A new discovery lights up the headlines.

Study shows sex could be a better predictor of sports performance than gender identity

Ya think???

Sex may be a more useful explanatory variable than gender identity for predicting the performance of athletes in mass-participation races, a new paper has found.

A new paper has found what everyone has always known. Humans are sexually dimorphic.

Outside of purely biological outcomes and criminology, little empirical work has been done to test the theory that gender identity is more important than biological sex as a cause of gender disparities in outcomes.

Surely they mean sex disparities in outcomes.

More to the point, what theory? There’s a theory that gender identity is more important than biological sex as a cause of gender disparities in outcomes? How could that be? I thought the theory was just that men who claim to be trans have found an easy way to cheat.

How dare a woman say that men shouldn’t take women’s scholarships?

Anti-Trans Swimmer Slammed After Causing Trans Teen To Lose Volleyball Scholarship

That is, woman yelled at after she points out that a boy won a scholarship intended for girls. The boy didn’t “lose” anything; he was never entitled to that scholarship, because it’s for girls.

Peter Karleby writes:

Anti-trans swimmer Riley Gaines has once again sparked outrage after her public campaign against a trans high school student resulted in the teen’s college scholarship being revoked.

That is, Riley Gaines “sparked outrage” in a male journalist after she pointed out that a scholarship for girls had been awarded to a boy.

It’s unclear how Gaines knew about the teen, but she took to X, aka Twitter, last week to write a cruel screed against the student, outing and misgendering her, revealing her identity with a photo, and calling on UW to revoke her scholarship.

A cruel screed is it? What about the cruelty of a male student stealing a scholarship intended for a female student?

Gaines claims that the student and her parents deceived the university by concealing her trans identity. Disclosing someone else’s sexual or gender identity without their consent is considered illegal harassment under Washington law.

So males who claim to be trans get to cheat while everyone else has to keep his secret? Why would that be?

Gaines’ supposed concerns about athletic fairness are likely not even valid. The teen is thought to have transitioned before puberty, meaning she never developed any of the supposed athletic advantages anti-trans agitators advocate against.

The “supposed” athletic advantages. Riley’s “supposed” concerns about fairness. What would it take to convince him of the reality?

Those advantages have yet to be proven substantive, even in cases of transition after puberty, according to the limited research on the topic.

Substantive? What are you trying to say, Lassie? Do you mean substantial? Real? Significant?

Anyway, whatever he’s trying to say, he’s trying to say it by lying outrageously. Two words: Lia Thomas.

Woke dogs! Gaslighting dog-havers! DEI for the canine set!

Comment sections filled with discussions on “woke idiots” in dog training. “Radicals are Hijacking Dog Training” posted one trainer, calling force-free training, the anti-aversive movement of which Mr. George is arguably the most prominent face, an “ideology” and a “cult” with a “radicalized agenda” — language that sounded awfully familiar.

Even before this, I’d seen the occasional Instagram post by a trainer using terminology that seemed drawn from another context: I’d paused on several posts that applied the term “consent” to dogs — as in, we should get their consent before we pet them. In some cases, the trainer’s vocabulary seemed drawn from even more distant shores: “I will not project colonial, capitalist, or patriarchal concepts on my dog,” one post read, in between tips on leash reactivity and separation anxiety; “don’t gaslight your dog,” another urged.

We should get their consent before we pet them…hmmmmmmm…how can we ever be sure of a dog’s consent? Maybe that tail is wagging to be polite; how can we know?

But Mr. George’s series of videos seemed to send whatever process had generated those posts into overdrive.“It sounds like dog training has become just one more target for the woke community to prey upon!” a YouTube user wrote. “These are the same people with ‘gender fluid’ dogs,” another wrote, a statement that I found funny, then spent too long trying to parse. (What is standard gender expression in dogs?) I watched a video in which a trainer referred to the “dog training far left,” which should have made no sense, except that at this point, I knew what he meant.

It’s not so much far left as far something else – far incloosive, far validationing, far emotional support dogging…thus bringing us around in a circle.

Far left would be communal ownership of the means of production. The soppy touchy-feely validationy wing of the left isn’t really lefty at all, it’s its own weird thing. It’s dripping wet emotionalism run riot.

