UK British News Megathread - aka CWCissey's news thread

https://news.sky.com/story/row-over-new-greggs-vegan-sausage-rolls-heats-up-11597679 (https://archive.ph/5Ba6o)

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.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

Skins had a girl (Sketch?) who was completely NUTS and obsessed with the blonde gay guy (max?) to the point she dressed up like a boy to try get with him. This was 2007 and everyone knew she was an insane stalker. Funny how things have changed

Blackadder had...Bob. Who was called...Bob because Rowan Atkinson struggled to say his B's and P's due to a speech impediment. So the in joke was to call her...Bob, which is why he has to pause before saying...Bob, as he mentally prepares the pronunciation before saying...Bob, adding to the joke.

Bob wasn't insane though, so even back then the propaganda was funnier.

 

[Overdrive]

Blackadder had...Bob. Who was called...Bob because Rowan Atkinson struggled to say his B's and P's due to a speech impediment. So the in joke was to call her...Bob, which is why he has to pause before saying...Bob, as he mentally prepares the pronunciation before saying...Bob, adding to the joke.

Bob wasn't insane though, so even back then the propaganda was funnier.

Bob... was a women pretending to be a man to get to do men things while still being a woman, not a woman who thought she was a man. The joke being that Black Adder thought he was turning into a poofter by falling for "him" and then being relieved when it turned out Bob was actually a woman. Nowhere near the type of propaganda TV has been since the mid-2000s.

 

[femboy fart huffer]

The clinical trial for puberty blockers has been delayed.

Yea so we have overwhelming evidence that these things deserve to be banned for anything other than precocious puberty (what they are actually made for). So we decided to wait a couple more weeks before mutilating a couple more hundred kids instead of doing it tomorrow. The fucking Sultans knew what would happen if you fucked with someone's puberty and that was hundreds of years ago, maybe the Greeks too thousands of years ago but I'm not a ball expert in that way.

There was a march for remigration in Manchester that flew under the radar somehow.

The sheer fucking density of BLOKES in these videos can only be matched by the density of paedophiles in a mosque. God nothing makes me feel more patriotic than a fat bald fuck waddling around like he's trying to find the toilet after the 10th pint. Tell me that the second last video doesn't sound like kier starmerss a faggot instead of wanker the first time.

A few scuffles were had.

A BROWN GUY STARTED SHIT AND GOT ARRESTED????????????????????????????
Fucking hell maybe everything will be ok.

 

[GoodWinSon]

Regional parliaments were proposed in the late 90s, as part of the integration of the UK into the European plan for the regions. It's where our geographical regions (the NUTS/ITL level 1 statistical regions) were defined as well. The problem was, they were intended to break up the country into arbitrary pieces, organised purely around economic roles rather than cultural or social connections, and to create "new" geographically-bound identies with no loyalty to the nation.

Blair was an evil man who wanted to utterly deracinate us and turn us compliant economic cogs in a globalist machine. He may have succeeded.

That's a bizarre proposal. Say what you will about Spain and Germany, but their federal states are based on distinct historical regions. Even the Roman's were delineating provinces via historical precedence back in the 1st century. Making a nonsense sub-national entity is something the USSR would do.

Bugger federalisation, let's return to the historic counties. The Local Government Act 1972 was an act of vandalism whitewashed with Progress!

Should Oxford and Cambridge Universities should also have their own MPs again?

 

[Geoff Capes Vapes Apes]

That's a bizarre proposal. Say what you will about Spain and Germany, but their federal states are based on distinct historical regions. Even the Roman's were delineating provinces via historical precedence back in the 1st century. Making a nonsense sub-national entity is something the USSR would do.

Should Oxford and Cambridge Universities should also have their own MPs again?

As long as we are going to roll them back to their pre-72 demographics first, I wouldn't be against it

 

[teriyakiburns]

That's a bizarre proposal. Say what you will about Spain and Germany, but their federal states are based on distinct historical regions. Even the Roman's were delineating provinces via historical precedence back in the 1st century. Making a nonsense sub-national entity is something the USSR would do.

It was an EU-originated plan, with most of the regional layout being negotiated at the EU level, based on input from national interests. The idea was to create a uniform collection of similarly-sized administrative regions across the entire EU, each with its own representative body. For places like Germany that already have that scale and level of federalisation, little would actually change, but other countries that operated on smaller divisions had to group them up, like Romania, which made its regions by drawing lines around roughly equal-sized groups of its county-equivalents and declaring each to be a thing. The regions all have their own "parliament" of one sort or another, though most are appointed rather than elected and currently don't serve much purpose outside of applying for and distributing EU development funds (which are managed at this regional level rather than at the level of member state governments). The long-term plan was for them all to be democratically elected bodies with the same level of authority as German federal republics, obviating the need for national governments entirely.

