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.

View image on Twitter


spread happiness@p4leandp1nk
https://twitter.com/p4leandp1nk/status/1080767496569974785

#VEGANsausageroll thanks Greggs

7
10:07 AM - Jan 3, 2019
See spread happiness's other Tweets
Twitter Ads info and privacy


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."

View image on Twitter


pg often@pgofton
https://twitter.com/pgofton/status/1080772793774624768

The hype got me like #Greggs #Veganuary

42
10:28 AM - Jan 3, 2019
See pg often's other Tweets
Twitter Ads info and privacy


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.

 

[Crunkle]

So, I am now escalating my assessment of civil war in the UK

Can you phrase this message in the context of sandwich nouns please

 

[mindlessobserver]

Can you phrase this message in the context of sandwich nouns please

I assess that within the next 4 years the English will be Sixes and Sevens with the Bobbies and there will be spots of bother in every county that is not immediately London. Now the celts will be tarn faffing for sure roight, wankers all of them. They will say the English deserve it and all such nonsense. So don't expect wales and Scotland to be on your side.

 

[Mister Fister]

I assess that that within the next 4 years the English will be Sixes and Sevens with the Bobbies and there will be spots of bother in every county that is not immediately London. Now the celts will be tarn faffing for sure roight, wankers all of them. They will say the English deserve it and all such nonsense. So don't expect wales and Scotland to be on your side.

Will you delete the jeets?

 

[Illumithotty]

My key point was that Shakespeare was historically something very popular with the working class. And not only in Britain. US pioneers I shit you not, not infrequently had copies of Shakespeare's works and would perform it for each other.

I know American opinions are generally as welcome as taking a shit on the vicar, but I'd like to back up this point. I've got a fondness for cheap westerns and I've felt that the best way to tell someone interested in telling a western story and someone that just slopped cowboys into pulp trash is if there's an opera scene when the cowpokes come to town.

It's criminally understated just how big Shakespeare and dramatic plays were in the formation of the west, and it's part of the overall coarsening that I think has been deliberately pushed onto the lower classes. Sure, there were plenty of handjobs going on at dance halls, but crusty prospectors went there to dance - actually dance, and not just throw it back for a washtub bass line. Plenty of cold beans and creek water, but the variety of canned fruits and vegetables that were a staple of rough camps is broader than a lot of current day markets, and cocktails gained their prominence because rootin' tootin' frontiersmen did not actually like the taste of corn squeezin's and trade whiskey just fine.

Rednecks, chavs, just general purpose shanty irish have been robbed just as surely as if someone cracked their heads and ripped out their pockets in having to settle for only crudity, only coarseness, because betters things are 'too fancy.'

 

[SirCliveSinclairdabbing]

I like Hamlet 2

 

[Snackbarism]

OTOH, can we condemn the town of wolverhampton for what they’ve done turning hobgoblin from a real ale into lager with red dye?

Haven't they already been condemned due to them handing out private hire licences in corn flakes packets so they can drive for Uber and other services in various parts of the country? That's why you see them pretty much everywhere in England, as these taxi badges are given out like candy and are less stringent than their own local authorities.

 

[>IMPLYING]

In large part because I hate the (false) notion that working class people are less cultured or smart.

I completely agree. It's a stereotype, and it's one I think even people in the working class have fallen into believing. It becomes self-fulfilling, as once the working class believe it of themselves, they'll become and encourage the stereotype because they assume it's true. It's like how African Americans will shit on one of their own for "acting white" I.E. dressing properly, culling Ebonics, valuing their education, etc. A classroom of working class kids might take the absolute piss out of the one kid who tries to speak properly, or enjoys reading... ;(

As an aside: people point to Little Britain doing a lot of damage to the perception of the working class, but one of the worst examples of media doing this is that piece of shite, Shameless, which wasn't even endearing in its portrayal. Absolutely caustic.

