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.

 

[Kane Lives]

My father in law gets ever more beguiling with his campaign to sell up everything and have us all decamp to the old country. We have the passports. The life would be more rural but in the nice on TV move to the country way. There is extended family there, we'd do well, it's a beautiful part of the world. We would hardly be going far. The kids are young enough and resilient enough to manage just fine. It's not like I have anything to leave behind here.

But I don't want to be a foreigner. Yeah yeah I'd only be a bit of a foreigner, it's not like I'm brown, I have the magic passport blah blah. But still. I don't know how to explain it any better than that.

It's stupid and it's not rational and at some point I will bow to the inevitable. I can't really explain my reluctance. I think if nigel was more into the idea we'd already have gone. I would be taking everything important to me in my life with me. The more I talk about it the stupider I sound for not having gone. I could even get those ducks I want.

You ever wonder this is how the more forward thinking Romans felt during the long managed decline of the Empire after the 3th century AD? And like the WRE, things will just continue until they disappear, and what's left of the apathetic citizens will shrug and let it stay rotting and forgotten

 

[teriyakiburns]

On an entirely different note: Bin strikes in brum are still ongoing. It's a big enough issue that the BBC has a live happenings page on it. (archive)

 

[Otterly]

On an entirely different note: Bin strikes in brum are still ongoing. It's a big enough issue that the BBC has a live happenings page on it. (archive)

View attachment 7114473

Large piles of rubbish in Birmingham? You don’t say

 

[A-Logato]

Support for Ukraine was (posisbly still is) a fairly popular position, but Starmer latched on to that support to revive his political fortunes in such an obviously cynical way that it has made people instinctively oppose it just to spite him. I cannot express just how much I despise that vapid little twerp. I look forward to his eventual downfall.

Well it was popular until Starmer decided to start giving away billions to Ukraine whilst at the same time cutting everything we had domestically because of an alleged black hole in finances and leaving the country to devolve until South Africa and finishing that off with threatening to ship off gen z to go die in a field somewhere in Eastern Europe because Starmer just couldn't stop antagonising Putin does tend to make peoples outlook on something to change.

 

[Cassius Crayfish]

I don't know how to explain it any better than that.

It's stupid and it's not rational and at some point I will bow to the inevitable. I can't really explain my reluctance.

Edmund Burke would approve. One needs no reason to hold onto a place other than that it is yours. You were put in that place, so you should want to conserve it because it is part of who you are and you are part of what it is. In that sense, our 'irrational' attachment to our places are not really that irrational at all. We were designed to feel such things.

 

[Goose the Redeemer]

On an entirely different note: Bin strikes in brum are still ongoing. It's a big enough issue that the BBC has a live happenings page on it. (archive)

Why are they just piling it up in the street, presumably in front of their own houses, and not taking it down to the local council office? People pay council tax for a reason, this is the council's problem.

---

Asim Iqbal also spoke to me and he said there was "mess and smells everywhere".
He said there were seven people living in his house [...]

But what about the rubbish piling up?

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

On an entirely different note: Bin strikes in brum are still ongoing. It's a big enough issue that the BBC has a live happenings page on it. (archive)

View attachment 7114473

Which are the photos of bin strikes? Because all I see is a white-washed version of Birmingham.

Edmund Burke would approve. One needs no reason to hold onto a place other than that it is yours. You were put in that place, so you should want to conserve it because it is part of who you are and you are part of what it is. In that sense, our 'irrational' attachment to our places are not really that irrational at all. We were designed to feel such things.

The agricultural revolution and the settling of societies began approx 12,000-14,000 years ago, if we go along with conventional wisdom.
For the time before that, some 300,000+ years, we were nomads. We travelled from Africa to the modern-day mideast, traversed the mountains, hills and dales of Europe. Spread far and wide to the orient and ventured across the Asian Steppes. We swam to Islands, then swam to some more islands.
We explored, conquered and surveyed every square inch of habitable, and often, inhabitable parts of the world. Then when we had accomplished that, we set our eyes on the stars and the skies.

