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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teriyakiburns said:
I've never seen any ethnic breakdown of emigrants. Just numbers. How many are immigrants leaving again?
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Not sure if this is a quip at me mixing up the usage of emigrants and immigrants. If it is, you're a fag. If not, numbers below. Pick your own adventure.

The latest official estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicate that net migration in the year ending December 2023 stood at 685,000, compared with an updated estimate of 764,000 for the year ending December 2022.
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What are the UK's latest migrations statistics? The latest estimates on migration from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that in 2023: 1.2 million people migrated into the UK and 532,000 people emigrated from it, leaving a net migration figure of 685,000.
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https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06077/#:~:text=What%20are%20the%20UK's%20latest,net%20migration%20figure%20of%20685%2C000.
 
Bog-standard Poster said:
Not sure if this is a quip at me mixing up the usage of emigrants and immigrants. If it is, you're a fag. If not, numbers below. Pick your own adventure.
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It's a genuine question. I see a lot of net migration figures, but there's little information about who is leaving. The most I can find is this from the ONS, but it only describes "british nationals", which doesn't mean much without knowing what ethnicity they are. For all we know, they could be second generation midget albanian clowns who decided to go back to the motherland. I am certain that the ONS records this data, but they've never published it.
 
teriyakiburns said:
It's a genuine question. I see a lot of net migration figures, but there's little information about who is leaving. The most I can find is this from the ONS, but it only describes "british nationals", which doesn't mean much without knowing what ethnicity they are. For all we know, they could be second generation midget albanian clowns who decided to go back to the motherland. I am certain that the ONS records this data, but they've never published it.
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That's a very good point. I'm not sure what level someone has to be as to be classed as a national. Anecdotal, but I do know of a few Latvian/Polish/Lithuanians who went back home and more who are going to do so when their kids are out of school.
Outside of that, I just assume it's Brit retirees heading for greener pastures.
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo

Is this fake news, like much of the BBC ?

"In order to encourage students into classes, the school is having to take a range of unusual steps.

Some pupils can only make it into the car park, where they are met by a teacher or welfare officer, and then allowed to return home if they cannot face coming in. Others make it to reception but no further.

For those who can get beyond the threshold, there are limited timetables - sometimes just two-to-three hours per day - or a forest school, where pupils learn bushcraft skills in the school grounds. Other students are taken to a local zoo and encouraged to learn about the animals and how to care for them."

What the hell is going on in this country ? What is all this feeling anxious nonsense ? Everybody feels anxious when they are out of their comfort zone, doing something new, but that's virtually the only way to make progress in this life. Surely the time for all the mollycoddling has to be over and a bit of Darwinism has to happen.

What possible progress can be made from "you don't have to do something if you don't feel like it" ? Frankly, the way I feel now with these kids, is that's fine, but you can reap the consequences when you're older - do not expect anyone to look after you when you're an unemployable shut in. Where are the parents in all this ? My parents weren't exactly tiger parents, but they did give me a nudge occasionally if they thought I could do better - and I'm extremely grateful for it.
 
EddyRooney said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo

Is this fake news, like much of the BBC ?
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Post the full article so people have info. I assumed it would be another university one.

Schools across the UK are under unprecedented pressure as they struggle to address a range of social issues unrelated to teaching. A group of schools in the West Midlands town of Telford illustrate the problems. Here, for a growing number of pupils, simply getting to school is an achievement in itself.
It is lunchtime and a handful of pupils at Lantern Academy, a Telford primary school, are playing indoors even though the sun is out. As head teacher Michelle Skidmore approaches, they begin to gather their coats.
“Are you heading out?” she asks. A five-year-old boy responds. It is not clear what he is saying, and Ms Skidmore tries to help. He repeats himself, four times in total, before she figures out that a family member of his has gone to hospital. He runs outside.
“We have a number of children who struggle with basic communication,” says Ms Skidmore. “'Can I go to the toilet? Can I have a drink?’ These are some of the basic sentences we have to teach our children to say.”
The children, whose parents speak English at home and have no learning disabilities, are coming to school unable to communicate. The staff therefore have to teach them Makaton, a basic form of sign language that uses symbols and signs to allow them to express themselves.
Some of the children who cannot talk are not toilet-trained either. At the start of Reception in September, eight of the 27 four-year-olds came to school in nappies. The school has had to develop “intimate care plans” to keep them clean as well as providing potty training.

