UK British News Megathread - aka CWCissey's news thread

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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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Coelacanth said:
I think it is high time that we start compiling information and resources Kiwis and normies alike can use to help prepare for the incoming shitshow.
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I can help here.

Assuming that you have basic manual tools, you can build-up from zero by recycling other materials.

Those basic manual tools are - wood chisels, sharpeners, a tenon saw, rulers, pliers, wood clamps and a monkey wrench. Other shit, like sledgehammers, shovels, buckets aren't essential but are very useful - anything above that is useful, but this is a bare-minimum approach - the wood chisels are the most critical. Duct tape is worth its weight in gold, but since it's hard to manufacture, I try to use it sparingly.

Silicon tubing is very handy, too, and rubber hoses.

So - most motors and electronics can be disassembled and re-integrated. A bench power supply is what I'm using, but as a goal, I'm focusing on Lithium Ion Cells and 12V Car Batteries. There are more complex ways to live off-the-grid, but I figured it'd be more more logical to focus on something I would easily find anywhere. Car batteries are high in amperage, but can be easily recharged. Ion Cells are extremely common, easily recharged but more complex to manage. I haven't reached that bit, myself.

Motors are trickier than heaters - but they're common. Most household electronics have a motor. Heaters are simply running a current through a wire. The basics are all based off of those two concepts - electricity to kinetic, and electricity to thermal.

Once that is sorted, gears and belts can be worked from wood. Those two can also be found in broken power tools - the goal is to build the basic joints of a "portable" workshop - the bulk components can be sourced locally, using whatever you have at hand.

With that - basic cabinetmaking is more of a practice situation than a studying one. To practice, get yourself some wood offcuts from eBay and start replacing your cutlery handles with solid oak. It's therapeutic, and good practice.

Since this is the British News megathread, I'll stick to clay. Clay is extremely common, directly underneath the surface. In order to get it, fill a bucket halfway with dirt, then fill the rest with water. Mix hard - the clay and sand will suspend, organic matter will float at the top, while everything else will sink. Skim off the top, filter out the rocks, then let it sit for a while. The clay will eventually sink to the bottom, as will the sand - you can filter it through a mesh to get a higher clay-sand ratio, but for most purposes that's not an issue.

Metals are everywhere - but unfortunately, it's usually steel. Steel is great, if you can work it. Working steel is no easy task, though. Aluminium is also very common - which has the opposite problem. It has an extremely low melting point, making it unsuitable for anything high-temperature. Copper is good for electronics, but that's more of an electrician's gig.

Plastics are very common, but not infinitely recyclable - they have their uses, as a fuel, cover or as a mould, but for reliable components, stick to metal and clay when you can. Wood is renewable, and easily acquired - but doesn't have many desirable properties for high-intensity tasks. Metal and ceramics are the two big ones for the rest of this.

The most important thing to get your head around would be the mechanics of how piping works. Since that's a more complex deal than it might seem - in brief, the inside bore should be as smooth as possible, the material should be inert and there should be as few curves as possible.

Siphons are very useful, and you can use a plastic bottle to "huff" air out of the bottle, rather than use your lips on the end of the hose. There isn't much point to that, except that a mouthful of petrol is fucking disgusting. This has the advantage in that, once you overcome the height difference, from the top of the water to the highest point on the pipe, you can set the bottle down and it will empty into the bottle. Keeps things cleaner.

Manufactured pipes are easy to get, but the general properties of piping - efficiently moving a fluid from one location, to another - is more generalised. Forced convection is an extremely efficient way of transferring heat - which is why I would avoid plastics. Most of the time, a clay tunnel is enough - make a pipe out of wax or plastic, cover it in natural clay, then melt out the wax. That same method works for quick, easy chambers - a big plastic bottle will burn at higher temperatures, or melt away. You can also heat them up, and stretch them to a desired shape as a mould - then just pack it full of natural clay.

Natural clay can be altered with charcoal, or with powdered concrete - there is a long list of recipes, and in general, well-made porcelains are extremely hard and brittle - while also having high density and low conductivity - while being extremely accessible. You can use a dinner plate to melt most metals - and crushed porcelain, although sharp, can be used as a good insulator.

Adding in powders like silica sand - if you have any - would make it more heat resistant, but in a crude system you'll be able to repair it as-needed.