Everyone I spoke to for this story was deeply sincere (these are, after all, dog people): “The world of dogs does not exist in a vacuum of pet guardian and pet but is interconnected with systemic oppression,” Rachel Forday, a positive trainer, told me when I asked about her use of political language. “Systemic oppression dictates who is allowed to own a dog and what kind of dog they own.” Robert Cabral, a balanced trainer, worried in one of his videos that the rise of science citations in dog training was turning the profession into an “elitist realm.” “I have an issue with that,” he said. “I’m a simple guy. I didn’t go to college.” He continued, “I think when you make things complicated, you cut out a lot of good people.” The vibes these people are projecting are simply who they are.

Meanwhile their dogs are sniffing other dogs’ butts.

Will he be sued? Is he trawling to be sued? Does he have wistful daydreams about being sued? Does he identify as being sued?

By the way it’s not “denigrating” anyone to point out that people can’t change sex.

Not a hate crime after all?

Within 48 hours of Brianna Ghey’s murder, DCS Mike Evans of Cheshire police told the media that the force had “no information or intelligence to suggest it was a hate crime”. The statement caused an immediate uproar, particularly among the LGBTQ+ community, who held vigils in her memory. Many people suspected that Brianna’s being a transgender girl [might] well have played a role in her killing and were angry that detectives seemed so quick to rule out transphobia as a motive.

After all, it’s not as if the detectives could have known more about it than the “many people” who were watching from Twitter.

Although transphobia did not come up in the trial, the judge, Mrs Justice Yip, may consider it to be an aggravating factor when sentencing one or both of the teenagers. But she told potential jurors on the first day of the trial to put aside any “uninformed views” about Brianna’s killing.

She also took a dim view of online commentators who pronounced that the defendants were transphobic. After the case was opened, the prosecution complained about a tweet from the barrister Jolyon Maugham, the founder of the Good Law Project, saying the teenagers had exchanged “transphobic slurs”.

Yip said the tweet was potentially in contempt of court, a serious crime that has previously resulted in short jail terms for those judged to have prejudiced a trial. Heer said the prosecution had deliberately not used such terms in the presence of the jury.

Maugham was spoken to by police and deleted the tweet, the court heard.

Good law indeed.

Typical Trump: if the reporting says he said something repulsive he then repeats it 9 thousand times to demonstrate that he can be repulsive if he wants to so NYAH.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night denied he was inspired by Hitler while repeating his comments that immigrants were “destroying the blood of our country” — despite coming under intense fire for similar remarks over the weekend.

Not “despite”; because of.

“They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing — they’re destroying our country,” Trump said Tuesday at an event in Waterloo, Iowa, echoing comments he made at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday in which he said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

…

Trump brushed off the Hitler comparison, claiming that Hitler’s rhetoric was said “in a much different way.”

Wrong.

“I never read ‘Mein Kampf’” he told the audience in Iowa. “They said Hitler said that — in a much different way. No, they’re coming from all over the world — people all over the world. We have no idea — they could be healthy, they could be very unhealthy, they could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country. But they do bring in crime. … They’re destroying the blood of the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out.”

Of course he never read Mein Kampf; he’s never read anything. He doesn’t read. He watches Fox News.

Originally a comment by Sackbut on Its sanitized depiction of slavery.

The NYT article did mention the disturbance of gravesites as part of the reason, but that appears secondary.

The group, which is affiliated with an organization called Save Southern Heritage Florida, sued the Defense Department in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Sunday, arguing that the Pentagon had rushed its decision to take down the monument and that it had circumvented federal law by not preparing an environmental-impact statement. It also said that the work would damage the surrounding graves and headstones. A hearing on the matter was scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday.

I hope this isn’t too much of a digression: there is a large Confederate memorial at the Alabama state capitol here in town. The Confederate battle flag that used to fly on top of it was taken down in 2015. The monument itself includes this inscription, over the four sides of marker:

North/Navy Side

“The seamen of Confederate fame startled the wondering world: for braver fight was never fought, and fairer flag was never furled.” Anon.

