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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.

View image on Twitter


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."

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
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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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Morethanabitfoolish said:
I think once things get bad enough getting worse is a challenge, giving those lagging behind chance to catch up.
Leeds I believe needs a story about a rapist eating his victim on the streets as the next hurdle to clear on its slide into a circle of Hell made manifest on Earth.
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Unfortunately given Haitian cuisine I think Springfield, Ohio is going to beat that city all the way to the 9th circle of hell.
 
Morethanabitfoolish said:
For those who needed more reason to hate the junior doctors and the BMA. I also hate them an additional amount for specifically picking an American term because they all watch too much TV.
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I hate junior doctors, 99% of them at my workplace are rude, entitled, and block the corridors all the time with ther laptops on wheels and ignore your very existence when you try and get past them. All they seem to do is tap away on the laptops, gather around a patient when a doctor is doing stuff and sit around chatting in staff rooms, nothing as backbreaking or challenging as what nurses and such have to deal with on the wards.
I also hate asking them about medical machines, (sometimes the nurses are all busy, or there are only junior doctors at the desks) as they have zero idea what any of them are or do, so I just get a lot of dead stares when I need to locate something important for repair or cleaning.
 
Morethanabitfoolish said:
I do wish the word "excommunicated" was in this article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g4z9j6p4do
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I'm really suspicious about that story, I know a little bit about the Catholic church in UK and Ireland, and it's often the case that 1 eldery priest will be running 2 or 3 parishes.

Churches (CoE are bastards for it) often use financial management to keep control of clergy, many of whom if they're doing pastoral work earn a pittance (which is why so many of them look for chaplain or teaching roles). It's not about the money it's keeping individual clergy in their box.

I'm also wondering if this wasn't so some personal conflict with the Sacristan or other lay parishoners. Anyway I just smell bullshit.
 
Out on early release and breaching his restraining order within 24 hours. Colour me surprised.
A former Hollywood actor who was released early from prison has been rearrested and remanded in custody.
Jason Hoganson, who had a leading role in 1987 film Empire State, was photographed raising a thumb as he was released from Durham Prison on 10 September.
The following day the 53-year-old was arrested in Newcastle's West End on suspicion of two counts of breaching a restraining order and one count of assault.
He admitted one count of breaching the order, but pleaded not guilty to the other count while also denying assault. He was refused bail at North Tyneside Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.
Hoganson was released after serving half of an 18-month jail sentence at HMP Durham earlier this month.
He is due to stand trial on 30 October at South Shields Magistrates' Court.
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Tellingly this is the most recent one but I can find half a dozen different results on the first page of search results from the headline.


A prison officer has been jailed for conducting an "inappropriate relationship" with an inmate.
Dawn MacCormack, 42, of Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, began an intimate relationship with prisoner Josh Moore in 2019 while working at HMP The Mount, near Hemel Hempstead, police said.
She was sentenced to 27 months at St Albans Crown Court for misconduct in public office, and admitted two charges of unauthorised transmission of calls or texts.
Hertfordshire Police said her "corrupt behaviour completely undermines the difficult and dangerous work that prison officers do in order to help protect the public and keep prisons secure".
The Mount is a Category C men's prison on the outskirts of the village of Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, with capacity for about 1,000 prisoners.

Dawn MacCormack was sentenced following a nine-day trial at St Albans Crown Court in July
Police said that Moore was found with "two illicit phones that had been smuggled into the prison".
Between 15 May and 20 June 2019, MacCormack shared more than 4,000 messages and more than 90 calls with the inmate.
She was arrested in 2019 and charged in June 2020.
Det Con Paula Mowbray, from the Dacorum Local Crime Unit, said: "The actions of the minority who engage in illicit behaviour and inappropriate relationships should not be ignored, and we will continue to investigate such cases.
"I would also like to praise staff at HMP The Mount who came forward to give evidence during the trial, leading to a successful conviction.
"Prison officers up and down the country work tirelessly to maintain the smooth running of the prison regime and were brave enough to stand up to a colleague who was abusing her position and endangering the safety of her colleagues.
"Her corrupt behaviour completely undermines the difficult and dangerous work that prison officers do in order to help protect the public and keep prisons secure."
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Less than 17 percent of the voters turned out for a by-election. I'd say good grief but the other one they won was less than 15%.
Labour has lost a by-election to the Tories in central London amid the row over Sadiq Khan’s plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street.
The Conservatives saw their vote jump nearly nine per cent in the West End ward of Westminster Council to just under 49 per cent, with Labour down by slightly more than ten per cent to 38 per cent.

