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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
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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.
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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.
 
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The response the British public had to COVID is honestly a depressing macrocosm of why this country will never truly up end the system it sees it's self be oppressed by. We had one of, if not the highest vaccination rates globally at something like 80% of the population and some of the most draconian lock downs of any country that wasn't China and they just happily went along with it without a second thought.

I do honestly believe that the government saw just how many people are willing to go along with mass government control and just the sheer amount of shit it's willing to put up with and realised they could get away with almost anything and have unofficial government bodies and NGO's play defence for them if anything does come to bite them in the ass. Southport was an exception but lets be fair, was very centralised to the north of England and they came down extremely hard on. I doubt more and more well see any real rebellion to what's happening to us and that COVID was the very moment they found out just how easy to manipulate the population truly was.

Let it be known that the biggest controversy of lockdown was the fact that some MP's had a party and not the loss of jobs, borderline forced vaccination and masking and all the people who were jailed.
 
They shut all of the pubs, in Britain, the biggest piss-head country in the world, and nobody batted an eye-lid. Before covid, pubs had never been shut, ever, not even 'durin' tha woh' (tm)

This country will comply with anything.

DP:

Kier starmer's communication chief has stepped down.

Mr Doyle joined Sir Keir Starmer's team in the summer of 2021, arguably the lowest point of his leadership, shortly after a humiliating defeat for Labour in a by-election in Hartlepool.

An email from Mr Doyle to colleagues this morning, seen by the BBC, said "it's time to pass the baton on".

He added: "I wanted to let you know that I have informed the prime minister I am standing down as director of communications.

"When I started working for Keir four years ago, not many people though we could win a general election and certainly not in the emphatic way we did.

"That was down to the hard work and determination of so many people and of course Keir's leadership.

"I am incredibly proud of the part I have played in returning our party to government and the change we are already bringing to the country. Now it's time to pass the baton on."
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teriyakiburns said:
This is "jump before he's pushed" territory, isn't it?
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I was thinking more along the lines of "I'm jumping before this arsehole sinks my career and legacy". Both could be true.

The timing is interesting; not close enough to the GE win that he can celebrate a job well done. Far enough into the new government for him to realise what a shit show it is.
 
UselessRubberKeyboard said:
You’re best off assuming that anything and everything you do on your mobile phone can be accessed by thems in the big spiky palace down south - and more importantly, thems in the big steel doughnut out in the arse end of GloucesterWorcesterHerefordshire (that neck of the woods is all the fucking same to me, boring-arsed tracts of fuck all, no wonder they stuck the spooks there). Unless you have something really wild and out there like…I dunno, do they still make YotaPhones? But connecting to any U.K. communication network more than likely means the Big Guys can have a look see. I wouldn’t trust any communication network to be confidential in the U.K., at least not any electronic ones.
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Don't forget that many new cars (made by BMW, Skoda, Audi, Nissan, Volvo and many more) have SIM cards built in so access can be gained to GPS, wi-fi, etc. The data they collect can also be obtained by Law Enforcement in the UK. Lots of hire cars, mostly the more expensive models, are fitted with trackers.

Law Enforcement can request, with a Production Order, details of the data held by the in-car SIM and the hire cars tracking data.
 
>IMPLYING said:
I know I'm naturally the one who has the most optimism as indicated by my posts, so my perception of things might be worthless
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On the contrary, it has great value. Outrage is emotionally rewarding, defeatism excuses inaction and cynicism gets upvotes because it contradicts the propaganda. Three reasons why people can be inclined to a miserable fatalism. Your posts have genuinely made me feel a bit better. And I think optimism is necessary to improve things. It just can't be naive Pollyanna optimism. It needs to be mixed with a little stubborn orneriness, but you can't effect change without it.

And as the theme of much of your posting currently is the ineffectiveness of the govt. to do widescale enforcement you'd reminded me of an old leadership maxim: "Never give an order you can't enforce." Whether you're a teacher, an officer or a dictator it holds true that this is almost always a mistake that weakens your position.

