UK British News Megathread - aka CWCissey's news thread

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

A heated row has broken out over a move by Britain's largest bakery chain to launch a vegan sausage roll.

The pastry, which is filled with a meat substitute and encased in 96 pastry layers, is available in 950 Greggs stores across the country.

It was promised after 20,000 people signed a petition calling for the snack to be launched to accommodate plant-based diet eaters.


But the vegan sausage roll's launch has been greeted by a mixed reaction: Some consumers welcomed it, while others voiced their objections.

View image on Twitter


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

#VEGANsausageroll thanks Greggs

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


Cook and food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe declared she was "frantically googling to see what time my nearest opens tomorrow morning because I will be outside".

While TV writer Brydie Lee-Kennedy called herself "very pro the Greggs vegan sausage roll because anything that wrenches veganism back from the 'clean eating' wellness folk is a good thing".

One Twitter user wrote that finding vegan sausage rolls missing from a store in Corby had "ruined my morning".

Another said: "My son is allergic to dairy products which means I can't really go to Greggs when he's with me. Now I can. Thank you vegans."

View image on Twitter


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

The hype got me like #Greggs #Veganuary

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


TV presenter Piers Morgan led the charge of those outraged by the new roll.

"Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns," he wrote on Twitter.

Mr Morgan later complained at receiving "howling abuse from vegans", adding: "I get it, you're all hangry. I would be too if I only ate plants and gruel."

Another Twitter user said: "I really struggle to believe that 20,000 vegans are that desperate to eat in a Greggs."

"You don't paint a mustach (sic) on the Mona Lisa and you don't mess with the perfect sausage roll," one quipped.

Journalist Nooruddean Choudry suggested Greggs introduce a halal steak bake to "crank the fume levels right up to 11".

The bakery chain told concerned customers that "change is good" and that there would "always be a classic sausage roll".

It comes on the same day McDonald's launched its first vegetarian "Happy Meal", designed for children.

The new dish comes with a "veggie wrap", instead of the usual chicken or beef option.

It should be noted that Piers Morgan and Greggs share the same PR firm, so I'm thinking this is some serious faux outrage and South Park KKK gambiting here.

 

[3deadniggers]

I'm not pointing fingers but all the people saying "Fuck 'em all. I want to pay zero taxes and let the poor starve" are usually rich tossers with no connection to reality. Having no safety net at all creates a criminal underclass that start fucking things up for everyone else. You have to keep a safety net to bounce people back up from back situations or you end up wasting so many people who fall on hard times.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

Who says you're paying?

That line that says PAYE on my payslip

 

[SirCliveSinclairdabbing]

I'm not pointing fingers but all the people saying "Fuck 'em all. I want to pay zero taxes and let the poor starve" are usually rich tossers with no connection to reality. Having no safety net at all creates a criminal underclass that start fucking things up for everyone else. You have to keep a safety net to bounce people back up from back situations or you end up wasting so many people who fall on hard times.

Nets need holes in them so they don't get clogged up with scum

 

[Doctor Love]

What is your story?

Doctor misdiagnosed heart problems as anxiety.

Then repeatedly tampered with my record to make sure nobody else could investigate it.

Caught him doing it, got proof, had to tactically leverage that proof to finally get my heart checked.

Had ultrasound - waiting for the full documents, but lots of clicking and -wubby- noises and the Doppler sure as hell looked like a lot of backflow.

 

[Otterly]

I do hope our apocalyptic future is set to the background music of the Wurzels and Lancashire Hotpots.

Saw the Wurzels live years back. Great night.

I remember saying people who don’t work should be poor and friends acting like I was a monster. Motherfuckers, take a look at how much you pay in taxes and think harder about what I just said.

People who deliberately don’t work should be. People who have had a job reliably then get sick (genuinely sick) or injured or lose that job should get appropriate support IMO. Some euro countries have a system where you pay into an insurance scheme each month and if you lose your job you get x% of your pay for up to a year . I feel like that would be a good solution.
We shouldn’t be punishing someone who’s worked for years and then gets injured on the job and needs eight weeks off for something to heal, and we should be supporting people through short periods between jobs, or who have been hurt , get cancer etc

Every system we have for determining who gets what has been tanked becasue a. It’s always farmed out to private contractors or useless councils and b. We have got rid of the concept of the deserving va undeserving poor.
I know a family where both have worked all their lives, two kids, both lost their jobs the same month due to no fault of their own. They’d just had to use some of their savings to cover something, looked after elderly unwell family so they didn’t have much to spare and found neither was eligible for any support at all. Nearly lost the house because they couldn’t pay the mortgage. Both found work again fast, he started his own business but they were really shocked by the fact that half their neighbours are dole scum and they work hard and got nothing.
The system rewards the wrong behaviours

 

[Doctor Love]

A pistol crossbow is going to be worth its weight in gold at some point. Light, simple and actually quite easy to modify if you know how. With the right kind of bolt the damage done to practice targets can make your eyes water.

