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.

View image on Twitter


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.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Andrew Bridgen MP just soft confirmed he and Lowe are intending to collaborate on a political party 'if Musk will back it'.

They should approach the others Farage has driven out. Richard North should be at the top of that list. He was a very early victim of Farage's egomania.

 

[Smyrna]

The only issue with those like Richard North (and his brother(?) Pete) is that after their experiences they are very distrusting of anyone who didn't suss Farage out ASAP, which will include Rupert and most anyone who joined the Brexit Party or Reform. Pete is openly a member of Homeland, and lots of others who were burned by Farage are as well. I don't think they will attack a Lowe party so long as it doesn't punch right like Farage does, but they won't join or work with it either.

 

[Goose the Redeemer]

I had to constantly refresh it copy and paste everything because I'm not registering an account there.

If you can't, or don't want to, use uBlock Origin then archive.today is the next best thing, just add "archive.today/" to the front of the URL (e.g. archive.today/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/03/20/revealed-reform-uk-widespread-use-gagging-orders/)

I wonder how many archives are created simply to bypass these paywalls.

(L|A)

 

[The Gene Genie]

Andrew Bridgen MP just soft confirmed he and Lowe are intending to collaborate on a political party 'if Musk will back it'. [Source]
View attachment 7115414

Time has come, I'm making a Happenings thread, please feel free to DM me with anything you think should be included. The original zoomer fan video made for Rupert Lowe is top priority if anyone has it.

They should just join Homeland.

 

[Kier Starmer]

Honestly, Homeland should just join them, Lowe is a powerhouse, and if everything goes in his favor the trappings to be a great leader. I can see Musk doing it too he hates Starmer because I think as a South African he understands what people like Starmer want to do, use the whites for wealth generation, and then all the Muzzies are off all day raping.

Even though it is the Express

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2029788/crime-madness-labour-sentencing-Gauke

Looks like Starmer is terrified of the good weather coming. Also, the stories of rebellion keep coming and the Council tax hikes are not going to help. I should not joke about abuse but Victoria Starmer must be parkouring like fuck around Number 10 dodging her abusive "husband".

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

I should not joke about abuse but Victoria Starmer must be parkouring like fuck around Number 10 dodging her abusive "husband".

Please, he's too busy slapping around those who voted him in to harm his own family.

I said back when the election happened that Labour were going to treat the UK like an abuser who just got their victim back. As it happens I massively undersold the degree to which they would do so but I stand by my assessment of the Tories as a neglectful parent and Labour as an abusive one.

 

[A-Logato]

I stand by my assessment of the Tories as a neglectful parent and Labour as an abusive one.

Tories are death by one thousand cuts, Labour is death by shotgun blast to the face.

 

[Alpahrius Omegon]

Tories as a neglectful parent and Labour as an abusive one.

Then the SNP and Greens are the new age hippy parents that make their kids go vegan and troon out.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Then the SNP and Greens are the new age hippy parents that make their kids go vegan and troon out.

Worrying that that is the benevolent version when the former it's looking like they literally stole from their voters and the latter signed them up to a death cult.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

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.

Not millions, or even hundreds of thousands. A thousand a year, maybe.

 

[Trig.Point]

Bad Lads Army ages like a fine wine every year.
The main problem is Capita and how fucked recruitment is. People act like basic training is like full metal jacket where you get screamed at all the time. Directing Staff do genuinely give a shit about the recruits under their care and unironically I think that the army can provide what a lot of lads are missing in this day and age, self discipline and camaraderie. They might only do four years but it can set them in good stead for the rest of their life.

That's a very generous deptiction of the typical DS. Who for phase 1 recruits is usually some Cpl whose unit could do without them. With the infantry they're often not even Cpl, they're L/Cpl who get a temporary 2nd tape.

Phase 1 training in the British Army is different from other militaries because they try to jam so much into it. Every hour of every day is accounted for, and their simply isn't time to have some moving moment where a shitbag learns the error of his ways. If the troop staff think a recruit isn't worth the time and isn't going to pass out, he'll be encouraged to 'leave'. Not many years ago that encouragement could take the form of a section commander taking a shit in a recruits locker.

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

Sometimes I forget just how little contact most British people have with the military. The British Army is not regarded as the best in the world, we're not envied, and we don't show how it's done. The American attitude to the British Army particularly after the 2012 taliban raid on Bastion ranged hit levels of outright contempt.

The British Army is the source of the majority of its own problems not starmer, not the Labour party. It's the Army that unique among western countries takes non degree holders usually from a military family or certain private school, and then commissions them after a 44 week course.