 

[Heinrich Maneuver]

Yesterday, Lowe posted this tweet which promised to scrap the interest on student loans for British students.

I look now at the cards our country has dealt young British men and women? It’s a proper miserable deal, isn’t it?
Student loans, for example. It is a suffocating graduate debt. NINE percent, over a very low threshold. That’s just brutal. Any real chance of saving, gone. NINE grand a year to even go to university. We break their backs before they even start working.
Restore Britain would scrap interest on student loans altogether - funded by removing eligibility to foreign nationals who in the many, many thousands abscond and fail to pay a penny back.

Reasonable, imho, as the interest rates on student loans are downright appalling, your feelings about mickey mouse degrees aside, as long as you are paying off your loan you should not see it constantly increasing.
Anyway, the Conservatives then pledged to abolish the ‘unfair’ additional interest on student loans. Rattled!

Kemi Badenoch has announced she would scrap supplementary interest on Plan 2 student loans, which students who attended university between 2012 and 2023 took out, saying they “increasingly feel like a scam”.
The loans have been criticised for the interest rate of up to 3 per cent that is imposed in addition to inflation, and has been blamed for leaving two-thirds of graduates unable to pay off their balance.
Although the loans are written off after 30 years, their structure means that graduates must earn at least £66,000 just to keep up with interest payments and often pay back far more than they borrowed over the course of their career.
The Conservatives have pledged to abolish real interest on Plan 2 loans and cap the interest rate at the RPI rate of inflation, which is currently 3.2 per cent.

Writing for The Telegraph, the Tory party leader blamed Britain’s “low growth, high immigration” economy on the “Blairite settlement” that pushed too many people to go to university.
“I am horrified at what graduates today are dealing with, and this is one of the reasons millions of young people feel they’ve been stitched up,” she said.
“Plan 2 student loans, the system most people who started university from 2012 to 2023 are on, increasingly feel like a scam.”
She added that the New Labour government had hit its target of 50 per cent of young people going to university by “creating loads of crap courses”, and the “Oxbridge-educated political class was too embarrassed to say no for fear of looking like hypocrites”.
“Conservatives are the only party trying to help young people, whether by abolishing stamp duty or with our New Deal for young people,” she said.

 

[femboy fart huffer]

Anyway, the Conservatives then pledged

Can Lowe pledge to only appoint people who don't rape kids and have the ability to shit in a toilet just to see what would happen

 

[the printer is outo fink]

Soaps are a completely retarded way to push an idea towards the plebs, especially when viewing figures are plummetting because Granny's are dying off leaving nobody watching Hollyoaks or Emmerdale or Corrie or Eastenders and kids growing up now are casually aware that it's a comfort show for retards.

They're losing their audience and influence now, but I guarantee you that Hayley on Coronation Street was at least 70% responsible for how many people spent decades considering transwomen to be poor gentle unfortunates.

 

[Clem Fandango]

Reasonable, imho, as the interest rates on student loans are downright appalling, your feelings about mickey mouse degrees aside, as long as you are paying off your loan you should not see it constantly increasing.

My first year out of uni I remember actually calling up the Student Loans Company in confusion and saying "There's been some mistake, I've been paying this off and the statement says it's gone up from nine thousand to ten thousand". Pretty embarrassing when they said yeah retard it's called interest.

But at least that was ten grand for a four year course. I can't imagine what kind of figures kids these days are dealing with.

Personally I do an anti-Blair. Where he said it should be 50% of school leavers going to uni, I'd say it should be something like 10%, and free? Unfortunately thst probably wouldn't work since modern unis are just money making machines, they'd make up the difference by aggressively courting overseas students.

 

[HairyBadger]

One final message from me, before my inevitable ban and account deletion.

Made in Wales, you will be missed. While we have never directly interacted we hold similar points of view. Sometimes I dont agree with you. Tuff-shit.

I hope you hang around in some form, your daily UK news updates are just scary in what you find.

If not, then fair weather my friend, may the wind have your back.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

kids these days are dealing with.