One mother says her son was late reaching all his milestones, and had no interest in learning to use a potty before going to school.
“He wasn’t ready,” she says. “So when we felt he was, the school really helped with that.”
A child in Year 1 is still not toilet-trained at six years old.
Michelle Skidmore is the 14th head at the school since 2016. The high staff turnover reflects the challenges the school has faced in recent years.
Polling suggests that most people think public services have deteriorated nationally in recent years. This article is the first of three focusing on the town of Telford, which a BBC News analysis has identified as facing particular challenges across its courts, schools and health services. Similar problems to those found in Telford are widespread, however.
Situated in one of the most deprived areas of Telford, Lantern Academy was known as Queenswood Primary when it was run by the local authority, and rated as “Requires Improvement” by Ofsted. It was renamed to give it a fresh start when it joined a local multi-academy trust, the Learning Community Trust, two years ago.
Forty-eight per cent of pupils receive free school meals - about double the England average. But the new ethos that Ms Skidmore has worked hard to create is being severely tested by challenges resulting from the Covid pandemic. “For some people, the role of parenting has changed - 100%,” she says.
Educational experts and teaching unions say the forced closure of schools during the pandemic meant some families lost sight of the value of education. In some cases, they were too busy working to home school their children, or didn’t have the space. When schools reopened, they placed less importance on ensuring their children attended.
In addition, many schools found that parents’ mental health became strained. And this coincided with the closure of services where people with young children could meet, and receive professional support. Some parents today do not know how to play with their children, the school has discovered, so it now runs a weekly class to teach them.
“I keep going back to that competition element - my child’s walking, my child’s no longer in nappies - those milestone moments, they’ve gone now because those parent and toddler groups, where you’d see all that, have gone,” Ms Skidmore says.
Parents at Lantern Academy also sometimes struggle to keep their children healthy. School welfare officers now sometimes accompany them to doctors’ appointments, at the parents’ request, so they can be confident of fully understanding the medical advice.
Children’s mental health has also become an ever greater challenge since the pandemic, and it is the key driver behind the biggest problem faced by all the schools in the trust - attendance.
The trust has 7,000 pupils on its books across 13 schools - five primary, five secondary, two special schools and a pupil referral unit. At any time about 700 pupils, 10% of the total, are being looked after by a team of welfare officers employed to support teachers and families to get through the school year.

“When we're digging into the background problems now, we're noticing that things are getting more complex for a lot of children and families,” says Nikki Morrison, a school welfare officer for 20 years, who leads a team of eight.
“We’ve higher rates of parental mental health issues, we've got the cost of living crisis, we've got children who are on waiting lists to be assessed for autism and ADHD, who are quite clearly struggling in the educational environment that they've been placed in, because it's not the right environment for them.”
For the past two years, Ms Morrison has been working with Harley. The 15-year-old suffers from severe anxiety and has not attended a full day at his school since April 2023.
“Most of the struggle is leaving the house,” he says. “It's not just for school, it's to go anywhere.” Harley, who says he studies history and maths at home, is fully aware that his lack of attendance is harming his future. But despite Ms Morrison’s efforts – which included getting him a place at one point at a special school with a handful of other pupils - Harley still is not able to engage with education.
His anxiety, he says, was a problem in primary school but the pandemic exacerbated it. “I missed most of Year 6 and Year 7 because of the pandemic, but I also missed having transition days into secondary school, meaning that when I actually started secondary, it was a lot more difficult for me because it was a place I was unfamiliar with.”