West/Cavalry Side

“The knightliest of the knightly race who since the days of old, have kept the lamp of chivalry alight in the hearts of gold.” F.O.T.

South/Infantry Side

“Fame’s temple boasts no higher name, no king is grander on his throne: No glory shines with brighter gleam, the name of “Patriot” stands alone.” C.T.R.

East/Artillery Side

“When this historic shaft shall crumbling lie in ages hence, in woman’s heart will be, a folded flag, a thrilling page unrolled, a deathless song of Southern chivalry.” I.M.P.O.

The monument was erected in 1898 by Historical and Monumental Association of Alabama & Ladies Memorial Association of Alabama, which I think explains some of the focus of the inscription on the perspective of war widows. The text is quite blatantly praising the men who fought for the Confederacy as “patriots”, “knightliest of the knightly race”, and “chivalrous”. I don’t think there is any effort to try to move it. There is also a statue honoring J. Marion Sims (“father of gynecology” who operated on slaves without consent or anesthesia) at the capitol, and recently a monument honoring his victims (titled “Mothers of Gynecology”) was unveiled; perhaps a counter-monument like that might be appropriate.

Not so fast, Treason Dude.

A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

And the Supreme Court will of course wave him through.

The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

Trump’s attempted coup was also the first of its kind in history.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.

And let’s be real: he did actually do that. They’re not making it up, and they’re not exaggerating.

Because the rozzers have NOTHING better to do.

So yeah, they false reported me to the rozzers. On Saturday, I was arrested then interviewed under caution about my interview with @andrewdoyle_com on @GBNEWS and my @StandingforXX speech at #LetWomenSpeak in Leeds. Five hours later I was released from custody and told no action would be taken against me coz I haven’t committed any crimes, obvz. The worst part was when they arrested me I was naked except for a towel and still had flippin shampoo in my hair, then had to go get dressed in front of another copper with a bodycam like I’m some kinda terrorist. They took mugshots, DNA swabs and finger prints too. I’m taking those psychos back to court at Twixmas so can’t into anymore detail right now. Just wanted to say thankyou everyone for having my back when I was in ze gulag, especially our @Glinner. What an absolute fucking farce

Arrested and interviewed and detained for five hours for knowing that men are not women. This is hell, nor are we out of it.

Speaking of monuments to the Confederacy and Just Asking Questions about why we should remove them and who is going around defending slavery anyway, let’s take a quick look at Florida and its education standards.

Florida’s public schools will now teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills, part of new African American history standards approved Wednesday that were blasted by a state teachers’ union as a “step backward.”

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education.

Yes of course they did; how could it have been otherwise? The whole point of them was to do work for the slaveowners such that the slaveowners would make big profits. Of course that meant developing skills. That doesn’t count against the fact that they had no choice in the matter, they couldn’t leave, they weren’t paid, they were property from birth to death, they had no rights, any children they had were also property from birth to death, they could be whipped, tortured, locked up, killed at their owners’ discretion.

H/t Seanna Watson

The Times on the Confederate statue and the pause in its removal:

Hours after workers began removing a towering Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, a federal judge issued an order temporarily halting the effort to dismantle one of the country’s most prominent monuments to the Confederacy on public land.

Emphasis mine, for the benefit of people who pretend to be puzzled about why the monument should be removed.

The memorial has been criticized for its sanitized depiction of slavery, and the plan to remove it from the country’s most famous cemetery is part of a militarywide effort to take down Confederate symbols from bases, ships and other facilities. Dozens of Republican lawmakers have opposed removing the memorial.

Why would the military want to take down Confederate symbols? One, because a military needs unity, which becomes more difficult in an environment full of reminders of subordination and injustice. Two, because the creation of the Confederacy was an act of treason, and the military tends to frown on treason. Three, because the military has become a very significant path out of poverty and obscurity for people who don’t have the boost of white ancestry.

On Monday, as the work to remove the monument was getting underway, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that had been requested by a group called Defend Arlington.

The group, which is affiliated with an organization called Save Southern Heritage Florida, sued the Defense Department in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Sunday…

Save what Southern heritage? The slave-owning one. The enslavement-defending one. The Glorious Cause one. That Southern heritage.