£121'456. I don't pay enough to match the interest, and I don't ever expect to pay it off. It's just effectively a new tax for me. My parents got their degrees for free. Pain. Paaaiiiinnnnn.
EDIT: I did a Masters though, and then a funded PhD, so I had extra loans, and a period of no work which could be used to pay it off before I even got out of education.

 

[Clem Fandango]

£121'456. I don't pay enough to match the interest, and I don't ever expect to pay it off. It's just effectively a new tax for me. My parents got their degrees for free. Pain. Paaaiiiinnnnn.

Ho-Lee-fuck. That's absolutely crazy. Those are numbers we used to laugh at yanks for paying in their unis. How did this happen so fast?? I went to uni in the early 2000s, and I was resentful that people ten years older than me got free degrees in the 90s. But jesus christ it's gone off a cliff since then. I'm counting my blessings.

Eta:

I just had this weird feeling that I've finally "become the boomer".

 

[Chunky Salsa]

Ho-Lee-fuck. That's absolutely crazy. Those are numbers we used to laugh at yanks for paying in their unis. How did this happen so fast?? I went to uni in the early 2000s, and I was resentful that people ten years older than me got free degrees in the 90s. But jesus christ it's gone off a cliff since then. I'm counting my blessings.

Because "It's not actually a loan haha you won't even notice it, really you should take the most you can get because it's not even really a loan." was actual advice all teachers were told to give to their students about university. Also I might just fuck off to the US and never pay it lmao. It's a financial timebomb as well because the government lists the debt as a technical asset that is maturing rather than a mountain of debt that will never be paid off and will eventually explode, taking down the economy with it. In 40 years we'll be seeing articles about how student debt from plan 2 loans is a fiscal wrecking ball that needs to be paid. I'm not even sure who's even making money at this point off of this, because the universities plead poverty, the government is getting nothing back, graduates are on dogshit pay with no progression? The money just sort of catches fire and vanishes up the noses of students and into off licence tills.

 

[2 Faces 2 Colours]

I have not been keeping up with the news this week, but I have heard that @Made In Wales has left Kiwi Farms. I am devastated.

 

[Clem Fandango]

Because "It's not actually a loan haha you won't even notice it, really you should take the most you can get because it's not even really a loan." was actual advice all teachers were told to give to their students about university. Also I might just fuck off to the US and never pay it lmao. It's a financial timebomb as well because the government lists the debt as a technical asset that is maturing rather than a mountain of debt that will never be paid off and will eventually explode, taking down the economy with it. In 40 years we'll be seeing articles about how student debt from plan 2 loans is a fiscal wrecking ball that needs to be paid. I'm not even sure who's even making money at this point off of this, because the universities plead poverty, the government is getting nothing back, graduates are on dogshit pay with no progression? The money just sort of catches fire and vanishes up the noses of students and into off licence tills.

You'd like to think that there's some moderate "third way", but yeah even I remember the phrase "It's the best loan you'll ever have" being thrown around. And it seems that it's just perpetuate and expanded until it's clearly irresponsible lending. I find it hard to get mad at any individual student taking out the loan though tbh. There's going to be a reckoning one way or another in about 40 years. And how is that allowed anyway? Just set up a blatant time bomb for a future parliament to deal with?

 

[Chunky Salsa]

You'd like to think that there's some moderate "third way", but yeah even I remember the phrase "It's the best loan you'll ever have" being thrown around. And it seems that it's just perpetuate and expanded until it's clearly irresponsible lending. I find it hard to get mad at any individual student taking out the loan though tbh. There's going to be a reckoning one way or another in about 40 years. And how is that allowed anyway? Just set up a blatant time bomb for a future parliament to deal with?

The losses are baked in, so theoretically it'll be fine. But we've jumped from 50 billion in debt, to nearly 300billion in debt in 5 years. That's a big leap that doesn't show any sign of slowing down.

The moderate third way is to do what my brother is doing, take the minimal needed for the course, go to a nearby university not a redbrick, do a technically skilled course, and get a job all the way throughout. Don't do what I did and go as far away from home as physically possible short of leaving the country lol. EDIT: The issue then of course becomes that as more people have gone to uni, the value of the degree went down, so will he even have a job going to such a shameful institute as *checks notes* Oh, Warwick, ha. Bad example to use, but for a lot of students It'll be a real concern.