At Charlton School, a Learning Community Trust secondary school with more than 1,200 pupils in the north-east of Telford, attendance is 92%, on a par with the England average of 93%, but down from the 95% typically seen pre-Covid.
That headline figure masks a greater problem. The number of pupils classed as persistently absent - who attend less than 90% of the time - is 22%. That is close to the current England average rate of 21%, but double the pre-pandemic England average.
In order to encourage students into classes, the school is having to take a range of unusual steps.
Some pupils can only make it into the car park, where they are met by a teacher or welfare officer, and then allowed to return home if they cannot face coming in. Others make it to reception but no further.
For those who can get beyond the threshold, there are limited timetables - sometimes just two-to-three hours per day - or a forest school, where pupils learn bushcraft skills in the school grounds. Other students are taken to a local zoo and encouraged to learn about the animals and how to care for them.

“Our primary focus in this school is providing education,” says head teacher Andrew McNaughton. “Unfortunately, for many students, we have to do a big piece of work to enable them to be able to access that. The challenges have increased. For us to be able to put the support in place for students just to simply be able to come through the doors can be a challenge.”
The Charlton School has access to Nikki Morrison’s team of welfare officers, but also has seven of its own. A key problem they face is the increasing number of students who are presenting with ADHD or autism, or other neurodivergent conditions.
According to Andrew McNaughton those children can wait more than two years for a formal diagnosis. “If we send them for an assessment in Year 9, they’ll probably have left the school by the time they get diagnosed,” he says.
Adding to the school’s concerns is that Shropshire Beam, an emotional health and wellbeing service where young people could get drop-in support, closed at the end of April, as its funding ended.
Many of those students therefore end up with the welfare team. Nikki Morrison is always optimistic that her staff can find solutions - she has even cajoled her husband into helping, getting him trained to be an exam invigilator so he can supervise students sitting GCSEs at home. But she wonders what will happen to these students when they get older.
“If we haven't brought children through the system who are resilient and ready for the next level, who's going to pick this group up - young people who’ve spent most of the last five or six years sporadically in and out of education, or having a bespoke timetable where they've been away from their peers and they've become quite socially isolated?
“Somebody is going to have to pick up that group when they leave school and try to put in the support to enable them to be productive and functional members of society.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Wainwright and Callum Thomson
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Christ, these children are doomed.
 
Shig O'nella said:
For the first time in my life, I'm not voting. Fuck em all.
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It's so difficult to decide who to vote for, because they all seem like arseholes.

I'm really pissed off that the only party who seems to know what a woman is, is Reform party.

I've never felt so disappointed in the choices we have.

If I was rich enough and brave enough, I'd definitely bugger off to a different country.

But I'm a skint scaredycat.

Really not looking forward to voting day, it all feels completely hopeless.
 
EddyRooney said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo
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It's hard not to think that millennials are possibly the worst generation of parents in history. Soft touch, low socialisation, no expectations.
One mother says her son was late reaching all his milestones, and had no interest in learning to use a potty before going to school.
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In other words "I tried asking him once to use a potty but he didn't look up from the ipad so I gave up."
I know people who teach and the mental health shite is absolutely out of control. If any kid doesn't want to do anything they'll just cry about "muh anxiety" and the school will have to try and give them accommodations instead of a clip round the ear. All these kids are being completely failed, just conditioned into having 0 self control or attention span.
TL;DR the ipad and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
 
Standard issue BBC behaviour

Non-white applicants to the BBC’s flagship journalism training scheme were almost two and a half times more likely to get in than their white counterparts.Since 2022, an average of 22.5 per cent of applicants were classed as coming from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME).

However over that same two-year period, BAME individuals made up 41 per cent of participants on the scheme.
In contrast, whites made up an average of 77.5 per cent of applicants but only 59 per cent of participants, since 2022.
This means that non-white applicants were 2.4 times more likely to be given a place on the highly coveted scheme than their white counterparts.
The two-year scheme, referred to as the Journalism Advanced Apprenticeship, provides participants with training and a potentially permanent role at the Corporation.