I think the argument to make regarding the teaching of Shakespeare is that you touched on with Mosley and the stuff I touched on regarding an appreciation for the construction of sentences and the sound of words. A lot of people who represent the Humanities nowadays absolutely contribute to it being shit on value-wise, but English is meant to give people an appreciation for the language they speak and become familiar with the way it works. Skill with English doesn't just come from the number of words you know, but how you use those words as well as how they sound. Gaining a consciousness for the rhythm of language, as a practical skill, helps with communication and coherency, which seem basic on the surface but are universally applicable and are lessons we all abide by even if we're not conscious of it. If you want a taste of how an England without these skills would sound — or its inevitable future if things don't change, and change quick — just phone up any company's tech support line.

Any English teacher not drawing the focus of the pupils to the exactitude of the language and the sound of it, is doing it wrong. The modern focus on imagery is a mistake, and deceives pupils into thinking the extent of how complex diction gets is in painting; oftentimes the idea that things like assonance, parallelism, alliteration, etcetera, are largely confined to poems and are used nowhere else dumbs people down and has them look at texts as a whole rather than the construction of individual sentences.

This was all I could find. If you can link me to a more complete and unedited version, I'd be very interested to hear it.

I made the comment because the version you posted was actually complete. People often post it alongside another speech - the one where he exclaims "England lives!" - and both suffer as a consequence because of how they trim and slice to keep it at a certain length. I appreciate Zoomers Mosley posting but it's just a shame they have to erode a great speech just to make effective propaganda.

 

[Overly Serious]

I like Hamlet 2

But doesn't everybody die at the end of the first one?

 

[SirCliveSinclairdabbing]

But doesn't everybody die at the end of the first one?

That’s why he enlists Einstein and Jesus to build him the time machine, so they can stop all that business with the poison.

 

[Overly Serious]

That’s why he enlists Einstein and Jesus to build him the time machine, so they can stop all that business with the poison.

Yeah, I know. You were supposed to reply: "I have a device" like in the film.

I'm going to go watch Alpha Papa, now.

 

[SirCliveSinclairdabbing]

Rock me rock me
Rock me sexy Jesus

 

[Otterly]

The education system does a great job of sucking the air out of the room with any given subject.

It certainly does. I went to what these days would be called a sink school, and i had some really poor teachers but also some really good ones. I then went to uni, and worked at a uni for a bit and did some teaching myself, only under/postgrads so not school age but I’ve seen the system as it were. I also like others have said saw my peers become teachers and some of them are, frankly, thick as pig shit.
Good teaching makes a massive difference. I still remember some of my teachers, and specific things or concepts they showed us. Others I’ve had were so poor they even started making me go off things I enjoyed. I’m seeing it again now as my kids go through the system - good teaching is precious. Bad is corrosive. And both work within a broken systems.
The state of education across most of the western world is dire, and I can only conclude that’s a feature, not a bug.

 

[Russian Bot #5361]

You can be proud of your country and well-read. You can be able to handle yourself in a fight and know what a iamb is. You don't have to, but there's no reason you can't. But you, you great big snob, seem to think it's one or the other and that educating kids is some kind of brainwashing abuse.

Excellently put, eloquently written, and captivating beyond the usual diatribes posted here. I thoroughly enjoyed reading every paragraph bravo. Posts like this are the reason why I keep coming back to this thread.

I'm not an inverted snob .... I don't think it's one or the other. People are deeper than that but school is supposed to be useful. I've yet to see why a 15 year old studying Shakespeare is useful to any one. It's something that should be an option (like learning German or French is an option) but it shouldn't be the default.

Please accept that you have been superbly trounced in your arguments, as you decided to engage someone in a battle of wits and came unarmed.

 

[Clem Fandango]

Can we please, please update our archaic house buying process? Who does it benefit?? It's sooo slow, and why am I personally couriering around paper copies of documents with "wet signatures" to my conveyancer when you can have multi million pound business deals and employment contracts signed on pdf these days??

 

[Overly Serious]

Please accept that you have been superbly trounced in your arguments, as you decided to engage someone in a battle of wits and came unarmed.

I appreciate the appreciation but the above is not my attitude. Yes, I have some feelings about the value of our literary history and believe it is useful to teach (assuming it is taught well). But I feel "big inverted snob" is more bantery than how the above feels to me.