On your worked example of Rotherham, though I would take some issues. Fear of being perceived as racist was a widespread factor across the police force and government officials and it came down from on high to not act on this stuff. In several cases the police actively prevented families from rescuing their kids and even returned underage girls to their abusers. And micro-focusing on that case ignores that it happened in a wider context of many such attitudes. Police officers have testified that they were ordered not to wear riot gear or be armed when facing violent Islamic groups because it created bad optics. An absolutely despicable radio talkshow guy on LBC said that the abused girls were that way because their parents were "drunk in the gutter". I don't really see how the police in those areas couldn't know what was going on as I lived in that region and most people knew. I knew three girls who had been molested by Pakistani gangs just personally. I would pick a different example to illustrate optimism and faith in human nature, if you want my advice.
 
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A-Logato said:
The response the British public had to COVID is honestly a depressing macrocosm of why this country will never truly up end the system it sees it's self be oppressed by. We had one of, if not the highest vaccination rates globally at something like 80% of the population and some of the most draconian lock downs of any country that wasn't China and they just happily went along with it without a second thought.

I do honestly believe that the government saw just how many people are willing to go along with mass government control and just the sheer amount of shit it's willing to put up with and realised they could get away with almost anything and have unofficial government bodies and NGO's play defence for them if anything does come to bite them in the ass. Southport was an exception but lets be fair, was very centralised to the north of England and they came down extremely hard on. I doubt more and more well see any real rebellion to what's happening to us and that COVID was the very moment they found out just how easy to manipulate the population truly was.

Let it be known that the biggest controversy of lockdown was the fact that some MP's had a party and not the loss of jobs, borderline forced vaccination and masking and all the people who were jailed.
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It helps to remember any potential backlash was mitigated by 'bribes'. They spent 70B on paying 80% of the wages for furloughed workers I.E. people forced to remain at home were paid for nothing, which was 12 million people. 28B on the self-employed, and an extra 9B on giving the unemployed even more money. I think people are willing to go along with whatever bullshit the government might want if they give financial incentive and couple it with co-ordinated media campaigns to inspire fear — which was all the rage when Covid first emerged — but if people become generally more disbelieving of what you and media have to say and you don't dangle the carrot of free money in front of them, I don't think people's instincts are naturally compliance, even with Southport in mind. Whilst I could serve an anecdote of violating lockdown rules and gatherings more than a handful of times and not getting caught, plenty of people were caught and fined for violating the rules (no jail time though), and I'm partially convinced based on my experience that this number is probably a lot higher; I just don't think many people were caught. Seeing my grandmother act shocked at Boris and Gove violating the rules on gatherings, knowing full well over the period she still had drinks at the family gatherings every Wednesday (herself, her two daughters, grandson, two friends) was kind of funny. I think the controversy with the MPs might've helped people realise in hindsight how unnecessary it all was which I do think is helping feed into long-term discontentment with the government as a whole.
 
Overly Serious said:
It just can't be naive Pollyanna optimism. It needs to be mixed with a little stubborn orneriness, but you can effect change without it.
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Yeah, I was aware that my post could come off as a little too optimistic, but despite the impression it might give I don't think good fortune will just fall onto our collective laps without some kind of action, and just because you have hope doesn't mean you should let it numb you to the actions of the government. I get all of that, truly. I just think a little optimism is necessary to some extent if only because too much fatalism/cynicism puts you into the miserable corner of unwilling yet accepting of things, leading to inaction and the idea that nothing can be done about the current state of affairs, when I personally think the outlook could be considered bright when you consider all the factors (which I always try to list off in my posts). By painting the government as an obvious evil in your mind, seeing a lack of immediate action from the rest of the country, it breeds the mindset that nobody is actually angry or prepared to do anything about it; so why bother? You are enlightened, everybody else is in the dark, and it's going to stay that way — which is as cynical as it is self-fellating.