I've encountered Army officers that were sub 80 IQ characters from a 70's sitcom. The government might as well set fire to additional military spending as give it to the army.

The RAF and RN aren't much better but because their officers have technical roles it's harded for them to bluff their way through their miltiary education.

 

[Alpahrius Omegon]

I've encountered Army officers that were sub 80 IQ characters from a 70's sitcom.

Bet they still had degrees though, a degree doesn't make you smart.

 

[BongoMongo]

Every single one of our ruling class should be made to live in Grimsby on benefits in the winter in a flat with junkie scum below and migrants above.

I have long believed that this country would be a far better place if, in order to run for MP, it should be a hard requirement that you must have lived in the constituency you're running for,earning NMW, for at least 12 months before being considered.

This is what they consider the minimum level of an acceptable income. Let them see how a gigantic chunk of the population exists.

 

[Montalbane]

Any news on the Heathrow fire?

 

[Smyrna]

Any news on the Heathrow fire?

Probably not deliberate, although the usual suspects will seize on any angle by which they can blame Putin (the Mail is already at it).

The next one will be deliberate.

 

[FedPostalService]

Probably not deliberate, although the usual suspects will seize on any angle by which they can blame Putin (the Mail is already at it).

The next one will be deliberate.

Anti-Terrorism police leading the investigation. No foul play found yet but expect this to me memory holed as a mental illness issue.

 

[The Gene Genie]

I've encountered Army officers that were sub 80 IQ characters from a 70's sitcom.

This is the case with every military’s officers, no matter the branch or nation. Do you really think that officers who went to some university and had some military training courses mixed in with their weekend benders and normal classes are somehow more well-adjusted, more intelligent? Even military academy officers are hardly prime specimens.

 

[Alpahrius Omegon]

This is the case with every military’s officers, no matter the branch or nation. Do you really think that officers who went to some university and had some military training courses mixed in with their weekend benders and normal classes are somehow more well-adjusted, more intelligent? Even military academy officers are hardly prime specimens.

Word of warning.
It's not worth arguing with people like Trig, they are fueled by nothing but hate and bitterness. Probably from being padre's driver on Herrick. It's easier to just let them tire themselves out from sperging than argue with them.
Most of what he's saying is outdated anyway. The Army is for better or for worse far different after the Deep Cut inquiry came out. You can't just shit into recruits lockers anymore and training centres are inspected by Ofsted to make sure that fucked up shit isn't happening.
RMAS is cranking out shit officers precisely because they have too many degree holders. Unis are borderline indoctrination centres these days and all they do is take that indoctrination and bring it to the Army with them. Most of them are great at peacetime officering like writing SJARs but I'm hesitant to say how they'd perform on a deployment. Not to mention that the Army is hemorrhaging junior officers and struggling to fill Coy 2IC PIDs from in battalion, I heard like two out of twelve officers remaining from two intakes or somthing equally ridiculous. Wouldn't bet my eyebrows on how genuine that fact is though but it gives you an idea.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Manchester's tent city is getting worse

https://archive.ph/kClGx

Manchester's homeless camp is growing because "activists are buying tents", according to council leaders.
The city centre has seen a number of encampments over the last year, most notably in St Peter's Square until a court order obtained by Manchester City Council saw those staying there effectively evicted on 26 February.
But within hours, new camps were established on Lower Mosley Street, next to the Midland Hotel, and on Albert Square.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said he was listening to the calls of protestors but suggested the city was "doing more here than anywhere else to support people facing homelessness".
"A bed every night is our flagship scheme," he told BBC Radio Manchester.
"It's going up to 600 places from the start of April, and I think because of what we do more people come here looking for support.
"It doesn't mean though, to me, that we should then stop doing what we do."

​

Some 35 tents were counted in Albert Square on 7 March but just 12 days later that figure was around 42.
Residents have tended to be "refugees with legal right to be here'", according to deputy council leader Joanna Midgeley, who oversees the authority's homeless response.
Ms Midgeley said "the situation remains challenging" with the camp as she gave an update on action the council was taking to tackle it.
"It's not being helped by activists buying tents and making it bigger," she said.
"This is a national issue that's being played out on the streets of Manchester and across the country."

More than 200 camp residents had been placed into support accommodation by the council, the deputy leader added, and a further 25 "have been voluntarily connected to other local authorities".
The council said it could not use the existing court order to evict the residents of the new camp because it only applied to a "small, defined area" of St Peter's Square.
A spokesperson said previously: "It remains our position that such encampments anywhere in the city are not in anyone's best interests and are not a suitable, safe or sanitary place from which to access the support available to people facing homelessness."