There are arguments against teaching Shakespeare or other English classics in school, but they're mostly the same arguments that would cut out a lot of mathematics. A lot of science. Ultimately once you start prioritising purely vocational education over generally trying to produce well-rounded human beings with a good basis for further education if they choose, then there's not really a hard stopping point for that principle. I think you end up with a general educational decline in the population and you also start enshrining a two-tier educational system where kids of particular backgrounds are shuffled off to vocational paths because that's what people expect of them. And those vocational paths will be picked for them. I want more for our nation than that.

 

[Russian Bot #5361]

I appreciate the appreciation but the above is not my attitude. Yes, I have some feelings about the value of our literary history and believe it is useful to teach (assuming it is taught well). But I feel "big inverted snob" is more bantery than how the above feels to me.

I was just being a little dramatic for the flair of it. The contrast in quality of the two posts was so stark that I couldn't help but get involved in a little shit flinging.

There are arguments against teaching Shakespeare or other English classics in school, but they're mostly the same arguments that would cut out a lot of mathematics. A lot of science. Ultimately once you start prioritising purely vocational education over generally trying to produce well-rounded human beings with a good basis for further education if they choose, then there's not really a hard stopping point for that principle. I think you end up with a general educational decline in the population and you also start enshrining a two-tier educational system where kids of particular backgrounds are shuffled off to vocational paths because that's what people expect of them. And those vocational paths will be picked for them. I want more for our nation than that.

I absolutely agree with you, I think one aspect that people often miss in regards to education is that it expands your view of what is possible and fundamentally changes your perspective of the world. The knowledge and experience that we carry from school, though for many it is isn't useful is daily life, has a continuing effect throughout our lives, as it has expanded the limits of what is possible. Ideas are the bricks of the tower of knowledge, and without the fundamental cornerstones, the building can't stand properly. People often deride mathematics at school — I was guilty of that myself when I was younger, as I was of the ilk to argue that it would never be useful for me — without realising that something like algebra has an infinite number of applications and can be a useful tool in understanding the world. Without fundamental mathematics you cannot reasonably understand the economy, engineering, statistics, architecture, finance, or the millions of other topics requiring logic. You may be able to replicate, but you won't truly understand it, as you'll be like a monkey copying what you have seen. I think learning and knowledge are an end in of themselves, as all we hope to do as human beings is try to learn and understand as much about the world we live in.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Can we please, please update our archaic house buying process? Who does it benefit?? It's sooo slow, and why am I personally couriering around paper copies of documents with "wet signatures" to my conveyancer when you can have multi million pound business deals and employment contracts signed on pdf these days??

It benefits the entrenched interests: the conveyancers, the solicitors, the agencies, the search carry-outerers (term of art), and of course the tax man. They all get to skim money from the process for doing essentially nothing. They had a purpose in the distant past, when communication was slow and information wasn't easily accessible, but not today. It has become the model for the modern regulatory state; a layer of middle-men, who slow down the process and provide no tangible benefit, but who are considered "productive" because money changes hand.

 

[Chandiler Savant]

Good teaching is a dying art. Most people have that one teacher that changed them for the better, although I don't know how true that is nowadays. Further education seems to be a popular choice because boomers tell their kids that's how to get employed (lol). Imagine how unemployment will build up every year with recent grads who also can't find a job.

 

[Symbol of the Chud]

Here's my solution, we should only exclude Shakespeare from the curriculum if the student is some shade of brown.
It's not like little Mbubu is going to appreciate the most influential writer of all time when he has barely graduated from click click language.
Maybe replace it with, idk, discipline lessons, where they are taught by force to not be rapist thieves. Bring back beatings, it's literally the only language they understand.

 

[Kofi Drinka]

There are arguments against teaching Shakespeare or other English classics in school, but they're mostly the same arguments that would cut out a lot of mathematics. A lot of science. Ultimately once you start prioritising purely vocational education over generally trying to produce well-rounded human beings with a good basis for further education if they choose, then there's not really a hard stopping point for that principle. I think you end up with a general educational decline in the population and you also start enshrining a two-tier educational system where kids of particular backgrounds are shuffled off to vocational paths because that's what people expect of them. And those vocational paths will be picked for them. I want more for our nation than that.

I'm not sure of the value of modern science education either. I assume it's all global warming and girl dick at this point.