 

[Overdrive]

When I went to uni it was £3k a year for tuition fees, my uni even "reduced" the fee by giving us back £1k as a bursary. Of course being students instead of putting that aside to actually pay back the loan amount it all went on booze and such each year. I've ended up paying all my student loans off, but not through trying instead just due to being paid well and the amount of time that's passed now. £121k is crazy tho, happy I just went and got a job after my undergrad lol

 

[EddyRooney]

Because "It's not actually a loan haha you won't even notice it, really you should take the most you can get because it's not even really a loan." was actual advice all teachers were told to give to their students about university. Also I might just fuck off to the US and never pay it lmao. It's a financial timebomb as well because the government lists the debt as a technical asset that is maturing rather than a mountain of debt that will never be paid off and will eventually explode, taking down the economy with it. In 40 years we'll be seeing articles about how student debt from plan 2 loans is a fiscal wrecking ball that needs to be paid. I'm not even sure who's even making money at this point off of this, because the universities plead poverty, the government is getting nothing back, graduates are on dogshit pay with no progression? The money just sort of catches fire and vanishes up the noses of students and into off licence tills.

It's a good job I'm not PM Chunky, if I was in charge you'd be heading to the slammer if you didn't pay it back.
I don't see how taking out a loan with no intention of paying it back isn't thieving.
If you are of a supposed graduate calibre ( phd in your case - congrats, better than me ) I don't believe that you can't understand the power of compound interest. So by extension you would understand an interest rate and what that would mean regards repayments. God forbid you ever get a fucking mortgage. So the " I was duped into this by the nasty mean government and nobody told me" is an absolute load of bullshit as an excuse. You signed the deal, take responsibility for it.

There were idiots taking out student loans when I was at university thinking they were oh so clever and they couldn't understand why I was laughing at them. I worked jobs, played ( and got paid ) for rugby, scrimped and saved. But no loans. The only loan I wanted ( and I didn't really want that, but wanted home ownership ) was a mortgage, I knew student debt would impede this. Try not paying a mortgage back and see what will happen. There should be consequences for lack of actions. By not paying back a government loan, way I see it is you're stealing from all of us that pay tax. Makes you on a par with the eternal dole bludging ponces or the permanent PIP fakers.

I don't agree that students should be paying back at 9%, but I absolutely believe that it should be set at inflation. It shouldn't cost the tax payer to put people through university. But the govenment shouldn't exploit students either. People simply shouldn't have the option to accumulate massive loan debt to pursue Mickey Mouse courses that won't lead to a decent wage. Call me crazy, but at 18, I took a very serious cost / benefit analysis with my parents about whether it would be worth me going for 3 years. I appreciate it would seem I'm not ordinary, but I don't see why people who don't have the sense to do this should legitimately be able to use this supposed ignorance as an excuse. Surely if you are truly of graduate calibre, you would consider these things ?

Courses shouldn't be Blairite rubbish anyway. The question should be "what are you reading ?" - i.e. an academic study. You don't read nail technology or all these other bullshit courses that all the chavs take. University intake should be based on meritocracy again - purely for the top 10% to do useful courses that will lead to careers in the public interest. If you want to read classics - let Mummy and Daddy pay for it. Nail technology or Simpsons studies or whatever just simply shouldn't exist. A large proportion should be sent to technical colleges and apprenticeships - these lead to good careers and shouldn't result in the students saddling debt.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

It's a good job I'm not PM Chunky, if I was in charge you'd be heading to the slammer if you didn't pay it back.
I don't see how taking out a loan with no intention of paying it back isn't thieving.

When it's not a loan according to the government that issues it. I'm just avoiding taxes that I don't need to be paying is all.

If you are of a supposed graduate calibre ( phd in your case - congrats, better than me ) I don't believe that you can't understand the power of compound interest. So by extension you would understand an interest rate and what that would mean regards repayments. God forbid you ever get a fucking mortgage. So the " I was duped into this by the nasty mean government and nobody told me" is an absolute load of bullshit as an excuse. You signed the deal, take responsibility for it.

Oh absolutely, I'll clear mine fairly quickly once I bother to actually bite the bullet and just overpay. I plead poverty, but I'm just naturally whingey and irritable about any money leaving my account. I'd make Scrooge seem money incontinent. Mine spiked because I did my Masters, then got paid to do a PhD. If I had just gone to work straight out of university it'd be much lower. A better pathway would have been go into my current job at a lower level, have them pay for my PhD, and I would have been earning enough to start knocking it on the head straight out. But ho-hum, profs ballwashing you because they ALSO want money from the infinite magic funding tree feels great.