Review of Adolescence from the Spectator Australia, helpful because it points out the people that served as inspiration were not convinced to do so by social media.

https://archive.ph/8VZrH

According to one gushing review, Netflix’s Adolescence is the ‘most brilliant TV drama in years’. And that verdict is at the mild end. Others have called it ‘flawless’ and ‘complete perfection’. The drama has achieved a 100 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the TV and film review website. If you haven’t watched Adolescence yet, you are almost certainly being implored to do so by friends, relatives, or – oh, the irony of it, as will become clear – by online peer pressure.
The four part mini-series, which tells the story of a 13-year-old schoolboy, Jamie Miller, who kills a classmate, certainly deserves many of its accolades. Owen Cooper, a 15-year-old who plays the lead part puts in a tremendous performance – all the more remarkable when you read that each episode was filmed in a single take.
Stephen Graham, who co-wrote the show with Jack Thorne, is thoroughly convincing as the miscreant’s father. The series is directed with great intensity. In an ago when TV schedules scream with more murders than the Lower Bronx in the 1980s, many of them in the artificial and stylised format of a Whodunnit, Adolescence brings a refreshing realism. You really do see it as if you were a fly on a the wall in the midst of a family trauma.

But flawless? When you read those kinds of words you know that reviewers have lost a sense of objectivity. Adolescence is very far from perfect. For one thing there is the gaping gap of the victim’s family. What are they thinking, how are they reacting to this cataclysm? We never find out because we never see them. We do see her best friend, briefly, but she seems mysteriously untraumatised – unless you interpret her impossibly gobby behaviour towards teachers and police officers as a symptom of shock.
Adolescence isn’t just a TV drama; it verges on being a morality play. It strikes so hard at the national moral panic over children, social media and the internet that I fear reviewers are failing to ask the questions which need to be asked about the very straightforward plot: namely, does an otherwise seemingly well-adjusted 13-year-old boy really knife to death a female classmate in cold blood because he has been offended by an emoji suggesting he will never find a girlfriend?
Graham says he was inspired to write the series after a spate of news stories involving teenage boys who had murdered teenage girls. One of these cases would appear to be that of Hassan Sentamu, a 17-year-old who murdered a friend of his ex-girlfriend in Croydon in 2023, for which he was sentenced to life in jail earlier this month. But then he had a long history of violent and threatening behaviour, sparked, it has been suggested, by abusive behaviour towards him while he was growing up in Uganda. At the age of 12, by then living in Britain, he drew a knife in his classroom and threatened to kill himself. Before his crime, his behavioural issues, and autism, had led him to be educated in a special school. His crime does not seem to have a lot do with social media or the internet; rather the trigger for his act appears to have been a group of girls making fun of him and spraying him with water the day beforehand.
Or there was the case of Logan MacPhail, a 16-year-old of low IQ who killed his ex-girlfriend in Northumberland, for which he was jailed for life last November. Again, there does not seem to have been much of an element involving social media; he had, though, fantasised about becoming a sniper while attending Army cadets. The murder was a grubby tale of jealousy and revenge which could have happened in any age.
Children do, of course, sometimes kill classmates without any obvious reason – in the United States it seems to happen far too often. Moreover, it has been going on since well before the internet and smartphones. Adolescence never really gets to the bottom of the deep traumas which turn a teenager into a killer – all that we learn is that, for no great reason, Jamie has severe anger management issues and a problem with girls. The series is constructed very determinedly in a way to make middle-class parents feel guilty about giving their children smartphones and allowing them to chat online in the privacy of their bedrooms, where they are exposed to all kinds of incel conspiracy theories. It was Andrew Tate wot did it, in other words – along with those nasty US tech firms. Indeed, Jack Thorne has this week called for smartphones to be banned for the under 16s.
Adolescence is still a good series, but were I reviewing it for Rotten Tomatoes I am afraid I would be dropping one of those five stars. For me, it becomes just a little too preachy.

 

[Kier Starmer]

The more I hear about this fucking show the more I am convinced with my schitzo theory that it is a glowop based on targeting zoomers and gen alpha to hate themselves more and fuck disgusting half-breeds. The caveat is Parliament is retarded and does not know how TikTok works and how right-wing younger people in Europe are on the rise and getting more vocal.

The funny thing is these politicians talk about watching it with their kids but according to the screen ratings standards, they are participants in the abuse of their children.

In other news, the OBR is having a sealed meeting today with Reeves to talk about growth, it's going to be about recession clearly. Also in a 2000 poll of Labour members, 1 in 4 wanted Starmer gone which is damning. The survey was carried out by Survation

https://labourlist.org/2025/03/cabinet-league-table-labourlist-survation-poll/