To think that we should stay in one place for reasons, is a little silly. Ignoring the current climate, moving for work, a better life for you and your family, is a rational and sensible decision. None of us begrudge a dirt farmer from india moving to England to work hard, intigrate and settle with his family, knowing he can afford them a better, more comfortable and rewarding life.
Why should we begrudge ourselves the same luxuries? Because ol' blighty was once great?
What of those families of yesteryear who moved to Australia, New Zealand or Canada? We all know people who did. Are they wrong for moving while the country was good, or right for moving when the country was good because leaving when things are shit is bad?

If anything, the only real reason to stay in a failing country, especially if you offer a lot in the way of tax payments or employing staff, is to prop up the failing country. The pigs at the trough don't want you to stop bringing them slop, otherwise they will have to do it.

"Don't ask what you can do for you country. Ask what your country can do for you" - Dave Mustaine.

 

[Cassius Crayfish]

To think that we should stay in one place for reasons, is a little silly. Ignoring the current climate, moving for work, a better life for you and your family, is a rational and sensible decision. None of us begrudge a dirt farmer from india moving to England to work hard, intigrate and settle with his family, knowing he can afford them a better, more comfortable and rewarding life.
Why should we begrudge ourselves the same luxuries? Because ol' blighty was once great?
What of those families of yesteryear who moved to Australia, New Zealand or Canada? We all know people who did. Are they wrong for moving while the country was good, or right for moving when the country was good because leaving when things are shit is bad?

I wasn't making an argument against moving, and there are always situations where it is the best decision. I am simply saying the feeling of understanding one's home is this place is not wrong, or pointless. Yes, some people have the spirit of adventure more than others, but it is not good for one to restlessly adventure forever. If given the choice of moving to a new location that is either slightly better or just as good to live in as where they currently are, or staying in that place, do you think many would choose to leave? I doubt it. Here is a passage from Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution:

"You will observe that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance that we have from our forefathers and are to transmit to our posterity—as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, with no reference to any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution preserves its unity in the great diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties from a long line of ancestors.

This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection, or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection and above reflection. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temperament and limited views. People who never look back to their ancestors will not look forward to posterity. Besides, the people of England know well that the idea of inheritance provides a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement, held tight for ever.

By a constitutional policy that follows the pattern of nature, we receive, hold, and transmit (i) our government and our privileges in the same way as we enjoy and transmit (ii) our property and (iii) our lives. The (i) institutions of policy, the (ii) goods of fortune, and (iii) the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a sound correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world and with the kind of existence possessed by a permanent body composed of transitory parts. God’s stupendous wisdom molds together the great mysterious body of the human race is such a way that the whole thing is never at one time old or middle-aged or young, but moves on—unchangeably constant—through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state: in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering to our forefathers in this way and on those principles, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians but by the spirit of philosophical analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our political structure the image of a blood-relationship, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable (and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities) our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

Through the same plan of conforming to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling on the aid of nature’s unerring and powerful instincts to strengthen the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other considerable benefits from seeing our liberties as an inheritance. The spirit of freedom when left to itself inclines to misrule and excess, but when it acts as if in the presence of canonised forefathers it is toned down by an awesome solemnity. This idea of a liberal descent [i.e. the idea that our freedom is something that has come down to us] inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents the upstart insolence that almost inevitably infects and disgraces those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors.

It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age and on account of those from whom they are descended. All your logic-choppers can’t produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, choosing our nature rather than our theories, our hearts rather than our inventions, as the great conservatories and store-houses of our rights and privileges."

 

[Otterly]

None of us begrudge a dirt farmer from india moving to England to work hard, intigrate and settle with his family, knowing he can afford them a better, more comfortable and rewarding life.

There are a billion of them. We cannot accommodate them, no matter how nice and deserving they are. England does not have that carrying capacity.

 

[Alpahrius Omegon]

There are a billion of them. We cannot accommodate them, no matter how nice and deserving they are. England does not have that carrying capacity.

We can take them if they are nice and deserving is the outdated mindset that led to this shitshow. The standards of nice and of deserving have been shifted by those in power to be meaningless.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Nicola Sturgeon CLEARED over SNP finance probe as husband appears in court

Sounds like she's chucked her hubby under the bus to get herself out of hot water, just in time to publish a tell-all biography (presumably for money-laundering purposes).

