UK British News Megathread - aka CWCissey's news thread

https://news.sky.com/story/row-over-new-greggs-vegan-sausage-rolls-heats-up-11597679

A heated row has broken out over a move by Britain's largest bakery chain to launch a vegan sausage roll.

The pastry, which is filled with a meat substitute and encased in 96 pastry layers, is available in 950 Greggs stores across the country.

It was promised after 20,000 people signed a petition calling for the snack to be launched to accommodate plant-based diet eaters.


But the vegan sausage roll's launch has been greeted by a mixed reaction: Some consumers welcomed it, while others voiced their objections.

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spread happiness@p4leandp1nk
https://twitter.com/p4leandp1nk/status/1080767496569974785

#VEGANsausageroll thanks Greggs

7
10:07 AM - Jan 3, 2019

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Cook and food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe declared she was "frantically googling to see what time my nearest opens tomorrow morning because I will be outside".

While TV writer Brydie Lee-Kennedy called herself "very pro the Greggs vegan sausage roll because anything that wrenches veganism back from the 'clean eating' wellness folk is a good thing".

One Twitter user wrote that finding vegan sausage rolls missing from a store in Corby had "ruined my morning".

Another said: "My son is allergic to dairy products which means I can't really go to Greggs when he's with me. Now I can. Thank you vegans."

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pg often@pgofton
https://twitter.com/pgofton/status/1080772793774624768

The hype got me like #Greggs #Veganuary


42
10:28 AM - Jan 3, 2019

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TV presenter Piers Morgan led the charge of those outraged by the new roll.

"Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns," he wrote on Twitter.

Mr Morgan later complained at receiving "howling abuse from vegans", adding: "I get it, you're all hangry. I would be too if I only ate plants and gruel."

Another Twitter user said: "I really struggle to believe that 20,000 vegans are that desperate to eat in a Greggs."

"You don't paint a mustach (sic) on the Mona Lisa and you don't mess with the perfect sausage roll," one quipped.

Journalist Nooruddean Choudry suggested Greggs introduce a halal steak bake to "crank the fume levels right up to 11".

The bakery chain told concerned customers that "change is good" and that there would "always be a classic sausage roll".

It comes on the same day McDonald's launched its first vegetarian "Happy Meal", designed for children.

The new dish comes with a "veggie wrap", instead of the usual chicken or beef option.

It should be noted that Piers Morgan and Greggs share the same PR firm, so I'm thinking this is some serious faux outrage and South Park KKK gambiting here.

 

[isalaide]

If you're confident the reason babies are dying is because of a murderous nurse, why do you then drop the number you deal with sharply having gotten rid of her?

Because you are pretty sure, but you are consultants who specialise in snatching barely alive babies from death, and you're extremely fucking risk averse having lost three times as many babies as you should have in the previous 12, 18 months.
And you don't know yet if she acted alone. You think so, but you have to take fewer babies so that no baby is getting 1 to 1 nursing. None of you can be alone with the babies until the figures normalise.

 

[FedPostalService]

Do you guys think that the Trump assassination attempt was staged by Spain in order to distract from the Jay Slater case?

You have no idea how much I want to post that on facebook for a laugh.

 

[Amin Yasister]

Later today, if the football goes to form, the Stars and Stripes will be replaced with the George Cross, and Trumps face to be replaced by Southgate's.

About 1000 times on social media.

 

[Suspicious Activity]

Just for a brief change of pace….
Boris had planned to scrap the tv licence when the contract ran out in ‘27.
Kier Starmer appears. First week on the job and has now promised not only to NOT scrap the sodding tv licence, but INCREASE the amount of general taxpayers money they’re going to get.

I don’t pay it anymore. I’ve given up linear tv altogether, but my elderly family do, as do many of the older generations. MATI.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

I don’t pay it anymore. I’ve given up linear tv altogether, but my elderly family do, as do many of the older generations. MATI.

You don't need a TV license and they have no proof if you have one or not. The license gestapo they send round to bully you are a 3rd party company and are legally trespassing by knocking on your door. You don't have to answer it, answer to them or prove anything.

Starmer will keep paying the propagandists that will run cover for him, especially now he's just saved their jobs.

 

[Amin Yasister]

Juries can be stupid and my experiences of jury service was bleak and depressing (literally some people making a snap decision and others wanting to agree to get it over with).

Like the recent trial of the two "Just Stop Oil" activists. Both were filmed in the act of invading the pitch at a rugby international and throwing paint everywhere. Filmed from multiple angles in the act.

Jury found them Not Guilty, so they were released. No doubt they will perform similar antics soon.

 

[AssignedEva]

The license gestapo they send round to bully you are a 3rd party company and are legally trespassing by knocking on your door. You don't have to answer it, answer to them or prove anything.

Remember TV Detector Vans?

They used to say they could detect people who were watching TV without a licence, down to where in your house it was and what you were watching. Some of them were absolutely just empty vans they'd drive around to try and frighten people, but supposedly some did have some sort of antenna detection technology. Problem was all it'd really establish was someone was watching TV somewhere on that side of the road, and if more than one house was watching TV at the same time it couldn't really even do that. So unless nobody on either side of the street had a TV licence, they couldn't tell if someone was watching TV without one.

