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.

 

[ApeBass]

Said like someone who's never lived around the working class. Move to Liverpool, spend a week there and then do a back flip off of St Johns Beacon.

I'm more inclined to believe you've never lived around the working class and don't have any working class friends or family. I'm still not sure whether to rate your bizarre waffle as dumb, lunacy or autistic.
Regardless of your place in British social hierarchy, you're a dumb, autistic, lunatic.

 

[teriyakiburns]

The working class are not a monolith. Treating them as one is how you end up with all the problems we have today.

The class system has been up-ended, and I don't think for the better.

This is why I prefer to call them the media-political class. A lot of them are aristos, or connected to aristos, but just as many are nouveau riche sorts. What they have in common is that they've spent their entire lives soaking in the language of post-nationalism, privilege, and intersectionalism (from even before it was called that) and see the world through a purely technocratic lens; they believe in rigid rules and processes that must be followed, with everything put into neat categories defined within those rules and nothing allowed to exist outside of them. There is no morality or ethical behaviour; there is no good or bad. There is only a person who follows the rules and a person who doesn't. The former gets rewards, the latter gets punishments. If the rules change, then they must be followed to the letter, even if following them appears to be a complete reversal of belief.

Starmer is a perfect example of this way of thinking. He followed the rules, so whatever he did must be correct. People objecting to his policies weren't following the rules, so they had to be punished. The Casey report has changed the rules, so he follows the rules, and since he's always followed the rules, his conscience is clear. Never mind that just a week ago he was calling people who wanted an inquiry racist. The rules say an inquiry is required now, so he's correct to institute one. Anyone criticising him is clearly not following the rules.

 

[A-Logato]

I'm more inclined to believe you've never lived around the working class and don't have any working class friends or family. I'm still not sure whether to rate your bizarre waffle as dumb, lunacy or autistic.

Lived in one of the worst areas of the UK for over 20 years, I believe I've got more then enough experience to comment on my observations.

Though the thread showing that the working class tribalism is still going strong doesn't put much of a smile on my face these days.

 

[ApeBass]

Lived in one of the worst areas of the UK for over 20 years, I believe I've got more then enough experience to comment on my observations.

Though the thread showing that the working class tribalism is still going strong doesn't put much of a smile on my face these days.

Living in one rough community for 20 years clearly hasn't given you any insight into the class system. This might come as a shock to you, but working class people live outside Liverpool, even in nice, leafy, rural areas!
As Teriyaki said, they're not a monolith, and they're not a tribe. Disagreeing with you isn't an indicator of anyone's social class.

 

[A-Logato]

Living in one rough community for 20 years clearly hasn't given you any insight into the class system. This might come as a shock to you, but working class people live outside Liverpool, even in nice, leafy, rural areas!
As Teriyaki said, they're not a monolith, and they're not a tribe. Disagreeing with you isn't an indicator of anyone's social class.

Note that I also made fun of the middle class in the original post but no one has an issue when I do that. Also I mentioned Liverpool as an example, not the sole only example of where working class people in the UK live.

Working class tribalism at it's finest.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

his might come as a shock to you, but working class people live outside Liverpool, even in nice, leafy, rural areas!

They're not working class if they live in a nice, leafy, rural areas. Unless you're defining it in purely financial sense, which is retarded.
The working class and the scumbags that @A-Logato describes are those in squalid, urban council estates that are their own world, with unique problems, outlooks and issues.
Sure, you can have someone earning a living wage living in a leafy, sleepy, countryside town, but they are not the same working class as the tramps on council estates, and to think they are says more about your experience of the lowest of the social ladder than anything else.

 

[Le b0wski]

Can't even have an elephant slide now...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k1djpqyvko

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Can't even have an elephant slide now...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k1djpqyvko

The neighbours sound bitter as fuck. He probably put the elephant there to piss them off.