The memorial was the latest such monument to be targeted for removal since the public backlash in 2020 against Confederate statues after the killing of George Floyd. That movement helped push Congress to establish the Naming Commission in 2021 to devise a plan to rid the military of statues and monuments commemorating the Confederacy.

The Defense Department mandated that the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be removed by Jan. 1, 2024.

But apparently it’s a very bad thing to devise a plan to rid the military of statues and monuments commemorating the Confederacy. Somebody warn the Defense Department.

UK Schools can now say nope.

Schools will be able to overrule parents who want their children to change their gender identity if they feel it goes too far under new guidance.

The long-awaited guidance states that schools must take a “cautious approach” that complies with their legal duties.

It explicitly states that some forms of social transitioning — under which children change their pronouns, names and uniform — “will not be compatible with a school’s statutory responsibilities”.

Responsibilities like providing single-sex toilets and changing rooms, and not letting boys compete against girls in contact sports. (Should be any sports, but it’s a start.)

No duty on schools
Ministers had wanted to ban social transitioning but were unable to do so within the confines of existing legislation. Instead, they have opted for a compromise, with the guidance stating that schools are under no “general duty” or obligation to facilitate social transitioning. It will urge them to proceed with extreme caution and state that changing gender identity is not a “neutral” act. Ministers believe this will stop schools from taking “affirmative action” over social transitioning.

Protections for teachers
Teachers and fellow pupils will not be “compelled” to address children by their chosen pronouns if they have a “good faith” objection. As a compromise, they will be advised to use a child’s chosen name. This is designed to avoid teachers facing sanctions if they have principled objections to a child changing their gender.

It’s a start.

Erm…sound familiar?

Yes, of course it sounds familiar. It sounds like Hitler.

Also, he doesn’t even mean “Jews,” he means Israel, or to be more precise Netanyahu’s government.

He’s a man who thinks very highly of himself and his virtue.

Rick Wiles: Disciple of Jesus, TruNews host, Final Day author, Baptist elder, Bible teacher, businessman, global Ambassador for Peace. Unable to swallow BS.

Very very very global ambassador for peace.

By now it’s as familiar as “Once upon a time.”

A Tory deputy chairwoman has had a “hate incident” recorded against her after she described a trans woman as a “man in a wig”.

Rachel Maclean, the MP for Redditch, was accused of transphobia after she shared a post on X, formerly Twitter, about Melissa Poulton, who is standing for the Green Party against Maclean at the next general election.

The post said that Poulton was “a man who wears a wig and calls himself a ‘proud lesbian’” and Maclean added: “‘While the Greens don’t know what a woman is, my Worcestershire neighbours the people of Bromsgrove certainly do.”

It’s also relevant that Maclean is in fact a woman, while Poulton is not.

Poulton literally is a man in a wig, so is it in fact a “hate incident” to say so?

In all fairness there are literal truths that are cruel to point out, emphasize, belabor. It doesn’t really matter much whether you call uttering them hate incidents or just cruelty. Bullying with cruelty isn’t generally a police matter but it certainly is a social one.

But there are other literal truths we need to point out and even emphasize. The truth that a man is not a woman is very much one of them, especially now that it’s been made taboo. That applies to the generalization that men are not women and also to the particular instances of men trying to force everyone to agree they are women. It may hurt the feelings of the man in question (or it may give him the thrill he’s seeking), but that doesn’t matter nearly as much as women’s always precarious rights.

It is true that Poulton is a particularly awkward fit as a pretend-woman, and it may be rude to point that out, but given the rudeness of his claim to be a woman, I can’t summon much sympathy for him.

Maclean, who is the party’s deputy chairwoman for women, has said that she would “continue to make this stand” however many times she was reported to police.

Yesterday she said that West Mercia police had recorded a “non-crime hate incident” (NCHI) on her file.

Posting on X, Maclean said that she was involved in “changing rules to bring in common sense and proportionality” around such incidents while a Home Office minister.

She said: “Originally NCHIs were introduced in wake of Stephen Lawrence case and were used as intelligence gathering tools. It seems wrong and ridiculous to use the same tool to record that a woman said a man cannot be a woman or a lesbian.”