​

The findings were released via the Freedom of Information Act. Female applicants also had a stronger chance of getting in than men, but by a lesser degree.
Since 2022, an average of 60.25 per cent of applicants were women. But in that same period, women made up 71 per cent of participants.
In contrast, men made up an average of 39.75 per cent of applicants but 29 per cent of participants, meaning that womens’ chances of getting onto the scheme were 1.6 times higher than their male counterparts.
Neil O’Brien, who until the election was the Conservative MP for Harborough, said: “Unlike previous BBC schemes which have stated they are BAME-only, this scheme markets itself as open to anyone. But in practice there is discrimination.
“These practices will go into overdrive if Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister.
“People are not being treated fairly. We need to get back to hiring the best person for the job rather than basing it on the colour of your skin.”

​

In April, the Telegraph revealed that one in three participants on the scheme identified as white British.
A BBC spokesman said: “Similarly to The Telegraph’s Newsroom apprenticeship scheme, our apprenticeship courses enable people from a range of backgrounds to enter the media industry. We always offer places based on merit.
“We’re committed to our recruitment processes being fair to everyone, and attracting applicants that represent all parts of the UK, and like the Telegraph Media Group we’re committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture at the BBC.
“The BBC runs many apprenticeship schemes, so it’s unclear what analysis can be determined from applications made to one course.”
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More lawfare related to gender critical stuff


A football fan banned from matches for her gender critical views has launched a High Court bid to stop a police force from taking part in activities that she claims support trans ideology.

Linzi Smith was the subject of a “secretive” four-month probe by the Premier League over claims she had been “openly transphobic”.

Northumbria Police interviewed Ms Smith under caution, but did not pursue legal charges. Newcastle United, the club Ms Smith supports, however, proceeded to revoke her club membership and ban the 34 year old from all matches until 2026.

Ms Smith is now taking legal action against the football club to attempt to overturn her ban.

She has also launched a separate High Court challenge against Northumbria Police to prevent them from partaking in political activities, which give the impression they support transgender ideology.

“I’m angry with what the police have done to me,” she told The Telegraph on Friday night. “I’ve never been arrested, I’ve never been in trouble, I’ve always been law abiding.”

She has decided to take Northumbria Police to court to prevent others being put through a similar ordeal to the one she had suffered.

“I’ve been made to look like a criminal,” she said. “I can’t even go looking for a new job at the minute because I’m frightened of how I might be perceived.”

​

A pre-action letter sent to the force this week ahead of the judicial review being lodged, said political activities include “marching in Pride” and “making public statements supportive of trans causes”.

It adds that the police should further desist from “using or encouraging the use of flags, emblems, lanyards or symbols associated with trans causes in a public-facing way”.

The letter claims that Northumbria Police has undertaken activities that signal support for gender ideology such as being encouraged to march in Pride by its Chief Constable.

Another example given is that the force’s officers adopted flags and emblems associated with trans causes, while handing out “preferred pronoun badges”, at the Northern Pride event last year.

“The Defendants are engaging in activities, which may reasonably be regarded as signalling support for one side of a deeply contested social issue; and indeed one of the most divisive or toxic issues in contemporary society,” the pre-action letter states.

Ms Smith has denied that she is transphobic, but defends her right as a “gender critical lesbian” to express her view that gender ideology has “damaged” women’s rights by allowing males who identify as female into their protected spaces.

“This has all happened purely because I hold views that other people don’t agree with,” she said.

“The police are bullying and intimidating people for this very reason. And publicly shaming seems to make no difference, so the only effective course of action is to bring this judicial review.

“We need the police to realise that by posturing and making political statements, they are making people like me feel like I can’t rely on the law because I’m going against their agenda.”

Explaining the significance of the case, Paul Conrathe, the solicitor representing Ms Smith, said: “This legal action could set a precedent that Pride and its associated rainbow symbols and flags are political.

“They represent support for highly controversial and contested gender ideology – the belief that a person can have a gender that is different to their biological sex.

“By marching at Pride, wearing rainbow lanyards and driving rainbow painted police cars the police have plainly breached their statutory duty of impartiality.

“As the coercive arm of the state it is chilling that the police should take sides in a highly controversial political debate.”