I spent far too much time figuring out how to subtly synthesise potassium nitrate for you to be talking about crossbows.

neither was eligible for any support at all.

I don't get PIP or any kind of disability benefit. I now know what the underlying cause is - but the genuine reality is that the state will deny PIP if you describe, in detail, the symptoms of heart failure. They don't do medical assessment. Heart failure is not enough to qualify for any kind of benefit in the UK, but "being brown" is.

Both found work again fast, he started his own business but they were really shocked by the fact that half their neighbours are dole scum and they work hard and got nothing.

Like I said in the other thread - the "people in charge" of distributing it have more in common with "dole scum" than with anyone who is willing to work. They're happy to take money off of you, and assist in the theft, because they see you as the enemy and the dole scum as the friend.

There's not much else beyond it - grifters assisting grifters. They're more likely to hire the dole scum to help with the bureaucracy than to ever be productive.

 

[Otterly]

but the genuine reality is that the state will deny PIP if you describe, in detail, the symptoms of heart failure. They don't do medical assessment. Heart failure is not enough to qualify for any kind of benefit in the UK, but "being brown" is.

PIP is based not in what you have as a diagnosis but in your capabilities to manage everyday life. It’s a deliberately confusing system that deliberately discriminates against people who try to make the best of their conditions and try to function as well as they can. So there’s questions like can you make yourself a hot drink? Well yes you probably can. Can you do a hard days work no you probably can’t, but that’s not what they’re asking, it’s all broken down into these individual capabilities like walking a certain distance unaided, making a cuppa etc. people tend to overestimate their abilities and the questions are worded in quite a leading way to make people say yes I can do that - so maybe one day you can walk so far unaided but you struggle others, but they only look at best day and you fail that point.

If you feel you should genuinely be entitled to PIP then you need to fill the forms out with that in mind - I imagine there are guides online on how to answer the questions in a way that gets you through. Best of luck with that and the heart

 

[6MillionCoofs]

I think you're very optimistic if you think you can educate the sort of people that currently spend much of their life on the dole. That's one of the reasons why many are unemployable. But sadly even for those that are employable, it seems to be a lifestyle choice to game the system.

The system is so fucked that it isn’t even really a choice. There isn’t really an effort by the system to help get people off it once on.

Currently the UK is filled with too many drowning men, pulling the rest of us under.

Indeed. And that’s inpart what I’m saying. The way things are set up currently there does not even seem to be an attempt to teach them to swim.

a. It’s always farmed out to private contractors or useless councils

I honestly feel like that is the root issue and cause of most problems.

The system rewards the wrong behaviours

Indeed.

there’s questions like can you make yourself a hot drink? Well yes you probably can.

I learnt the hard way you answer no to that because they don’t listen to the next bit where you say their is a high percentage chance you’ll burn yourself to death.

There is litterally no nuance or detail allowed in the system. Even though that would allow them to better deal with people.

 

[AssignedEva]

Most of the tax money in the country is spent on pensioners anyway

What are you retards chatting?

Not most, but a lot, and this is exacerbated by the demographic bomb that's going off. Gov.uk has a table of pensions expenditure 95/96 - 21/22 and you can get a breakdown of total benefits expenditure from annual accounts (although prior to 2005/06 the info is only available adjusted for inflation)

It sits pretty consistently at around half of benefits expenditure:

although it does climb a bit, e.g. in 2007/08 pensions represented around 45% of pension expenditure. In terms of overall government spend, it was about in £1200 billion in 2022/23 (45% of GDP) and so pensions are about 9.5% of total government spending and about 4% of GDP.

 

[EddyRooney]

I'm not pointing fingers but all the people saying "Fuck 'em all. I want to pay zero taxes and let the poor starve" are usually rich tossers with no connection to reality. Having no safety net at all creates a criminal underclass that start fucking things up for everyone else. You have to keep a safety net to bounce people back up from back situations or you end up wasting so many people who fall on hard times.