 

[ApeBass]

They're not working class if they live in a nice, leafy, rural areas. Unless you're defining it in purely financial sense, which is retarded.
The working class and the scumbags that @A-Logato describes are those in squalid, urban council estates that are their own world, with unique problems, outlooks and issues.
Sure, you can have someone earning a living wage living in a leafy, sleepy, countryside town, but they are not the same working class as the tramps on council estates, and to think they are says more about your experience of the lowest of the social ladder than anything else.

So you believe a cleaner living in a council house in a rural village is not working class?
I don't think I'm the one with the "retarded" understanding of British social hierarchy.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

So you believe a cleaner living in a council house in a rural village is not working class?
I don't think I'm the one with the "retarded" understanding of British social hierarchy.

What did I say in my previous post? If you're determining working class solely on what they earn, then obviously, they're the same. However, if you think working class on a council estate in glasgow is the same as a cleaner who lives in little-hampton-on-the-wolds then you're retarded and have no idea about social heirarchy.

 

[ApeBass]

What did I say in my previous post? If you're determining working class solely on what they earn, then obviously, they're the same. However, if you think working class on a council estate in glasgow is the same as a cleaner who lives in little-hampton-on-the-wolds then you're retarded and have no idea about social heirarchy.

I made no mention of what the cleaner earns. A self-employed cleaner can easily earn more than an office administrator where I live. That doesn't imply the cleaner is middle class and the office admin is working class.
You're just proving the point that working class people aren't a monolith.

 

[A-Logato]

I made no mention of what the cleaner earns. A self-employed cleaner can easily earn more than an office administrator where I live. That doesn't imply the cleaner is middle class and the office admin is working class.
You're just proving the point that working class people aren't a monolith.

The percentage of working class people in a rural leafy village in the Cotswolds as an example compared to the numbers you'll find in a council estates across the whole country is not even comparable. Your comparing a tiny number of the working class to the vastly larger majority of them.

So if where I've lived is not representative of the working class then where ever you've lived where they apparently earn more money the admins certainly is not at all representative of the rest of country.

 

[ApeBass]

The percentage of working class people in a rural leafy village in the Cotswolds as an example compared to the numbers you'll find in a council estates across the whole country is not even comparable. Your comparing a tiny number of the working class to the vastly larger majority of them.

So if where I've lived is not representative of the working class then where ever you've lived where they apparently earn more money the admins certainly is not at all representative of the rest of country.

Working class people live in cities, suburban areas, and rural areas. They live on council estates, rent privately, and have mortgages.
They live in the Cotswolds, in Liverpool, in deepest darkest west Wales. Some earn minimum wage, some live off benefits, some earn more than office administrators. They are all still working class.
For the last time, working class people are not a monolith.

 

[>IMPLYING]

The working class are not a monolith. Treating them as one is how you end up with all the problems we have today.

I think there's a factor of age and region involved that adds further complexity to it. To enter the middle class the household income apparently has to be over earning over £34k a year... Nope! I don't know anybody personally who does either.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

I think there's a factor of age and region involved that adds further complexity to it. To enter the middle class the household income apparently has to be over earning over £34k a year... Nope! I don't know anybody personally who does either.

Huh, I'm middle class. Wild stuff. £34K a year is fuck all, insane that that's considered middle class. That's literally just two people who are employed.

 

[Kier Starmer]

Poor bros rise up, but seriously, this civil war is going to be great. If it gets bad, we can recreate Shaun of the Dead, replacing the zombies with jeets.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

I made no mention of what the cleaner earns. A self-employed cleaner can easily earn more than an office administrator where I live. That doesn't imply the cleaner is middle class and the office admin is working class.
You're just proving the point that working class people aren't a monolith.

What is working class to you? Because your definition is all over the place. Do you think that working class is someone who runs their own business and lives in a leafy village?

Huh, I'm middle class. Wild stuff. £34K a year is fuck all, insane that that's considered middle class. That's literally just two people who are employed.

That's middle class definition in the same way the vax was safe and effective, in the same way that protests were fiery but mostly peaceful, that concerns over immigration is far-right terrorism, in the same way that men can be women...