Northumbria Police declined to comment.
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Who is watching these people at football matches to see if they say homophobic or racist remarks? Three fellas have just been given an 8 month jail term in Spain for racist language toward a wog. In a crowd of 40,000, who is spotting these people should nigger or faggot?
Some lads were slapped with lifetime bans for homophobic remarks against the bender capital of UK; brighton.

Are police really watching crowds of 10's of thousands of people, for 90 minutes each, for hundreds of games a week? Seems like a bit of a waste of resources...
 
EddyRooney said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo

Is this fake news, like much of the BBC ?

"In order to encourage students into classes, the school is having to take a range of unusual steps.

Some pupils can only make it into the car park, where they are met by a teacher or welfare officer, and then allowed to return home if they cannot face coming in. Others make it to reception but no further.

For those who can get beyond the threshold, there are limited timetables - sometimes just two-to-three hours per day - or a forest school, where pupils learn bushcraft skills in the school grounds. Other students are taken to a local zoo and encouraged to learn about the animals and how to care for them."

What the hell is going on in this country ? What is all this feeling anxious nonsense ? Everybody feels anxious when they are out of their comfort zone, doing something new, but that's virtually the only way to make progress in this life. Surely the time for all the mollycoddling has to be over and a bit of Darwinism has to happen.

What possible progress can be made from "you don't have to do something if you don't feel like it" ? Frankly, the way I feel now with these kids, is that's fine, but you can reap the consequences when you're older - do not expect anyone to look after you when you're an unemployable shut in. Where are the parents in all this ? My parents weren't exactly tiger parents, but they did give me a nudge occasionally if they thought I could do better - and I'm extremely grateful for it.
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Can you imagine being a kid at that school wanting to be educated, pass exams and start a career? Or the being the parent of a child that wants to go there?

Sickening that teachers are more social workers than teachers. No wonder they are leaving, and recruitment is difficult.

Kids don't want to go to school? Fuck them, exclude them for good and let their parent educate them...into prison.
 
Bog-standard Poster said:
Who is watching these people at football matches to see if they say homophobic or racist remarks? Three fellas have just been given an 8 month jail term in Spain for racist language toward a wog. In a crowd of 40,000, who is spotting these people should nigger or faggot?
Some lads were slapped with lifetime bans for homophobic remarks against the bender capital of UK; brighton.

Are police really watching crowds of 10's of thousands of people, for 90 minutes each, for hundreds of games a week? Seems like a bit of a waste of resources...
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He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking.

A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing that he does is indifferent. His friendships, his relaxations, his behaviour towards his wife and children, the expression of his face when he is alone, the words he mutters in sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body, are all jealously scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever.

You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation.

Amin Yasister said:
Kids don't want to go to school? Fuck them, exclude them for good and let their parent educate them...into prison.
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No. Tax payers pay for prison. Prison also implies a crime has been committed, potentially against someone who does make a contribution to society.
Darwinism - They should be allowed to fail completely. Too anxious for school or a job ? Too anxious for the dole office too then. No hand outs.
If that eventually leads to crime and prison ( not too anxious to steal ? ) then they definitely shouldn't be too anxious to be forced into hard labour for a very long time.
 