That was the original intention of "job seekers allowance". A temporary series of payments to help out and enable one to get interviews for a job. It wasn't supposed to be a long term lifestyle choice.
I agree that the state should provide this and basic medical care and protect the borders. But that's all they should be - a safety net. We are way beyond that in the UK.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

That was the original intention of "job seekers allowance". A temporary series of payments to help out and enable one to get interviews for a job. It wasn't supposed to be a long term lifestyle choice.

It started being that when the people that were meant to help with you finding work gave up. It seems like the ran a calculation and decided it was more beneficial to keep them on then it was to get them off. Not sure when that change happened though.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

A pension shouldn't be labelled as a benefit, it's a reward to those who paid into the pension pot, the same pot that was robbed by Tony B Liar and has been robbed ever since.
Just as a mild rant: Some women got to their retirement age of 60 and were told, most with no warning, that their new pension age will be 65, under the justification of "the country can't afford it". When those women reached 65 (last year) they were told "gotcha, bitch. It's now 66 years old". Again, under the justification of saving a cost. Those women have paid into the pot all of their lives and have lost approx £54,000 in owed money.

The government - and it doesn't matter which flavour because none will give that money back, have said it has saved £10 billion by doing this. You may think "that's good, let's save money". Well, two things, 1) They've done it once and they will do it again, I.E. rob YOU and b) the estimate of housing JUST THE BOAT PEOPLE is going to cost £10 billion between now and 2030.

There's a government funded, media campaign that is trying to convince people that the elderly and pensioners are the reason the country is poor, it isn't. They're trying to convince you to attack them, take their pensions and they pinky promise you will get yours, you won't.
/rant

Pension isn't a benefit. Just like NHS isn't a benefit.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

Not most, but a lot, and this is exacerbated by the demographic bomb that's going off. Gov.uk has a table of pensions expenditure 95/96 - 21/22 and you can get a breakdown of total benefits expenditure from annual accounts (although prior to 2005/06 the info is only available adjusted for inflation)
View attachment 6102709
It sits pretty consistently at around half of benefits expenditure:
View attachment 6102715
although it does climb a bit, e.g. in 2007/08 pensions represented around 45% of pension expenditure. In terms of overall government spend, it was about in £1200 billion in 2022/23 (45% of GDP) and so pensions are about 9.5% of total government spending and about 4% of GDP.

Does this take into account winter fuel allowance and the fact most of the NHS is geared around pensioners?

 

[Doctor Love]

Pension isn't a benefit. Just like NHS isn't a benefit.

It was the silver lining to the over-one-million Brits who died in Europe during the wars.

Just imagine - what would your ancestors who fought do? I'm pretty sure mine would stab them, since he was a trench raider at the Somme.

 

[SirCliveSinclairdabbing]

Back in the 90s a regular topic on TV was how shameful it is that we're paying our pensioners so much less than other countries. Oh how the narrative shifts.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Does this take into account winter fuel allowance

A pittance

and the fact most of the NHS is geared around pensioners?

Most front-line NHS services are geared around smokers, who at least notionally pay for their use of the service through tobacco taxes, and fatties, who consume resources in approximately the same way they consume food. That aside, front line services are not the major portion of NHS spending. The vast majority of the NHS budget is spent on managers.

 

[Bloom Worm Cross Field]

Saw that people were posting the Wurzels a few pages ago and it reminded me of this classic

It looks like this song is at least as old as 2004. Crazy that it's more relevant than ever, you just need to change "tunnel" to "dinghy" in the first line. Well, and the "BNP" line is a bit of an anachronism nowadays.

 

[Str8Bustah]

The vast majority of the NHS budget is spent on managers.

That anecdote about the guy digging a pit with the 19 managers round the edge telling him he's lost his job due to budget cuts really does describe this country in a nutshell, doesn't it.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

There's a government funded, media campaign that is trying to convince people that the elderly and pensioners are the reason the country is poor, it isn't. They're trying to convince you to attack them, take their pensions and they pinky promise you will get yours, you won't.

As usually it is the government stealing money from people to fund stuff the people don’t want that is actually causing all issues.

That’s not even getting into the fact of constant mismangement that frequently balloons costs.

 

[Bloom Worm Cross Field]

https://nitter.poast.org/JakeWSimons/status/1803021169135640893

> "How would you have felt if Labour had won in 2017 or 2019?"
> "But we didn't win in 2017 and 2019..."

Has anyone checked if Sir Keir has ever changed a smoke alarm battery?