaller batch of classified records.

Two of the three judges who issued the ruling are Trump appointees.

The dispute over the files traces back to Judge Cannon’s decision to install a special master to filter the documents seized in the search of Mar-a-Lago for any that were potentially privileged. She also barred criminal investigators from using the materials until the review was completed, and rejected the Justice Department’s request to exempt the 100 or so records marked as classified from that process.

In short she acted like a Trump plant, or robot.

[I]n an interview that aired late Wednesday, Mr. Trump made the extraordinary claim — not advanced by his own lawyers or supported by prior practice or legal precedent — that he had the right as president to declassify documents by wordlessly willing it to be so.

He did. He thinks it’s a kind of magic. He really is that stupid.

“You can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it,” Mr. Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

…

Mr. Trump “has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the appeals court wrote. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”

The talking heads leaned heavily on that need to know point. Trump has zero need to know anything about those documents because he is just another fella now. He seems to think he’s a kind of shadow president in perpetuity, but he’s not, he’s a private citizen, and a very corrupt law-breaking in deep shit one at that.

Mr. Trump has claimed publicly that he declassified everything he took from the Oval Office, but no credible evidence has emerged to support that claim and his representatives have stopped short of repeating it in court, where it is a crime to lie.

If you’re a lawyer for Trump: be careful. Be very very careful.

Oh puhleeze.

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blasted New York State Attorney General Letitia James for involving the children of former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit.

They were involved in the business. Why wouldn’t they be involved in the lawsuit?

Also they’re bent, and corrupt, and evil, and they have profited hugely from their father’s many crimes. Of course they’re involved.

Barr, who resigned from the Trump administration amid attempts to overturn the 2020 election and has been at odds with the former president since, denounced James’ lawsuit as a “political hit job” and an example of “abuse of office.”

But he’s a crook. Should he be left alone simply because he won an election (despite losing the popular vote)? Why? He’s not above the law.

“It’s hard for me not to conclude it’s a political hit job,” Barr said during a Fox News interview on Wednesday. “[James] is a woman who campaigned for office promising she was going to go after Trump, which I think is a tremendous abuse of office, to go headhunting and targeting individuals.”

Speaking of abuse of office, Bill…

Crimebusters in Ireland

Oh no, a county council and a county library system are following…what, WrongThinkers? And a councillor is going to…what, try to get other council officials to punish them or defund them or report them to the police?

At least she’s proud of her work.

Another banning is in progress.

What resource? What organization?

We know how this is going to go.

You don’t get to “argue” that a law is not a law. At least, you do if you’re a lawyer and in the appropriate court, but you don’t get to if you’re just some asshole who wants to get away with stuff.

The senior federal judge tasked with reviewing the materials seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sharply questioned the former president’s attorneys Tuesday during their first hearing in his courtroom.

Judge Raymond Dearie repeatedly challenged Trump’s lawyers for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence.

…

Trump has argued that the 11,000 documents taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI pursuant to a search warrant last month were rightfully in his possession, including about 100 bearing classification markings that suggest they contain some of the nation’s most closely guarded intelligence.

But there’s a law that says those documents are government property, not his personal property. We don’t get to steal people’s cars and then “argue” that they’re rightfully in our possession. That’s not arguing, it’s bullshitting.

I’m doubtless wrong about that legally speaking; I’m just ranting. Sometimes one has to rant.

Trump has been threatening Big Problems if he is indicted. Nice little country ya got here type of thing.

Trump warned that if he were indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.”

Perhaps. Then again perhaps pigs can fly.

Trump, speaking Thursday to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, added, “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”

We would stand for it, sit for it, jump up and down for it, turn cartwheels for it, ride a bicycle from New York to San Francisco for it.

Hewitt, who is also a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, then noted that critics would describe the comment as inciting violence, and he asked Trump to respond to the claim. “That’s not inciting — I’m just saying what my opinion is. I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it,” Trump said.

Definitely not inciting, just as “it would be a shame if this nice country ya got here burned down one night” is not inciting.

When pressed by Hewitt, Trump said he thought there would be “big problems, big problems.”

Ah. I do love getting clarification.

Trump’s comments Thursday came hours before officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security briefed Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee about threats against federal officials. After the briefing, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairman, described Trump’s rhetoric as dangerous.

“Inviting the mob to return to the streets is exactly what happened here on January 6th, 2021,” Durbin told reporters. After noting that five people died as a result of the attack and 149 law enforcement agents were injured that day, the senator said Trump’s “careless and inflammatory rhetoric has its consequences.”

Oh it’s not careless. Oh god no. Careless is the opposite of what it is. It’s very deliberate and calculated. He’s not playing. He wasn’t playing on January 6 and he’s not playing now.

And it’s on.

The New York state attorney general filed a sweeping lawsuit Wednesday against former President Donald Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself.