Pumps and compressors seem hard, but are rather simple - by cutting the end off of a tin can, then using a screwdriver to punch a hole in the middle, you can form a base for one or the other.

A compressor uses thin blades at an angle to "slap" the gas in one direction - while a pump dredges the liquid. In general, either will work for either task, but each is specialised. The simplest way to make them is to use scissors to cut strips into the flat metal, then twist it into shape. Pumps "scoop" while compressors "slap"

You can jam a paperclip in the center for the rotating axis, then use a motor or any other mechanism to power the rotation.

With that, you can now do the work of ten men and, in theory, make almost anything.

Temperature can be adjusted by reducing the volume of a fluid, with a heat "sink" for that temperature to be disposed into. So, a cross-current system - a pump with cold water and a compressor with air - works by passing the fluids, in opposite directions, across a flat metal surface. The compressor heats the air as it enters, and that heat is dumped into the cold water. When the air exits, it expands at a much lower temperature. It's shockingly easy to make a cryogenic cooler, this way. The limiting factor is the strength of the materials you use. A heat exchanger works for heating a substance, too, naturally.

With the basic compressor, you can make a manually operated blast furnace with surprisingly little effort. Clay can handle high temperatures, and although I haven't done much testing, it has been able to withstand a fair amount. The burner, itself, is a combination of odd bits of steel held together with natural clay, and to fire it, just turn it on.

In theory, the blast furnace can produce temperatures as high as you could possible need them - with some strategic compressor placements, you can run the exhaust alongside the intake, to keep the efficiency as high as possible - a "regenerative heat exchanger" - the rest is insulating it properly. Blast furnaces can be used to heat an intermediary fluid, like a "molten salt" system, or just a regular boiler - they work on a small scale, because they burn fuel extremely efficiently. With a regenerative system in place - like a plate heat exchanger - you will have an extremely cheap and efficient way of burning anything you have on hand for energy.

The goal is to force hot air in, and then contain the heat within a desired location. Once you have the burner, you can slap together some kind of primitive kiln and make bricks and other ceramics - or, you can add a crucible to melt anything up to, and including, steel. As mentioned before, dinner plates or a fucking toilet can be smashed up with a hammer and used to fill in gaps. Be wary of doing that, though - the fragments come out like bullets and can easily take out an eye.

You'll be able to melt anything including steel if you can reach 1400C - while this is actually lower than the peak flame temperature of most fuels, actually keeping that heat is much tricker. Keeping something airtight, and keeping as much insulation between the burner and the environment, is how to make sure you don't lose that heat.

You can figure out shit like fuel efficiency depending on what you have - for fuels, and for general fire requirements, soaking fabric, or toilet paper, in cooking oil will produce a good-enough flame for most uses. However, for a true blast furnace, you would want to take advantage of the best fuel sources - dense solids. You can crush coal rather easily, and it's a very common resource to find if you dig for it.

Be very careful with powdered coal - it is, in fine form, extremely dangerous. Efficient - but it will fucking detonate if it forms a dustcloud near a flame.

Once you have a decent burner, you can melt down anything you need. Plastics are not infinitely recyclable, but you can ad-hoc whatever adjustments you may need. Be careful with what you burn, since acrylics produce Zyklon B when they combust.

Hydrocarbons, in general, are valuable for their convenience - you can use candles in this kind of burner, and they burn well - but they're better off as candles. Similarly, cooking oil has other uses - they're not the most effective fuel, and they can be used for things which other fuels can't.

As a side-note, don't listen to people who screech about how electric cars are bad - they aren't. Coal is an amazing fuel, and coal power generation is extremely productive. Solid fuels have high "particulate pollution" if they're inefficient, but they are definitely the best energy resource outside of nuclear.

Coincidentally, coal ash usually contains whatever minerals are in the coal other than carbon. This includes magnesium, iron, sulphur - which is neat, because those are also used in primers for firearms, so you can replenish ammo more easily.

Unlike the miniature pumps, engines are far more taxing. You could, theoretically, make one from wooden components but that would be fucking pointless. If you have anything strong enough, the basics are - a strong disk with a hole in the middle, and a metal bar which is locked to a single axis. This will transfer rotation to linear movement, and from there, you can use levers, gears or whatever you have on-hand to use it properly. Once you have the basics - a way to produce and transfer heat, and a way to produce and transfer movement, you can build anything.