A Freedom of Information request in 2013 revealed there had never been a single case where a TV Detector Van was used to charge someone for watching a TV without a licence. It's all smoke and mirrors. There's also a person who uploads every single warning letter they've received from the TV Licensing people, showing they escalate in intensity and make all sort of threats before looping back round to "investigation opened" and going through the same escalations over and over.

I've heard of the TV Licence people turning up with a policeman (this was a good few years ago) to make you think you had to let them in, but when pressed the policeman would say he was actually just there to make sure nobody attacked the TV Licence people and wasn't actually assisting with the investigation in any way. They rely on people being scared and letting them in (because then they CAN get you for having an unlicensed TV if they find one), they're like vampires in that regard.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Remember TV Detector Vans?

Fun fact an aerial , like a Tv aerial, can only pick-up signals, it can't transmit them. All those vans could do, at best, was detect that BBC was broadcast in that area and the houses had the ability to watch it, that's all. The whole thing was a scam and bully tactic that was used to scare millions into paying a tax that they didn't need to pay. Which is why I don't pay for a TV license.

They do escalate and the 'threatening' letter are laughable when they don't work as intimidation. And the men they send to the door? A polite "no thank you" doesn't work when they request access. One guy walked towards my door as if he was going to walk in. I stopped him and told him he isn't coming in as I don't watch live TV. He retorted with "you need a license to watch anything", which followed with the door being closed in his face.
When they came back a second time, my ex answered the door then slammed it shut while telling the guy to "Fuck off".
They didn't return a third time.

These people run on intimidation and bullying. They crumble like an empty bag of crisps when you use their tactics against them. Exactly the same thing happens on 'private' car parks. Outside of extreme circumstances, they can't fine you for parking and not paying.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

Just absorb the BBC into the government or make them play adverts like every other TV network

 

[Spunt]

Fun fact an aerial , like a Tv aerial, can only pick-up signals, it can't transmit them. All those vans could do, at best, was detect that BBC was broadcast in that area and the houses had the ability to watch it, that's all. The whole thing was a scam and bully tactic that was used to scare millions into paying a tax that they didn't need to pay. Which is why I don't pay for a TV license.

My understanding was that they could detect the radiation emitted by CRT TVs. This became much less effective when computer monitors became more common in homes then completely useless once flatscreens became the standard.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

Fun fact an aerial , like a Tv aerial, can only pick-up signals, it can't transmit them. All those vans could do, at best, was detect that BBC was broadcast in that area and the houses had the ability to watch it, that's all.

I suspect that it was always bullshit, but you might have been able to detect CRT TVs. They gave off a high-pitched whine, after all. I don't think there's any grounds for believing they could detect flatscreen TVs.

I never got why it wasn't a scandal, quite how aggressive and unpleasant TV Licensing are. They send me a love letter once a month, threatening one thing or another. It's rare to catch them outright lying in print, but they do come close at times (like saying you need a licence to watch Amazon Prime... but only to watch the live football that's sometimes on there).

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

My understanding was that they could detect the radiation emitted by CRT TVs. This became much less effective when computer monitors became more common in homes then completely useless once flatscreens became the standard.

That's the first I'm hearing of that. However, it wouldn't prove what you were watching, just that your TV was on. It was, and still is, legal to watch ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and FreeView, without a TV license. The BBC wouldn't have a leg to stand on if their evidence was "Tv glows".

The BBC should have been disbanded when it came to light that they covered for Saville. They're a horrible organisation that cover for rape gangs and smear political threats; Johnson, Truss, Corbyn, with over-exaggerated and fake stories, while uplifting scumbags; Khan, Sunak, Trans lobbies.

#endthebbc

I suspect that it was always bullshit, but you might have been able to detect CRT TVs. They gave off a high-pitched whine, after all. I don't think there's any grounds for believing they could detect flatscreen TVs.

IIRC the whine was because of the design of the CRT. Transformers (not the robots, AC/DC, not the rock band) create whine, just like your old Nokia phone charger used to, but we've eliminated almost all of it now.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

It was, and still is, legal to watch ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and FreeView, without a TV license.

Only on catch-up. You need a licence to watch iPlayer, or any live TV on any channel. This doesn't make any sense, I know.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Only on catch-up. You need a licence to watch iPlayer, or any live TV on any channel. This doesn't make any sense, I know.

I haven't read the TV license requirements for over a decade, but unless it has changed, you only needed it to watch Live BBC and Iplayer. ITV et al have adverts and don't receive funding from the license fee, so it was always legal to watch them. I could be going off of out-of-date info and it wouldn't be surprising to see BBC do everything in their power to fleece as much money as possible.

What really boils my piss is that wankstains like linker are paid millions for being a fart-huffin, white-hating, smug, BFG-looking cunt.