My Rotherham example was also chosen because it was probably the most well known, and I think it highlighted what I believe is the prime issue as to why the country's in the gutter. My 'defence' of police officers meanwhile was just the result of me arguing devil's advocate; Heal was a member of the police and advanced her concerns to the higher ups and it fell on deaf ears, so how many also showed concern but were similarly ignored that we don't know about? It was asking an open question because making an absolute statement on all the police doesn't account for exceptions, that's all. I also tried to end it on some optimism because Rotherham was a very miserable and horrid situation, and like you said with the LBC host, revealed just how outwardly malevolent some people are. Even then, that to me is still a symptom of what I was discussing. That host was likely of a similar mindset to the council members and police who disparaged the evidence and allegations to begin with, and their attempt to pin blame on the parents is just them trying to absolve themselves of responsibility, justify a lack of action and most pathetically, try to take some of the responsibility away from the Pakistani men responsible for the sake of optics and protecting themselves from backlash. I knew that concluding with "Everybody involved utterly failed at their job out of self-interest, laziness and fear", whilst still supporting my initial argument, would leave the prime takeaways being that the system is too broken to be repaired and there's nobody in this country worth supporting who's apart of it. Highlighting the fact a few people doing their jobs is all it took to undermine those who otherwise would've seen it buried was my meagre attempt to provide a silver lining, as tone deaf and out of place as it might be when attached to Rotherham of all things, which I do apologise for.

Anyway, I'm glad my posts help make you feel a bit better. I know not everyone bothers to read them, which is understandable since I'm prone to rambling.
Thank you. :feels:
 
Implying's avatar looks like Tom Holland, but I know it is not.

As for Doyle leaving, he essentially absorbed a lot of Sue Gray's responsibilities, and it seems to be quite a demanding job, but you are privy to A LOT of secret information. I imagine he heard some horrifying things, and to some with a conscience, it weighs heavily on the soul.

I have a feeling Doyle may have been the leaker or one of them who is actively cock-blocking Starmer and Reeves which I say good on him. At least undermine the system to disturb as much as possible. From the accounts I have read of people working with Starmer, he is unbearable to work with, and it seems people think he is very dumb.

After the abysmal Spring Statement and various laws coming in before May, I think the political field is going to be very choppy. Starmer is going to learn that having the majority means nothing when it is on sand. The cabinet seems incredibly divided too, and Reeves is trying to cosy up to Raynor to prevent the damage but she is spoilt goods and a victim. Mammood is fucked too the sentencing council essentially said she was powerless.

I ended up having a good talk with my neighbours, and they said it feels like something is going to happen, but they don't know what.
 
Amin Yasister said:
So how much did I personally cost the government?
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Rent free living space in their collective heads since it meant you were just getting pissed off and discontent?
:optimistic:
anklyscr said:
Serious question time. Where is implying’s avatar from?
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Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all!
Come cheer up, my lads
Come cheer up, my lads
 
@Chaotic Pizzaparty : I feel the same about something happening. They're plotting something, though I guess they always are. However, I think they're mindful of how damaging a summer of potential riots could be and are concerned that could happen.

I think once the benefits cuts start to bite either people will boot off,or they won't,but if they do start to kick up a fuss, it could get ugly.
 
Two-Tier Kier Row
The Sentencing Council in England and Wales has ignited fury by rejecting Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plea to ditch new guidelines that could favor ethnic minorities in court. Set to launch in April, these rules urge judges to weigh a criminal’s ethnicity, culture, or faith before sentencing, prompting fears of unequal justice.

Mahmood blasted the move, declaring, "I do not stand for any differential treatment before the law," and warned that "someone’s outcomes may be influenced by their race, culture or religion." She insisted, "All options are on the table and I will legislate if necessary," but the independent council stood firm.

Lord Justice William Davis, the council’s chair, defended the changes, claiming they reflect "disparities in sentencing outcomes" and equip judges with "more information" about offenders. Yet, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick slammed it as "blatant bias, particularly against Christians, and against straight white men," warning of a "two-tier" system that’s "very corrosive to public trust."

Downing Street echoed Mahmood’s resolve, stating "all options remain on the table," including legislation, as critics decry a justice system risking division over fairness.
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Above is the Disclose.tv summary of this Sky News article.
Trending on twitter and the like.
 
@>IMPLYING Minor thing but I want to make sure my meaning was clear. I realised after you quoted me that I mistyped. I've edited my post but what I meant to say was that you can't effect change without it [optimism]. Not that you can. Whoops!
 