 

[Otterly]

We can take them if they are nice and deserving

We can take a very small number of them. We cannot take billions, or millions of anyone. If we had half of Norway move here and it was the upstanding law abiding, quiet and decent half, all with decent jobs, it would still overwhelm us.
It’s not all about how deserving people are. There are billions of nice very poor people around the world and they do indeed ‘deserve’ a better life. But we cannot take them all. Nowhere can. What they deserve is a better life by their own countries being better. If we take too many in our home will be overwhelmed. It’s already overwhelmed - the infrastructure is creaking

 

[Goose the Redeemer]

For the time before that, some 300,000+ years, we were nomads.

There is a difference between a nomadic tribe and a rootless cosmopolitan.

 

[Alpahrius Omegon]

Starmer latched on to that support to revive his political fortunes in such an obviously cynical way that it has made people instinctively oppose it just to spite him.

This 100%. Supporting Ukraine is fine but it's clear he's just spouting shit about a peacekeeping force. 10,000 bods? that's an entire division plus whatever logistics they need to supply them. The Army is incapable of deploying a force that size. Not for a month, not for a week, incapable for any length of time. We have two divisions at the moment and they are only useful for admin reasons.
Then there's the issue of equipment or the lack there of. We would seriously struggle to deploy and armoured brigade for any length of time and keep it fed with spare parts ect. Any peacekeeping force in Ukraine would need armour or it's going to get steam rolled by the Russians. Putting the Army into Ukraine at the moment would be a massacre. I'm okay with the idea in concept but only if there was the equipment to do it properly.
Starmer knows this and the grifting cuntbag doesn't care, he only wants to say wonderful shit on the telly without caring that it's impossible to do without putting people in serious danger. Why's it always goddamn Labour pulling this shit. When Blair did it it was at least shooting sand people and farmers, not the Russian Army.

 

[teriyakiburns]

If we had half of Norway move here and it was the upstanding law abiding, quiet and decent half, all with decent jobs, it would still overwhelm us.

Almost exactly the example I've been using with friends and family recently (though I used Sweden, since we know some Swedes through an in-law). It was the first time I got them to understand what a low trust society is and how it can develop even when everyone involved is from a "good" culture, because your internal model of how interactions with others should go is no longer accurate, which generates mistrust and suspicion. It would take generations for Turnips and Bongs to develop an integrated culture and they're culturally very similar. We're being asked to "integrate" millions from fundamentally different cultures over the span of years and then being castigated because we don't immediately accept these vat hordes of "new English" as our neighbours.

Why's it always goddamn Labour pulling this shit. When Blair did it it was at least shooting sand people and farmers, not the Russian Army.

Always seems to happen after spending cuts and draw-downs as well, doesn't it? At least under Blair, the military was still in fairly decent shape, though it shrank over the entire period as cuts came into force. Our foray into the balkans came after cuts. The Falklands came after cuts. The suez crisis came right as cuts were biting. The only conflict we entered in the last 70 years that didn't come after a spending cut was desert storm, where the British Army performed admirably and regularly showed the Americans how it was done. You'd think a lesson would have been learned from that, but if there's one thing you can rely on in this country, it's for the MoD and the General Staff to always be wrong about everything. The moment the lads got home, there were cuts.

 

[isalaide]

When your country is in the economic shit, building lots of military shit that goes BANG is a well established strategy to make the good times roll. I notice the submarine launch today was full of how the Dreadnoughts will bring JOBS and INVESTMENT. Maybe this is the Hail Mary play they have in mind. We also export a lot of things that go BANG which brings in money.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Nicola Sturgeon CLEARED over SNP finance probe as husband appears in court

Sounds like she's chucked her hubby under the bus to get herself out of hot water, just in time to publish a tell-all biography (presumably for money-laundering purposes).

Oh come ON!

 

[GratsTheat783]

The Telegraph has reported Reform is making their staff sign gag orders, is this a normal thing parties do or not? I had to constantly refresh it copy and paste everything because I'm not registering an account there.

Spoiler: Revealed: Reform UK's use of gagging orders

Political Reporter Genevieve Holl-Allen


20 March 2025 2:22pm GMT


Nigel Farage’s party asks local branch officials to sign non-disclosure agreements before taking up their roles

Reform UK forced candidates who stood at the general election to sign gagging orders, The Telegraph can disclose.
The party also asks its local branch officials, including chairmen, secretaries and treasurers, to sign non-disclosure agreements –NDAs – before they can take up their roles.
Even some council candidates for May’s local elections were required to sign gagging orders before they could stand, but Reform sources claim this was done in error.
The practice is unusual – neither the Conservatives, Labour nor the Liberal Democrats use NDAs for branch officials or candidates.
It comes as Reform is engulfed in a civil war, with one of its MPs, Rupert Lowe – now ousted from the party – reported to the police for alleged threats against the party chairman.
Mr Lowe claimed in a letter to Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, that the party was “silencing members on the threat of being removed” for speaking out about him, and that he was removed because he had “dared to ask questions” within the organisation.