Morethanabitfoolish said:
Some of the children who cannot talk are not toilet-trained either. At the start of Reception in September, eight of the 27 four-year-olds came to school in nappies. The school has had to develop “intimate care plans” to keep them clean as well as providing potty training.
One mother says her son was late reaching all his milestones, and had no interest in learning to use a potty before going to school.
“He wasn’t ready,” she says. “So when we felt he was, the school really helped with that.”
Click to expand...
Morethanabitfoolish said:
For the past two years, Ms Morrison has been working with Harley. The 15-year-old suffers from severe anxiety and has not attended a full day at his school since April 2023.
“Most of the struggle is leaving the house,” he says. “It's not just for school, it's to go anywhere.” Harley, who says he studies history and maths at home, is fully aware that his lack of attendance is harming his future. But despite Ms Morrison’s efforts – which included getting him a place at one point at a special school with a handful of other pupils - Harley still is not able to engage with education.
His anxiety, he says, was a problem in primary school but the pandemic exacerbated it. “I missed most of Year 6 and Year 7 because of the pandemic, but I also missed having transition days into secondary school, meaning that when I actually started secondary, it was a lot more difficult for me because it was a place I was unfamiliar with.”
Click to expand...
Morethanabitfoolish said:
Some pupils can only make it into the car park, where they are met by a teacher or welfare officer, and then allowed to return home if they cannot face coming in. Others make it to reception but no further. For those who can get beyond the threshold, there are limited timetables - sometimes just two-to-three hours per day - or a forest school, where pupils learn bushcraft skills in the school grounds. Other students are taken to a local zoo and encouraged to learn about the animals and how to care for them.
Click to expand...
There's clearly something deeply wrong going on here.
Part of it reminds me of John B Calhoun's rat utopia experiments. Rats would be given unlimited resources and allowed to breed until they crowded - at which point their little rat society started crumbling. There was a lot of rodent violence, but also they started withdrawing from rat society. Eventually rat birth rates crashed massively and "the beautiful ones" emerged who showed little interest in doing anything other than eating, drinking and grooming themselves. Where rats had litters, the rat mothers would just lose interest in their young and abandon them before they'd been weaned. This is largely because the male rats in the wild would naturally fight to the death to form harems, but this didn't work in a situation with low infant mortality, so there was a male/female imbalance compared to what the population had evolved for. Female rats would naturally go somewhere secluded to raise their litters, but in this case there was nowhere secluded because they were too crowded, so the rat mothers would exhaust themselves trying to shield their young constantly in a way that was unnatural, and so would abandon them. It's still something to be said about instincts that would be healthy in a natural environment completely not working in an artificial environment.

The other side of it is Gentle Parenting. The bit about the child who isn't toilet trained is clearly the result of the likes of Dr Becky Kennedy who went viral a few years ago on social media for her stances on "Gentle Parenting", especially during the pandemic when everyone was going stir crazy.
The once fiercely independent three-year-old who was suddenly acting like a baby? “Normal, normal, normal! And healthy,” Kennedy assured on her Instagram account, which had become a real-time parenting triage service. The potty-trained toddler suddenly refusing to use the toilet? “Allow it,” Kennedy advised. “It’s OK. Care less about pooping in the potty and more about allowing your child decision-making power.” Most importantly, she reminded parents, nothing was permanent. “Who your child is right now is not a preview of who they are going to be in a few months . . . or even in a few days or weeks.”
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Gentle Parenting is supposed to be based on acknowledging the child's needs and feelings, without using bribery or punishment. If a kid's throwing a tantrum the gentle parenting approach is to say something like "You don't want to leave the playground right now, but I have said we need to leave the playground now because I have to go pick up your brother from school. I know you feel upset, but your brother will also be upset if we don't go pick him up, and we don't want anyone to be upset" and reflect the child's feelings back at them, in the hopes that feeling seen and heard.

The problem with this approach is... well, unless you twist the interpretation of gentle parenting, you end up in the insane situation where you claim your child "wasn't interested" in being toilet trained and so was still in nappies at age 5 "until he felt ready". Little children don't know what's good for them and poorly understand how other people think and feel; this doesn't work. It's pretty well established through centuries of research on child development that a 5 year old struggles with considering the perspectives of others so talking to them like a Californian therapist is not going to work when the little terror decides he or she wants another go on the swings instead of going home. It's "authoritarian" and "creates resistance instead of cooperation" if you say "if you don't get in the car right now, you're getting no trips to the park for a week".

Some of this might be the consequence of going to too much therapy and thinking your parent telling you "I told you to clean your room, it's still a mess, so now you don't get to go to your friend's birthday party" is the root cause of all your trauma and relationship issues and so you want to be different for your kids. Young parents also have consumed a lot of media that focuses on self care and validating anxiety... but the issue with validating anxiety is that it encourages avoidance, and avoidance makes anxiety worse. If you're abandoned at the school gates on day 1 and told it's going to keep happening, it's sink or swim time and the kid will eventually learn resilience and how to be uncomfortable... but if the kid's told "oh don't worry, darling, if it's too scary then we'll just go home and you can play on your tablet, we'll try again tomorrow" they'll never learn.

