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
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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.
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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.
 
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So I did call someone a retard at work and I didn't get fired nor warned- is that a win? *Edit* They found it funny, Idk why- but the person I called a retard was black, but we were jokingly saying it-he took it as a joke, but still ratted me out.

Anyway, I appreciate how all of you can respond like adults-unlike many of the fucking Americans on this site (yes this is an American run website, where else can I go..reddit?).

Anyway. I'm still a faggot and mentally deranged, but I'm white and British so you have to accept me.
 
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A-Logato said:
Multiple explosions' as tanker and ship crash in North Sea - with jet fuel spilling into sea and vessels on fire
So how fucked are we? Clearly it's already leaking as reports say the seas on fire and it's black smoke coming from the vessels. If it is bad which it sounds like it is then the whole of the eastern sea boards about to die off and kill what ever was left of our fishing industry and kill any coastal city/town on that side of the country.
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The tanker was American-flagged and was delivering jet fuel to the US military bases in the UK.

The collision was the fault of the Portuguese-flagged container ship, as the tanker was at anchor:
 
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FedPostalService said:
Just as Farrage implodes Reform? I’m getting my tinfoil hat out.
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Last week would have been a certain victory for Reform.

Now? Who knows. Who even cares.

Would you like red communist? Blue communist? Yellow northern communist with a silly voice or teal creepingly left wing megalomaniac who just wants any sniff at power and worship at this point?

I'll take the skip fire. Cheers.
 
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quaawaa said:
The collision was the fault of the Portuguese-flagged container ship, as the tanker was at anchor:
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This might need some clarification.

The tanker was at anchor, i.e. not moving. It's a tanker ( so as I understand it, fucking huge ). The container ship still managed to hit it ? Were they aiming for it ?

To paraphrase Brick Top " It ain't a set of fucking car keys, is it? And it ain't as if it's incon-fucking-spicuous now, is it?"

Stena Immaculate tanker - Her length overall (LOA) is 183 meters, and her width (beam) is 32 meters. Her summer deadweight capacity is 49,729 tonnes.
 
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Guntsress Of Diabeteeze said:
I went to Gregs today and they didn't have any of the square pizzas. I was upset-but the server was a Paki, so I guess it's okay.
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Get some standards! Greggs food is not good at all, only good thing they do is the coffee which tastes okay and is like 80p or whatever.

Give me a Cooplands any day of the week
 
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After looking into it a bit Labour’s welfare reform plan seems doomed to fail, on one hand they say they want more disabled people to work but on the other they are planning on cutting a scheme called Access to Work which as it sounds helps disabled people find employment but there’s a problem - Too many disabled people want to use it which means it’s costing the government too much money and also leading to long waiting times for anyone eligible to use it.

The inexplicable logic of Labour’s disability minister seems to be that if they add more red tape and pass the costs and legal obligations onto employers it’ll somehow lead to them hiring more disabled people which will save the government money:
Ministers appear to be set to announce cuts to a flagship disability employment scheme, just as the government is trying to push more disabled people towards the workplace.

Sir Stephen Timms (pictured), the social security and disability minister, told MPs yesterday that the Access to Work scheme was “unlikely to be sustainable in the long term” and needed to be “better and more effective”.

He pointed to the “very high level of demand” and said ministers were looking at “whether actually employers could do more” through some “fairly significant reforms to Access to Work”.

His comments to the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday) suggest that ministers will take measures to cut the number of disabled people eligible for the scheme, and increase obligations on employers to make more adjustments themselves in the workplace.

Only last month, the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said the government’s approach to social security would “ensure that work is accessible to as many people as possible”, including disabled people.

Sir Stephen’s comments follow years of rising numbers of recipients of Access to Work support – apart from the first year of the pandemic – and mounting backlogs and delays.

Employment minister Alison McGovern said last year that there were about 55,000 Access to Work applications yet to be dealt with on 7 October, while DWP figures later that month showed that the amount spent on assistance such as equipment, travel and support workers increased from £127 million in 2016-17 to £255 million in 2023-24, once the effects of inflation had been allowed for.

It also increased by 34 per cent in the last year, from £191 million in 2022-23 to £255 million in 2023-24, while the number of disabled people receiving Access to Work support increased from 34,800 in 2022-23 to 49,920 in 2023-24, a rise of 43 per cent.

Sir Stephen had been responding to concerns raised by disabled Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling.

Darling said he was concerned that the backlogs in the system could be “exacerbating vulnerabilities”, and he pointed to two disabled women who had reported serious delays.

One of them, a constituent, was told she would need to wait six months for Access to Work support, while another disabled woman was facing the possibility of a job offer being withdrawn because “it had gone on for months with Access to Work failing to process the claim”.

He said: “We want to help people back into work and yet the department is part of the problem.”

Darling asked if DWP had set a 28-day target for dealing with new claims and processing payments on existing claims because disabled people can find themselves “thousands of pounds in arrears”, which he said was “impoverishing” many people.

Sir Stephen told him: “The problem is that there has been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work.

“A number of us will remember that we used to talk about Access to Work as a kind of ‘best kept secret’ because nobody really knew about it and employers didn’t know about it.

“Well, that seems to have changed in the last two years and there’s been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work and the department has done its level best to keep up.”

He said DWP had allocated more staff to deal with applications, but the system was still “not in good shape at the moment”.

He said: “So I think what we’re going to need to do and we will touch on this in the green paper [due to be published next month] as well, I think we’re going to need to make some fairly significant reforms to Access to Work, look again at the whole approach we’re taking, look at whether actually employers could do more.

“There are legal obligations on employers to make reasonable adjustments. I’m wondering whether there’s more we can do there.”