Reform is gearing up for the local elections, which will be held on May 1. It is expected to see a surge in support and win control of, or be the largest party on, several councils.
In a copy of the NDA, seen by The Telegraph, branch members are prohibited from divulging private information about the “activities, communication and electoral functions” of the party.
The document terms are drawn up so widely that they could leave individuals open to legal attack for divulging information such as what goes on at private meetings or details of the party leadership.
The NDA said it covered all confidential information relating to “all activities, communication, and electoral functions with the intention of using it primarily for the broad purpose of our political, campaigning and fundraising activities”.
Confidential information included “the business, affairs, customers, clients, suppliers, plans, intentions” of Reform, as well as “any other information that is identified as being of a confidential or proprietary nature”.
The document also stipulates that the signatory could be liable to pay out any costs to Reform if they disclosed information deemed in breach of the agreement.
It includes an indemnity clause, which means that signatories are liable to pay any costs or losses, including as a result of “loss of profit” or “loss of reputation” as well as legal costs, incurred by Reform.
Reform has insisted that the use of NDAs is only to protect “data security” about members and candidates.

Gawain Towler, a former aide to Mr Farage, said that the NDAs were used so that Reform fulfilled its “duty of care to our people”, and said that there was a greater level of “intimidation” facing those who supported it compared to backers of other parties.
All Reform parliamentary candidates who stood in last year’s general election were asked to sign gagging orders before being confirmed as standing.
The NDAs were presented to candidates to sign after they had received GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] training and before they gained access to a site called Nationbuilder, used for campaign materials.
One party source said they understood that people were afraid to speak out about anything they had learned within Reform. Another former Reform source told The Telegraph: “If you speak out, you’re removed”.
Nick Morris, a former council candidate for the Cornwall elections who defected to Reform from the Tories before defecting back, revealed he had had to sign an NDA.
In a statement posted to the Cornwall Conservatives’ website, he said: “When I was asked to sign an NDA, I started to question what I was getting involved in. What are they so afraid of? What are they trying to hide? Having now seen how the party operates firsthand, I can confidently say it is far from a democratic organisation.”

An email sent in January by Helen O’Hare, the regional director for the East Midlands, said: “Anyone wishing to stand for us or volunteer as a branch official will be required to sign the NDA.”
However, Reform officials subsequently told the regional director that this was not the policy for prospective councillors. It is understood they then informed all the party’s regional directors.
A spokesman for the party said they “categorically deny that council candidates are required to sign NDAs to stand for Reform UK”.
A Labour source said: “Didn’t Nigel Farage claim to be a straight-talking bastion of free speech? If that’s all a facade and he’s muzzling his candidates, what else isn’t he telling the public?”
A spokesman for the Conservatives said: “As Rupert Lowe has said, Reform is a protest party without a proper plan. With all these NDAs, what have they got to hide? As we have seen from the ongoing internal warfare, anyone who dares to speak against the leader gets thrown under the bus.”
Mr Lowe accused Mr Farage of acting like the “Messiah” within the party in an interview with the Daily Mail. In the following days, the Great Yarmouth MP had the whip removed.

Reform said that it had suspended Mr Lowe over alleged bullying and verbal threats, which he denies and claims are part of a “witch hunt” against him.
The party also referred him to the police, who are investigating alleged threats of physical violence towards Zia Yusuf, the party’s chairman.
A Reform spokesman said: “Reform UK are committed to the highest standards of data security. Like any professional organisation, we expect those responsible for managing large amounts of member and candidate personal information to keep it secure.”

Source

 

[Kier Starmer]

Sargon said he did not have to sign one for UKIP and I have never heard of it either.

 

[teriyakiburns]

is this a normal thing parties do or not?

Nope. No party has ever done this. The only time an organisation has you sign gag orders is if it's doing shady shit.