 

[ApeBass]

What is working class to you? Because your definition is all over the place. Do you think that working class is someone who runs their own business and lives in a leafy village?

You honestly believe no working class people exist outside of cities? Everyone who is self-employed, even for cash-in-hand work, is middle class? Come on.

The working class are the social group consisting primarily of people who are employed in unskilled or semi-skilled manual or industrial work. Education and qualification levels are another factor to consider, but location is not.

 

[teriyakiburns]

No enter the middle class the household income apparently has to be over earning over £34k a year...

That's median wage, not middle class. A middle class income is variable depending on location. It's hard to define these days, because class used to be a primarily social status rather than a purely economic one. You had blue and white collar workers (physical and clerical), who were both workers, with different social status and similar economic status. The "middle class" was something that only emerged within the last couple of hundred years, as a group of people who weren't workers and weren't clergy or clerical workers, but also weren't the landed gentry. The middle class were - and still are - typically very wealthy. Far wealthier than the definitions popularly used today.

I honestly believe there's been a strong push to break the identity of the workers from multiple directions, for likely mutually opposing reasons that nevertheless end up at the same end state, with half the working class attempting to identify as "middle class" out of shame or ambition, or pride, or just because that's what they've been told to do by the media.

 

[>IMPLYING]

People in this thread who grew up and lived in the dingiest, rundown areas of the country and were thus also exposed to the worst dregs their country offered know how deep into shit some people can sink. "Working class" is the term they use but I think it's too broad a categorisation to include people earning less than 34k but also people who are content to a rather parasitic lifestyle. I hate to use Marx for this but he was a rather affluent fellow (son of industrialists) so when he got rather heated over the fact a majority of voting-age men in France (7 million out of 9 million - 500k no votes) decided to give Napoléon the 3rd more power, he finally gave a name to a vague class of people he only alluded to in his manifesto:

“The ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society... may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

He called such people the Lumpenproletariat, and elaborated on it subsequently:

“Alongside decayed roués with questionable means of subsistence and of questionable origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars—in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French term ‘la bohème’...”

Underclass will also do, or maybe we can invent a new term. The Subterranean class, maybe? Or the Buried class, because the government would rather just forget about them than deal with? But I digress.

I had an experience semi-recently visiting a nearby borough that was at the butt of jokes for years in my circle of friends (because one of them lived there) and I thought his tales about how shit it was was hyberbole. It's given me somewhat of an understanding to those I originally perceived to be larping or inconsolably black pilled. I wish I could share the area this was so you can see for yourself on google maps or something but I don't even want to allude vaguely to my area.

Oh I went [his area] last week. Insisted upon by [person 1] and [person 2]. Passed by the Oodles you order from. Went into a shopping centre-like place similar to [my area].
I saw two shoplifters in B&Ms
A ton more niqabs about than I saw in [my area], an unusual number of who were in Primark. Do they care what they have on under there? I guess they do. Worst McDonalds I ever had (didn't eat the awful fries, indulged on a full fat coke instead) — I'm guessing in-store food got shitter because they need to make sure the higher quality food is what's sent out on delivery, as there was 5 guys sitting out front on phones with bikes and deliveroo/uber bags on the back.

Thought you were exaggerating about [his area].

Nah, you guys have been living in paradise. These are the frontlines

It's alright [friend], I get it now.

I know I went to a McDonalds and not a Greggs but there wasn't one.

At bare minimum, I've seen how shit and squalid people can have it, and how that contributes to their mindset. No Fedposter, he's not a plod. Trust.

Regarding class, I think the upper classes who isolate themselves from the classes below tend to be the worst for leadership since that isolation remains with them even in government, putting far too much distance between themselves and the electorate to know what they truly want. For example, Margaret Thatcher had more exposure to people outside her social class in her youth than Starmer did.

Keir:

Thatcher:

Maybe it's not a class thing at all and everyone born South of Cambridge is just a cunt?