Wrong and ridiculous and an absolute disaster for women’s rights.

Piggy Giuliani is simply going right on libeling those two women even after the verdict.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the two Georgia election workers who won a nearly $150 million verdict against Rudy Giuliani for defamation on Friday, have sued him again, asking a federal judge to permanently prohibit him from lying about them.

The lawsuit comes as Giuliani has continued to make false statements about their work as absentee ballot counters in the 2020 election.

“Defendant Giuliani continues to spread the very same lies for which he has already been held liable,” the new lawsuit said. “Defendant Giuliani’s statements, coupled with his refusal to agree to refrain from continuing to make such statements, make clear that he intends to persist in his campaign of targeted defamation and harassment. It must stop.”

Moss and Freeman’s lawyers added that even since the verdict, Giuliani has indicated he wouldn’t stop repeating the false claims about them.

At the end of the first day of their defamation damages trial against him last week, Giuliani told TV cameras outside court that “everything I said about them is true” and that he had proof that the media should “stay tuned.” Giuliani presented little defense in the case, and didn’t testify.

Yeah sure he has proof, and that’s why he didn’t produce it during the trial.

In a separate court filing Monday, attorneys on both sides agreed on final numbers and terms now that the jury has weighed in.

Giuliani agreed the court’s final judgment would make clear he owes the women $146 million, plus more than $237,000 for attorneys’ fees. The jury verdict has been slightly reduced because Moss and Freeman previously settled another part of their lawsuit, against One America News Network and others.

Giuliani also said the court can say, in its final judgment, that he made more than a dozen defamatory statements about Moss and Freeman that hurt them, and that his “conduct was intentional, malicious, wanton and willful,” according to the filing.

By including those declarations in the court’s judgment, it will be more difficult for Giuliani to avoid paying Moss and Freeman by filing for bankruptcy.

But not to keep defaming them?

Maybe he’s planning to jump off a bridge tomorrow.

H/t twiliter

Stop stop don’t you dare remove that Confederate monument.

Hours after workers began removing a towering Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, a federal judge issued an order temporarily halting the effort to dismantle one of the country’s most prominent monuments to the Confederacy on public land.

Because why shouldn’t we have a monument to race-based enslavement? It’s such an inspiring part of our history.

The memorial has been criticized for its sanitized depiction of slavery, and the plan to remove it from the country’s most famous cemetery is part of a militarywide effort to take down Confederate symbols from bases, ships and other facilities. Dozens of Republican lawmakers have opposed removing the memorial.

This is where that obsession with identity politics gets Republicans – they want to be special so they stand up for slavery. Seems like backing a losing horse, to me.

On Monday, as the work to remove the monument was getting underway, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that had been requested by a group called Defend Arlington.

Defend Arlington by not removing a monument to the slaveholding South. You really want to go with that?

The monument was funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that took a prominent role in mythologizing the Civil War as a “Lost Cause,” depicting the Confederacy’s rebellion as a noble defense of Southern values and painting slavery as benign. Like other monuments that the group funded, the Arlington memorial promotes the false narrative of the “loyal slave,” which has been used to justify and perpetuate white supremacy.

Retrofitting. “We do this thing, so we have to come up with a way to make it look acceptable.”

More than 40 Republican members of Congress signed a letter last week demanding that Lloyd J. Austin III, the defense secretary, stop the removal of the monument. They argued that the memorial did not commemorate the Confederate States of America but rather the “reconciliation and national unity” between North and South.

Oh honestly. What a thing to take a stand on.

The memorial features a woman who represents the American South standing atop a 32-foot pedestal, according to the cemetery. Near the base are dozens of life-size Confederate soldiers alongside mythical gods and two enslaved African Americans.

One is a “mammy” holding the child of a Confederate officer, and the other is a man “following his owner to war,” according to the cemetery’s description.

…

The United Daughters of the Confederacy began planning for the memorial in 1906, said James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. The group, composed of descendants of men who had served in the armed forces or government of the Confederacy, raised money for scores of monuments and memorials that presented a romanticized view of the Confederacy and a sanitized take on slavery.