He pointed to the government’s Keep Britain Working review, which is being led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, former chair of John Lewis Partnership, and will focus on understanding what employers and government can do “to increase the recruitment, retention and return to work of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions”.

Sir Stephen said the review would look “specifically at what employers should be doing and can do to improve opportunities for disabled people, people with health impairments, to get into work and stay in work and do well in work.

“So I think there’s quite a big issue here and I think the current style of Access to Work is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term.

“We’ve got to come up with something better and more effective given the current very high level of demand.”
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Pickle Inspector said:
After looking into it a bit Labour welfare plan seems doomed to fail, on one hand they say they want more disabled people to work but on the other they are planning on cutting a scheme called Access to Work which as it sounds helps disabled people find employment but there’s a problem - Too many disabled people want to use it which means it’s costing the government too much money and also leading to long waiting times for anyone eligible to use it.
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I have an idea, a very bold and stupid one but... maybe the government could stop giving all our money to migrants and putting them up in swanky hotels? Then maybe there'd be enough for our actual citizens here. Madness, I know!
 
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Pickle Inspector said:
Too many disabled people want to use it which means it’s costing the government too much money and also leading to long waiting times for anyone eligible to use it.
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The sad truth is there aren’t enough jobs for disabled people normaly, for obvious reasons, so the ones that want to work have to use such a scheme. That’s before you even tackle the issues of how difficult is working actually when all their issues are factored in.

So you have long wait times and then you have a longer time trying to find something suitsble.

Sure a lot of places employers could make better but the big issue is even then a lot of jobs aren’t suitable.

And guess what? There is no way you’ll know if an employer said no to you or fires you because you are too disabled to be worth the trouble. They just won’t say. Or that won’t be the given reason.

Gov is so retarded when dealing with this issue

There is however an easy solution to all these problems…
pot of sneed said:
I have an idea, a very bold and stupid one but... maybe the government could stop giving all our money to migrants and putting them up in swanky hotels? Then maybe there'd be enough for our actual citizens here. Madness, I know!
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…this, this would be the solution.

Goverment has enough money to cover and care for the disabled, job or no. But it wastes its money on bs and undoubtedly cooks the books.

If we could see exactly where all the money was being wasted or sent and not clawed back we would likely be horrified.
 
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Infopost/summary of the Reform v Lowe circus over the weekend for the possibility, however remote, that something ultimately Happens as a result. It wouldn't be the first time a wealthy businessman outsider politician used their perceived persecution as a launchpad for success...

Flippant comparisons aside Lowe is obviously not going quietly into the night. He rebutted the Reform statement point by point and tweeted furiously most of the weekend. The Telegraph published warring articles by Lowe and Farage (and Ben Habib, another ousted Reform member). Tice did an unfortunate interview. Zia Yusuf was silent. Lee Anderson was a boorish oaf on X. Media reporting seemed gleeful but fairly neutral.

Reform's statement cited complaints from two female employees about serious bullying in the offices of the Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe which is with a KC and threats of physical violence against our Party Chairman which is with the police.

The alleged threats of physical violence against Zia Yusuf were reported to police on March 6th 2025 but took place on December 13th 2024. Lowe describes these occasions as 'robust debate' in his rebuttal. A Sky article on the subject also references an incident involving Labour transport minister Mike Kane on December 19th in which he describes being 'manhandled' by Lowe in the House of Commons. Contemporary reporting described their exchange as 'heated debate' and 'jibes', over toxic waste dumped off the coast in Lowe's constituency, in his view recklessly and without communication [article].

The bullying complaints are not against Rupert Lowe. His rebuttal to Reform's statement addresses it in detail below [Archive]. TLDR: a group chat got out of hand, and when some participants were disciplined for bullying they lodged complaints against his office, this is all properly documented with HR. MP Andrew Bridgen confirms the bullying complaints have nothing to do with Lowe personally and other employees have spoken in his defense.
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The Telegraph articles, Saturday 8th March
Rupert Lowe: I’m the victim of a witch hunt – and I’m innocent -- Is it a surprise that allegations about me were made public the day after I made reasonable criticisms of Nigel Farage?
Nigel Farage: Reform has acted responsibly over Rupert Lowe -- The stakes are too high: my party has elections to win
(Farage got ratio'd when he posted this)

Richard Tice did an interview in which he appears to imply Lowe would not be welcome in the party even if exonerated, Sunday 9th March

Rupert Lowe ended Sunday with the extraordinary claim the party leadership are briefing the press he has dementia. A commenter found lines in Farage's Telegraph article that seemed to suggest the same [Archive]
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Today he did a longform interview but unfortunately it involves Dan Wootton:
ETA:
Smyrna said:
There are also reports of shenanigans relating to the Stafford branch of Reform, where the membership appears to have been frozen out and new leadership is being imposed by HQ.
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Here's the screenshot:
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GratsTheat783 said:
Do you think Reform will survive until the next election or is it Nig-over?
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I'm pretty sure Farage set this up intentionally so as to best avoid being in any position of actual responsibility; had this whole cock-up not occurred Reform would have been a shoe-in for the upcoming by-election which would have been the beginning for real momentum and actual bright shining possibly. This would have been a worst case scenario for Niggel because he'd actually have to do proper leadership.
They aren't utterly fucked yet but the hope for glory is gone, doomed now to go the way of UKIP.
 
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Swerf'n'Terf said:
Today he did a longform interview but unfortunately it involves Dan Wootton: https://www.youtube.com/live/R53oMmGZpnE
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Don't let Wootton's involvement put anyone off watching this interview if they want more info on the drama. Lowe explains everything pretty well in the video.

On a couple of occasions Lowe tells Wootton to be quiet and let him talk, causing him to (mostly) keep his low IQ interruptions to a minimum.
 
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