Not to mention the obvious cop out that other kids will pick up on. Telling an 11 year old they've got double maths is already a hard sell... telling an 11 year old they've got double maths but their mates are going to the zoo to see cool animals because they're too anxious to do maths? Guarantee that the kid will self diagnose with anxiety so they can go to the zoo too.

I feel for the schools in this scenario. The way the education system is now structured is that if the parents aren't forcing kids to attend lessons at risk of punishment at home, the school's going to get dinged by Ofsted for failing to address attendance rates if they don't bend over backwards and try literally everything to tempt the kids to at least attend for part of the day.
Bog-standard Poster said:
Who is watching these people at football matches to see if they say homophobic or racist remarks? Three fellas have just been given an 8 month jail term in Spain for racist language toward a wog. In a crowd of 40,000, who is spotting these people should nigger or faggot?
Some lads were slapped with lifetime bans for homophobic remarks against the bender capital of UK; brighton.

Are police really watching crowds of 10's of thousands of people, for 90 minutes each, for hundreds of games a week? Seems like a bit of a waste of resources...
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Raheem Sterling set up a campaign to hold football clubs accountable for the behaviour of fans both in the stadium and online after getting several fans banned for racist chants at a match.

It eventually got published in The Times in 2019 with the backing of a load of footballers who were receiving highly inflammatory messages on social media and even targeted threats, and the Premier League rapidly set up their "Action Against Racism" plan. Basically, it was a reporting tool that enabled players, coaches, managers and relatives of those people to report stuff they found online - there's a similar one for fans called Kick It Out. It wasn't specific to racism, but it was badged as part of their anti-racism efforts since that's the most common form of harassment players receive.
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Reports would be referred to a central investigation unit in the Premier League This unit would compile information and turn it over to the club and also local police if there were grounds for prosecution under Malicious Communications or Public Order offences, and if they needed to be banned from stadiums, because they needed to show they were taking action to prevent harassment of players.

The first time this actually lead anywhere was seemingly 2023:
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What appears to have happened here is someone took offence to this woman's gender critical tweets, and knew she was a Newcastle supporter, so reported her to Newcastle United for "discriminating against trans people". Newcastle United apparently weren't sure what to do with this report but figured if they receive a report they're supposed to tell the Premier League. The Premier League handed the report to their investigation team (who I imagine probably don't have much work and are eager to justify their continued employment) who produced this document:
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This was then handed back to Newcastle United and then also the local police (who very quickly established no crime had been committed) but Newcastle United panicked at the 11 page dossier and banned her from the stadium for 3 years. I don't think there's any way this would hold up as the tweets were both a protected belief and also were not targeted at anyone.
 
AssignedEva said:
This was then handed back to Newcastle United and then also the local police (who very quickly established no crime had been committed)
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It says something when the fucking rozzers are the most sensible group involved in all this.
 
AssignedEva said:
Those are coffee cups, not bricks. You shouldn't be throwing anything at a campaign bus but they're very clearly not bricks.
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Oh you're right lol, on the frame I paused it on in the first throw it was side on and looked just like a grey brick or cement block that he'd pulled off the building site. I saw people on xitter talking about how great it was that Mosley was hit by a brick so I assumed they were connected.
Farage was reported to have pulled out of the panorama interview and they chalked it up to one of the Reform candidates saying the benefits of entering WWII were dubious https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-hitler-pulls-out-bbc-interview-b2560440.html
Now Reform are saying the BBC never asked them https://inews.co.uk/news/reform-blames-bbc-postponement-farage-panorama-interview-3103704
Sunak vows to halve migration from record levels to still-record levels https://www.gbnews.com/politics/tory-manifesto-rishi-sunak-conservative-election
Starmer accuses Sunak of having a manifesto as bad as the previous Labour manifesto https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dd7m3zjxzo
He didn't think it was too bad back then https://www.facebook.com/KeirStarmerLabour/videos/2692898070766495/
 
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