There were idiots taking out student loans when I was at university thinking they were oh so clever and they couldn't understand why I was laughing at them. I worked jobs, played ( and got paid ) for rugby, scrimped and saved. But no loans. The only loan I wanted ( and I didn't really want that, but wanted home ownership ) was a mortgage, I knew student debt would impede this. Try not paying a mortgage back and see what will happen. There should be consequences for lack of actions. By not paying back a government loan, way I see it is you're stealing from all of us that pay tax. Makes you on a par with the eternal dole bludging ponces or the permanent PIP fakers.

I pay more taxes to effectively cover the cost of every previous generation that got it for free; who also all paid less than I do for everything, across the board with no sign of that changing. I feel less than zero sympathy with any part of this to be perfectly honest. If we're talking consequences for lack of action then I think everyone over 45 should have their homes repossessed for fucking up the economy before I was even a fetus. Do that then I'll feel sympathy for teeth gnashing over gaming a shit system.

I don't agree that students should be paying back at 9%, but I absolutely believe that it should be set at inflation. It shouldn't cost the tax payer to put people through university. But the govenment shouldn't exploit students either. People simply shouldn't have the option to accumulate massive loan debt to pursue Mickey Mouse courses that won't lead to a decent wage. Call me crazy, but at 18, I took a very serious cost / benefit analysis with my parents about whether it would be worth me going for 3 years. I appreciate it would seem I'm not ordinary, but I don't see why people who don't have the sense to do this should legitimately be able to use this supposed ignorance as an excuse. Surely if you are truly of graduate calibre, you would consider these things ?

I'm 50/50 on the 'cost the taxpayer to do degrees' things. Because we want and need an educated class of specialists, but we don't want to pay for it. I increasingly run into the issue that we as a country are not competitive employers; and we're not particularly attractive for training. Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand are better than us at both of those things. If the US didn't have the visa issue, our country wouldn't have any graduates, they'd vanish into the wind the second they got their degrees. We're trying to fill for MOD roles that are very important, and despite having tonnes and tonnes of engineering and science grads they will - during interviews - tell us they'd like to do it, for 20K more, we say no and they say 'okay' and go somewhere else that pays that. The position remains unfilled, or filled with sub par staff and timelines stretch and things become a mess. When universities were state funded, we put out graduates that were worth a damn, and they produced good solid work; and weren't trying to jew every penny out of their degree like blood from a stone. I'd quite like that to be the case now.

Courses shouldn't be Blairite rubbish anyway. The question should be "what are you reading ?" - i.e. an academic study. You don't read nail technology or all these other bullshit courses that all the chavs take. University intake should be based on meritocracy again - purely for the top 10% to do useful courses that will lead to careers in the public interest. If you want to read classics - let Mummy and Daddy pay for it. Nail technology or Simpsons studies or whatever just simply shouldn't exist. A large proportion should be sent to technical colleges and apprenticeships - these lead to good careers and shouldn't result in the students saddling debt.

Nail technology is a bad one to use, because the actual goal of that course is to give people skills to set up their own small business as beauticians. I do think we absolutely should have more apprenticeships; but...no one's turning up for them. I have a friend that runs a trade business and he is dying for lack of apprentices; and so are the people he networks and contracts with. They apply, they get there, they go 'This pay is dosghit' and then they leave. I'm sure you'll say "Ah but then the ones that really want it will stay." No, they demonstrably will not, have not and that doesn't show signs of changing. We have a dearth of people going into trades because the conditions suck, the pay isn't even really that good anymore, and the pathway to it is seen as a joke, and financially is a joke. The thing of 'do it here, fuck off to Australia' is basically now just 'fuck off to Australia'. I'm sure some of the lads are just lazy, but it literally cannot be all of them.

We have to at some point accept that if we want people that are technically competent, we are going to have to bite the bullet and in some way cover the cost. Otherwise why would they A) Do the training and B) Stay afterwards? If you tell them 'pay for it yourself, then go get a good job' they look at the UK market and go 'okay' then leave. What you're left with, is the dregs. Do you want the lowest bidder building your missiles, your hospitals and your nukes? I don't.

I realise that most of the above is my incoherently screaming so tl;dr: Yeah no I agree pretty much. Increase the value of the degree itself, close off the pathway to silly amounts of debt, and try and get more people into technical pathways. I'm just crying sour grapes because it's that time of the month where I go over my financials and seethe at every single penny taken out of my claw like reptilian hands. EDIT: I was getting red face over my car insurance which is less than £50 a month and wishing for a world where I can just not pay it lmao. I really am a miser.