With all of the above, you can manufacture almost any kind of chemical with minimal effort. Obviously, with the state of the UK right now, I didn't make a blast furnace out of dirt and baked beans for no reason.

For chemical processes, especially the more useful ones, the only other components which are extremely useful are catalysts - the rest can increase efficiency, and help fine-tune it, which I have yet to test. Catalytic converters are, amazingly, a slightly adjusted Ostwald reactor - and AdBlue can be blasted with either hot steam, or naturally decomposed, as a source of ammonia.

Edit: Oops, you don't need steam for the AdBlue. I forgot it's 2/3rds water.

Those, together, are two very handy things to know.
 
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With all the criminals and grifters being treated with kid gloves by immigration, it's all too depressing reading about how cruel they are being to a man who actually contributed.
  • He moved here 47 years ago.
  • Worked and paid taxes all his life
  • Father of two professionals.
  • Bravery awards for stopping a mugger.
But he has to wait until he is 84 to get citizenship.

GratsTheat783 said:
There was also another service where a minister from another church was brought in and asked us to pray for the downfall of "Putin's evil regime." I'm not pro-Russia or pro-Ukraine, but that felt inappropriate for Church.
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I stopped going to an Anglican church when the Pastor not only denounced Putin but denounced Kanye too.
Putin revitalised the church in Russia, bringing Christ to a place that sorely needed it, and Kanye, has uncompromisably spread Jesus' message.
Bog-standard Poster said:
Does anyone find it weird or strange that the media aren't calling this a racially motivated attack, or a racist attack? It most likely isn't, but the dude drove a van into the house of a black man, attacked him and then killed a black kid. Usually, the media would be jumping on that narrative like a fatty on a trampoline.
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Bog-standard Poster said:
the media would now stay away from a racial narrative handed to them on a plate.
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It's London, hard to commit a random spree attack and only hit YT.
 
SIMIΔN said:
With all the criminals and grifters being treated with kid gloves by immigration, it's all too depressing reading about how cruel they are being to a man who actually contributed.
  • He moved here 47 years ago.
  • Worked and paid taxes all his life
  • Father of two professionals.
  • Bravery awards for stopping a mugger.
But he has to wait until he is 84 to get citizenship.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539
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Like you say, genuinely upsetting given how many have it so much easier. Looks more than anything else like the situation with the Windrush lot, no active malice just years of never getting the paperwork completely straight with everyone assuming it was.

I suspect that common sense will prevail there but we'll see. They've crowdfunded the necessary fairly effortlessly and it will apparently be split between a local foodbank and a charity that helps asylum seekers with housing if unnecessary.


A Merseyside family is “so overwhelmed” after £21,000 was raised in hours to support their legal fight against the Home Office.

Nelson Shardey moved to the UK in 1977 as an accountancy student from Ghana and has now lived and worked in the country for over 46 years. He has three adult children and in 1991, he set up Nelson’s News on Borough Road in Seacombe where he worked long hours for 31 years.


In 2019, Nelson found out that he was not a British citizen, coming as a shock to him and his family. They are currently taking legal action against the Home Office but will have to pay their legal fees if the family lose the case.


Nelson's been described as a local legend and received a Liverpool Echo Mersey Marvel award in 2007 after he saved a friend from a baseball bat attack. The community in Seacombe once rallied behind him after he was burgled.


He told the ECHO: “All along, I regarded myself as a citizen. I had a bank account, I bought everything on credit. Nobody questioned my citizenship. I was called up on jury duty. I don’t see any difference between me and everybody.”

He continued: “To be honest with you, I cried indoors when the children weren’t around. I would come out full of smiles as myself. I wouldn’t show it but I was really really shocked.”

Nelson was initially granted 2.5 years limited leave to remain and start on a 10 year route to permanent settlement. However due to a mistake renewing this application, he lost his status. He was also undergoing treatment for prostate cancer at the time.

The family were then told to go through the Windrush Scheme in 2022 but this was later rejected. In 2023, the family were told to then start the 10 year route to settlement again which could cost £18,000 and result in Nelson not getting citizenship until his mid 80s.

The family is being represented by the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit who said Nelson’s case was “quite unique, not just because of the length of time he has been a resident, but for all he has achieved.” The Home Office said it would not be appropriate to comment on active legal proceedings.