“The statue was a way of reminding Americans who was in charge in the South and what the true traditions of the South were,” Dr. Grossman said. “It’s one of hundreds of statues that were created across the South in the first two decades of the 20th century whose purpose was to make sure that everybody knows that this is a white country, and that slavery was legitimate and benign.”

Plans for the monument drew fierce opposition from civil rights activists and groups, notably the N.A.A.C.P. The depiction of the “mammy,” in particular, diminished the harm inflicted upon women whose families were destroyed under slavery, they said.

The monument at Arlington was among the most prominent memorials that the United Daughters of the Confederacy funded, and the symbolism of the location was potent. The cemetery was established on a former plantation that was seized from Gen. Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Nearly 200 enslaved people lived and worked on the plantation when Lee lived there, according to the cemetery.

You’d think by now we could all just agree that slavery was and is indefensible.

It’s not working any more. There are many replies and most of them ask the obvious and necessary question that has been neglected too long: what rights??? What rights exactly are you talking about? What rights don’t you have? What rights specific to trans people do you have in mind? Spell. them. out.

What rights? What rights is Helen trying to remove? What rights???

The DEI everything…

“Harvard is a vastly less tolerant place than it was when I arrived in 1998.  The intolerance is a function of an increasingly large fraction of our colleagues. And we – the rest of us on the Harvard faculty – let it happen. The cancelling, the punishments, the DEI bureaucracy, the DEI statements, the endless list that we could all recite – all this happened on our watch. We saw it happen, but we did nothing. We were too busy.  We were scared to speak up. We – we on the faculty – let Harvard become what it is. The Harvard that we have is the result of our own collective moral failure. The alumni who are furious are not trying to turn Harvard into something we do not want.  They are trying to rescue Harvard from what we let it become. We as a faculty failed.  That is why the alumni are speaking up. That is why we formed the Council on Academic Freedom in the first place.”

Still? Still?? When were we ever???

Love Actually at 20: Are we still in love with the controversial Christmas classic?

Who was ever in love with that grating cloying maddening piece of crap?

Richard Curtis’s 2003 festive drama remains a Christmas classic, albeit a controversial one.

The interlinked romantic tales of middle-class characters professing their love at Christmas gets an annual grilling from critics, viewers and even some of those involved in the film, who point out the unrealistic portrayals of love, questionable character decisions and outdated jokes.

“Unrealistic” is putting it extremely mildly. “Insane” would be more like it. The Prime Minister asks for a cup of tea and is instantly pole-axed by the young woman who brings it to him? And that’s love actually? A “writer” dude goes to Italy or Croatia or somewhere to “write” his “novel” and is instantly poleaxed by the young woman who tidies his house? And that’s love actually? A very young guy flies off to the US in quest of grrrlz and hey hey they crawl all over him, giggling madly? And that’s love actually?

Despite the misjudgements and gaffes, what many viewers want from a festive film is what Love Actually provides: easy watching, a cosy Christmas setting and an unabashed celebration of love.

It’s not easy watching though. Granted there’s no work involved, but it’s not easy being tortured. And hello, it isn’t any kind of “celebration of love.” Wanting to fuck a woman on first glance is not the same thing as love. Going all googly-eyed over someone you don’t know and haven’t spoken to is not the same thing as love.

The amount of real love in the film can be debated, but everyone agrees that Grant gyrating The Pointer Sisters’ 1983 track Jump around the No 10 offices is comedy gold.

Nooooo everyone doesn’t! I cringe so hard when Grant starts twitching his bum that I can’t even watch any more.

At other times in the year, we might be more critical of naff storylines, schmaltzy acts of love and out-of-date jokes, but at Christmas we allow ourselves to be lulled by Hugh Grant’s earnest optimism that “if you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love, actually, is all around”.

Nope. Nope nope nope. There are plenty of sappy movies I can allow myself to be lulled into watching without cringing, but Love Actually has never been one of them. It has some decent moments, which is why I can be so specific about its horrors – I have watched bits of it several times over the years. But along with the decent moments it has poke your own eyes out moments, so no. It gets no forgiveness.

That Times op-ed isn’t faring enormously well on twit.

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