Chaotic Pizzaparty said:
I ended up having a good talk with my neighbours, and they said it feels like something is going to happen, but they don't know what.
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A big one to remember is if any of them have tanked their future political careers over this and are still in office it's because Kier wants them to do worse and get the blame for it before they go or suggest worse and be "fired" because of it.

Standard caveat that this applies to all political parties not just Labour.
 
Not sure if it's been shared here or in the other thread concerning Lowe/Reform but Lowe is is crowdfunding a private inquiry into the rape gangs. Your willingness to click on the link might be rather low at the moment considering things so I'll just share a few things.

Scope and stages of the investigation.
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Current amount raised (100k was raised in 6 hours, average amount per person is £32)
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Twitter is down at the moment but Lowe called out Reform for their lack of push into investigating the gangs or being more firm in pushing for the inquiry to begin with despite his attempts to do so behind the scenes. I can't be certain if this will amount to anything but considering Lowe's character I think he'll at least not take the money and run. When the full report is finished I'm sure anything particularly damning will get circulated, and maybe it'll get covered on GBNews with or without Lowe's name attached.


Here is full text of the page:
If you wish to donate you must be a permissible donor, either on the UK electoral roll or a company registered in the UK.

Please be aware that if your donation exceeds the threshold for registration (£1,499.99), either on its own or when added to any other donation you have made this year to Rupert Lowe MP your name will be published in the House of Commons Register of Members’ Interests. Private addresses will not be published.

If you require more information please contact rupert.lowe.mp@parliament.uk.

Structure of the Inquiry:

  • A qualified panel will be appointed to oversee the inquiry.
  • A legal advisory team will support the panel throughout the inquiry.
The inquiry will take place in three defined stages:

Stage 1 – Launch & Evidence Collection

  • Official launch of the inquiry with a call for written evidence.
  • A secure submission process will be set up with a clear deadline for all submissions.
Stage 2 – Public Hearings

  • A multiple day live-streamed hearing period.
  • Hearings will be closed to the public (for safety and control) but broadcast online to ensure transparency.
  • Panel-led questioning of witnesses; in cases of non-attendance, questions will still be put on record.
  • Witness protection and safeguarding will be prioritised.
Stage 3 – Report & Publication

  • A closed period for the panel to compile findings and draft the report.
  • Pre-set publication date for the final report.
  • Follow-up Q&A session led by Rupert and the panel to publicly respond to the findings.
Core Inquiry Questions

To maintain focus and deliver actionable conclusions, the inquiry will centre around three key questions:

  • What happened?
  • How did it happen?
  • Why was it allowed to happen?
Funding

  • Costs will be kept minimal and transparent, covering:
    • Panel and legal advisor fees
    • Venue hire and security
    • Travel expenses for witnesses
  • Any surplus funds will be donated to charities supporting victims of grooming and exploitation.
  • Every line of spending will be published
Witnesses/participants

Victims and Survivors

  • Individuals affected by grooming gangs who are willing to share their experiences.
  • Survivors will be given the option to testify anonymously or via written/video statement to ensure their safety and comfort.
Whistleblowers and Frontline Professionals

  • Police officers, social workers, and council employees who raised concerns or witnessed systemic failings.
  • Former professionals who left their positions in protest or disillusionment.
Institutional Figures

  • Representatives from:
    • Local Authorities (especially those implicated in previous cases)
    • Police Forces
    • Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)
    • Social Services
    • Local Education Authorities
Politicians and Decision Makers

  • MPs, councillors, and other officials who were in office during key periods.
  • Those who may have been warned, made decisions, or ignored red flags.
Academics and Journalists

  • Experts on child exploitation, grooming, and community impact.
  • Investigative journalists who have documented the failures.
What Happens If Witnesses Don’t Show?

If a witness refuses to appear:

  • The panel will still proceed with the line of questioning, documenting the absence and reading questions into the record.
  • Any evidence related to that individual or institution will still be examined and referenced, including public records, whistleblower statements, or previous reports.
  • Non-attendance will be noted in the final report, possibly raising questions about accountability or transparency.
  • The livestream format ensures the public sees who did and didn’t cooperate.
  • Where appropriate, legal avenues may be considered (e.g. public letters of concern or formal requests) to highlight deliberate obstruction.
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