Since the story was reported by the ECHO as well as the BBC, The Guardian, and other publications, the family’s Go Fund Me has already raised more than £21,000 in just a few hours with one anonymous donor contributing £5,000 and another giving £2,000. The total is now more than their target.

Aaron Shardey, one of Nelson’s sons, said: “I was really nervous about asking people to donate, I do not like asking for stuff but I am so overwhelmed. It almost feels like a bit of a dream. I can’t get my head around the reaction it’s received.”

Aaron, who previously worked in the civil service, said: “I had no idea this was going to be what it has become. I would hope that this sends a message. With any policy that is sensitive like immigration and general migration, it’s not a one size fits all approach.

"There are people behind those numbers. That should be the message that is sent to them. The impact this has on the people going through this."

He said nobody contacted his dad to let him know about his status, adding: “People were still arriving lawfully but then their circumstances changed. People just settled and just went about their lives. That is exactly what Dad has done. I would find it astonishing if this was to continue because the reaction speaks for itself.”

Aaron and the family previously said they had repeatedly tried to get help from Wallasey MP Angela Eagle over the case. She told the ECHO Nelson should be be given permanent status in the UK, adding: “Nelson’s treatment by the Home Office has been appalling, and my sympathies continue to be with him and his family. This is yet another example of an under-resourced Home Office wreaking havoc on an entire family."

She added: “I have long known him as a highly respected and active local community member and business owner. I am disappointed to hear that Nelson and his family feel the support my team have provided has not been sufficient.

"It is certainly true that thus far it has not been successful in resolving his situation. Given that immigration advice is heavily regulated and subject to legal restriction, neither myself nor my staff are able to offer advice on immigration cases, and it is right that Nelson’s case is being dealt with by his legal team who are appropriately qualified to support him."

If the family win the case, there will be no legal costs and the donations will be given to Wirral Foodbank and the Boaz Trust.
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Also I feel it necessary to mention the nickname of the fellow he helps out in the baseball attack

NEWSAGENT Nelson Shardey saved his delivery-man friend from a violent masked robber.

The father-of-three grappled with the attacker after he smashed a baseball bat over the head of his friend Eddie “The Bread” Leahey, as he made an early morning delivery in March.

Mr Shardey, who runs Nelson’s News in Seacombe, and Mr Leahey have been friends for more than 20 years.
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Morethanabitfoolish said:
Like you say, genuinely upsetting given how many have it so much easier. Looks more than anything else like the situation with the Windrush lot, no active malice just years of never getting the paperwork completely straight with everyone assuming it was.

I suspect that common sense will prevail there but we'll see. They've crowdfunded the necessary fairly effortlessly and it will apparently be split between a local foodbank and a charity that helps asylum seekers with housing if unnecessary.
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That is good to hear. Bureaucrats ignore context, and thus favour those who game the system.
This whole thing reminds me to speak with my dad as he has been in the country a similar amount of time, but hasn't got citizenship yet.
 
SIMIΔN said:
That is good to hear. Bureaucrats ignore context, and thus favour those who game the system.
This whole thing reminds me to speak with my dad as he has been in the country a similar amount of time, but hasn't got citizenship yet.
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It doesn't help that he's likely getting the same shit everyone is, namely that the civil servants are at record lows of productivity so you'd be lucky to get a response this century.

As a mild PL a a mate recently did a purchase where as soon as it was through the owners tried to do a land claim on a small patch of the land she should now own. After finding out they had done so she filed a counter claim. Neither one of those have yet been processed 5 years later so the odds are fairly good that her counter claim won't be picked up till at least a year after their original claim is.

Much government stuff is very much at the "if we hold out long enough everyone involved will be dead or we'll have retired" stage.
 

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COMMI3 MARK said:
Another day another historic child abuse scandal in the british media

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I'd put money on this being another BBC presenter.
Coelacanth said:
Soooooo uh.

Any more news about getting the SNP's Hate Speech law revoked? Everyone's gone awfully quiet about it...
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Laws in the UK rarely get repealed so expect it to still be around for sometime until something else replaces it.
 
Inquisitor_BadAss said:
Laws in the UK rarely get repealed so expect it to still be around for sometime until something else replaces it.
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I normally would agree with you but considering what this particular law entails it's only a matter of time before someone with a little more brains than Useless comes along and fully weaponizes it in the way it was intended. Don't mean to be so dour. But with the way everything is going it's a strong possibility.
 
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