In the more than 200-page lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, alleges the fraud touched all aspects of the Trump business, including its properties and golf courses. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

“These acts of fraud and misrepresentation were similar in nature, were committed by upper management at the Trump Organization as part of a common endeavor for each annual Statement, and were approved at the highest levels of the Trump Organization — including by Mr. Trump himself,” the lawsuit states.

Trump and his children, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Along with a couple of non-family hacks.

James is seeking $250 million in allegedly ill-gotten funds and to permanently bar Trump and the children named in the lawsuit from serving as the director of a business registered in New York state. She is also seeking to cancel the Trump Organization’s corporate certificate, which, if granted by a judge, could effectively force the company to cease operations in New York state.

New York state includes Manhattan. They won’t like that. Let’s hope it happens.

In addition to the new fraud lawsuit, the Trump Organization is going on trial next month on charges it was engaged in a 15-year tax fraud scheme and its long-time chief financial officer has agreed to testify against the company.

Weisselberg, who served as chief financial officer at the Trump Organization for decades, pleaded guilty in August to his role in a 15-year-long tax fraud scheme, and as part of the deal, he had agreed to testify against Trump’s real estate company at trial.

In recent weeks, the Trump Organization had offered to settle to ward off the lawsuit even as they denied any wrongdoing, but James’ office made it clear it wasn’t interested in a deal, people familiar with the matter said.

No doubt this will do wonders for Trump’s plans to run for president again.

“Offensive” isn’t really the issue.

Met officers guilty of sharing offensive messages with Wayne Couzens

A serving Metropolitan police officer and a former officer accused of sharing racist and misogynistic messages in a WhatsApp group with Sarah Everard’s killer have been found guilty of what a judge described as “sickening” and “abhorrent” behaviour.

Those are the issue – racist and misogynist. They’re the issue because of their relevance to how the police treat people and how they investigate crimes against people.

PC Jonathon Cobban, 35, and Joel Borders, 45, had joked about beating and sexually assaulting women, raping a colleague and using Taser weapons on children, their trial had been told.

I’m sure cops need to let off steam, but doing so by expressing contempt and loathing toward women is not ideal.

The district judge, Sarah Turnock, said WhatsApp, an encrypted social media platform, had been used as a “safe space” where the guilty men believed they had “free rein” to share the grossly offensive comments.

Again – it isn’t the “offensive” part that matters, it’s the focused hatred and contempt. Lots of things are considered grossly offensive that aren’t about focused hatred of particular categories of people.

I did a couple of posts about “Giulia” Valentino last month: he’s a man who plays football on women’s teams. The Guardian had a Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Trans Ladies piece earlier this month about how mean everyone is to men who compete against women.

Five weeks later, speaking to the Guardian in a first media interview since the controversy, Valentino sought to set the record straight about the tournament final and make the case for including trans people in sports.

Issue isn’t sports. Issue is men muscling into women’s sports.

Commentators had suggested the game they played in, called the Dublin Junior J Shield football final, was for teenagers whereas it was for adults, with junior signifying a lower skill level, said Valentino. “A lot of the misinformation was clearly intentional; they wanted to give the public a specific angle. This is the well-known toxic narrative against trans people we know so well.”

Not trans people; men. This is the well-known dishonesty and manipulation we know so well.

An Italian tech worker who moved to Ireland two years ago, Valentino is a newcomer to Gaelic sports and by her own account not especially skilled, yet she may leave a lasting mark if the GAA and LGFA allow trans players to compete – she has been consulted by the policy review. “I will never be remembered for my sporting results but I’d like to be remembered for leaving a legacy of inclusion for other trans players.”

He may be not especially skilled but he still has a man’s body. Just drop the whole Steal Women’s Sports campaign and that will solve the problem.

For opponents of such inclusion, the photograph of Valentino closing in on an opponent appeared to tell its own story: a bigger, stronger athlete with an unfair physical advantage from having undergone male puberty.

The Guardian agreed not to publish this or any photograph that identified Valentino, who has been harassed. “Safety is a privilege that doesn’t belong to trans people,” she said.

He said. Why is the Guardian so tenderly concerned about this man and so callously unconcerned about the woman he displaced and the women he put at risk?

I have no such qualms about publishing the photo: here you go:

We get the usual gabble about how he’s lost power yadda yadda.

Valentino said that since starting to play Gaelic football in February she had heard no objections from other players in the ladies’ league. “Cisgender women players are our main supporters. I never had an issue on the pitch.”

Gee I wonder why. Could it possibly be because of the massive amount of abuse and bullying women face if they do object? Could it be that he heard no objections not because the women didn’t object but because they didn’t feel free or able to object? Could it be that he should know that and should never have seized the unfair advantage in the first place?

I’m so tired of these cheats and the guardians that enable them.