 

[AssignedEva]

Only on catch-up. You need a licence to watch iPlayer, or any live TV on any channel. This doesn't make any sense, I know.

Goes back to when the only broadcaster on TV or radio was the BBC (there used to be radio licenses too). It was a way of funding a public institution to build and maintain transmission infrastructure and programming, on the basis that people who didn't have a TV or radio shouldn't have to pay for it. Obviously back then, the only thing you could do was watch live.

Later on with the advent of home recording and playback, provided you didn't have a TV aerial, you could hook up a TV set to a VCR/DVD player/games console and use it like that, since you weren't receiving transmissions. Although again you'd just tell the TV Licensing people you didn't have a TV and the aerial wasn't hooked up to anything, since they didn't have a list of "TV sets sold to people who didn't have a licence", they just had a list of "addresses that don't have TV licenses" and didn't know if you did or didn't have a TV. Or, practically, you'd just tell them to go away.

They've no way of knowing if you're watching a live stream on the Internet beyond making you say you've got a TV licence to use iPlayer, so they're just doing the same thing these days.

 

[Overdrive]

I haven't read the TV license requirements for over a decade, but unless it has changed, you only needed it to watch Live BBC and Iplayer. ITV et al have adverts and don't receive funding from the license fee, so it was always legal to watch them.

Its been required to watch any live TV as its broadcast in the UK since at least the first year I was in uni, which was nearly 20 years ago now. It must be about a decade ago now that they tried to expand it to streaming any video on the internet but the govt told them to fuck off and so they only got to apply it to iplayer use.

I've never paid it and never intend to.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Its been required to watch any live TV as its broadcast in the UK since at least the first year I was in uni, which was nearly 20 years ago now. It must be about a decade ago now that they tried to expand it to streaming any video on the internet but the govt told them to fuck off and so they only got to apply it to iplayer use.

I've never paid it and never intend to.

It's not really important either way because we can agree that the license is shit, I just don't remember it being required to watch ITV and Channel 4, as they were privately funded. I remember it as "any live BBC channel". I know they tried puling the old 'any live tv channel' schtick as a bullying tactic.

Either way, the BBC should be burned down, metaphorically speaking.

 

[teriyakiburns]

It's not really important either way because we can agree that the license is shit, I just don't remember it being required to watch ITV and Channel 4, as they were privately funded.

Nope, it was always any live television broadcast, regardless of origin, which is why people tried all sorts of tricks like time-delayed rebroadcasts. It was a license to receive a radio signal, which is as classic a British bureaucratic bodge as you can imagine. How do you enforce reception, other than with an enormous bureaucracy and a constant propaganda campaign designed to cow people into submission? It's like requiring a license to see.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Nope, it was always any live television broadcast, regardless of origin, which is why people tried all sorts of tricks like time-delayed rebroadcasts. It was a license to receive a radio signal, which is as classic a British bureaucratic bodge as you can imagine. How do you enforce reception, other than with an enormous bureaucracy and a constant propaganda campaign designed to cow people into submission? It's like requiring a license to see.

Interesting.

I do remember the time-delay as an attempted work-around. The proper work-around was a dodgy Sky card or NTL box from the car booty.

 

[AssignedEva]

Either way, the BBC should be burned down, metaphorically speaking.

I agree. I think there's a role for a publicly funded state broadcaster, but I don't think the BBC fulfils it any more.

BBC News? I don't bother with it, most of the time, I actually prefer Sky News for reporting. They're whittling down Newsnight, and Question Time is a joke. There's a role for a channel that will broadcast important state events without commercial interruption, but anything important I can usually find on channels that will make sure they don't interrupt what's happening. BBC Parliament is good for seeing what's going on in the Commons, but there's no reason you couldn't just make that its own thing.

Radio? Only things I like are Radio 4 (for some of it), Radio 6 (but I can get that elsewhere, thanks to the internet) and the BBC World Service. But they're scrapping the World Service. That was one of the last bastions of good BBC journalism and you could listen from anywhere in the world and feel a connection to home, but again you can find similar things elsewhere these days.

The other classic argument was prestige drama - the BBC makes high quality television that wouldn't get made by commercial channels. But it's not so true any more. Can you think of a recent BBC production that compares to e.g. the quality of the 90s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, or platforms emerging talent and high brow creative works like Play For Today? And educational content - BBC Schools? They scrapped that years back. Maybe Panorama? But I've not watched Panorama in years.

They probably do contribute to joint productions I've enjoyed, but so do other production agencies. The last pure BBC productions I can think of thinking were actually fantastic were Fleabag and I May Destroy You, and both of those could have gotten made elsewhere - neither talent was discovered or developed through the BBC, they'd already "come up" through other means.

If the BBC still produced educational and high quality programming, and enabled working class people to break into the entertainment industry, I'd happily pay my license fee. But they don't. The last thing I watched on BBC was hatewatching Doctor Who, which had an episode where they saved a spaceship full of talking babies using the power of flatulence, and another episode where everyone in a futuristic city was white which was revealed to be because they were all racists who were too racist to accept help from a black man and then doomed themselves to extinction.