Tory candidate Tim Barnes got 627 votes, Labour’s Fiona Parker 489, Green Rajiv Sinha 94 and Liberal Democrat Philip Kerle 74.
Turnout was less than 17 per cent.
The result came just days after Mr Khan had unveiled plans, backed by the Government, to pedestrianise parts of Oxford Street.
The move is controversial with even the Labour-run Westminster Council raising concerns.
It was not clear if the West End ward vote result was swayed by the pedestrianisation row.
But Nickie Aiken, former Tory MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, tweeted: “Congrats to @VoteTimBarnes @westminstertory on a great by-election win.
“People of West End made clear their views on @MayorofLondon plans to strip @CityWestminster of ownership of Oxford Street and pedestrianise our iconic High St.”
Labour sources said that in eight council by-elections across the country on Thursday the party was down nearly 14 per cent, and so it’s vote in West End had held up better than in some other areas including in the Harrow Road ward of Westminster were it was down just over 27 per cent, even though they still held the seat.
Mr Khan announced the proposal to pedestrianise parts of the popular shopping street on Tuesday as part of a wider regeneration project supported by the Government.
The scheme, which would see the 0.7-mile stretch between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch pedestrianised with the potential for further changes towards Tottenham Court Road, is aimed at boosting the experience of shoppers, residents, workers and tourists.
But the plans have divided Londoners, including shoppers, road users and politicians, with pedestrian safety and accessibility for less mobile visitors seen as key issues.
Oxford Street is one of the world’s busiest shopping areas, with around half a million visitors each day.
Announcing the revitalised plans, the Mayor said: “Oxford Street was once the jewel in the crown of Britain’s retail sector, but there’s no doubt that it has suffered hugely over the last decade.
“Urgent action is needed to give the nation’s most famous high street a new lease of life.”
But Westminster Council leader Cllr Adam Hug has written to the Mayor and Communities Secretary Angela Rayner raising ten concerns over the proposal including on displacing traffic into narrow, nearby roads, air pollution, ensuring local residents views are heard over the plan, and protecting access for older people, people with disabilities and families with young children.
He stressed: “It is no secret that our own well-developed plans for the future of Oxford Street focused on ways to transform and improve the street whilst retaining bus, taxi and cycle access.
“The substantial practical challenges for delivering pedestrianisation are well known and will need to be thoroughly addressed to ensure any future transformation of the street works properly and does so in the interests of everyone who has a long-term stake in the West End, including local residents.”
Ms Rayner said the plans, estimated to cost around £150 million, would give the shopping district the “boost it needs”.
City Hall officials hope that the project could be paid for by a combination of local businesses, new revenue streams and private funders.
A previous attempt by Mr Khan to ban traffic from the road was blocked by then-Conservative run Westminster City Council in 2018.
Mr Khan’s latest proposal depends on him obtaining permission from Ms Rayner in her role as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to establish a new Mayoral Development Corporation, which would provide planning powers.
This request can only be made following a statutory period of consultation and consideration by the London Assembly.
Restrictions already in place mean between 7am and 7pm vehicular access to parts of Oxford Street is limited to taxis and buses, except on Sundays.
Labour held onto a council seat in a second by-election further west in Westminster, in the Harrow Road ward.
The party’s Regan Hook gained 512 votes, the Green Party’s Faaiz Hasan was second with 244, followed by Hoz Shafiei of the Workers Party for Britain, Conservative Jonathan Goff 162, Liberal Democrat Helen Toeman 63, and Independent Abby-Jan Dharamsey 11.
Turnout was less than 15 per cent.
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A Guardian opinion piece that made me smile at times? I might need to have a fainting spell.

Can someone gift the prime minister a designer spade? He wants to keep digging. If Keir Starmer were a celebrity, this week we’d be looking for the black hole in his publicist’s brain. Alas, these are mildly testing times for anyone who bought into the always ridiculous idea of No Drama Starmer. The prime minister has officially graduated into his Some Drama Starmer era, and – like all prime ministers ever – is on the ineluctable journey towards his All Drama Starmer era. This journey is of variable speed, of course – sometimes it takes 11 years, and sometimes it takes 44 days.

The PM is never going to be Loves the Drama Starmer, though, judging by his amusingly defensive response that it is basically essential for him to be by far and away parliament’s biggest receiver of hospitality and freebies, as well as being one half of the sort of couple on a combined salary of over two hundred grand who can’t buy their own clothes, and also a guy who has a weakness for multiple pairs of designer glasses. Forgive me – “luxury eyewear”, with a value of £2,485.

I sympathise with his football security issue but can’t quite keep a straight face over the hammy melodrama of the statement: “… never going to an Arsenal game again because I can’t accept hospitality is pushing it a bit far”. We could be mere days away from an explanation that accepting £4,000-worth of Taylor Swift tickets off the Premier League is a basic human right. (I’m afraid my reaction to the phrase “£698 of Coldplay tickets” is: how many thousand Coldplay tickets is that?)

Nor did Starmer completely nail the tone when addressing the full-spectrum briefing war currently being waged between his chief of staff, who now gets paid more than him and is fine with that; internal enemies of his chief of staff, who get paid less than they were expecting and are not fine with it; his senior adviser and political strategist; lesser spads; and – I think? – the cabinet secretary.

I’m finding the angles on this quite hard to keep up with, but the general vibe of his No 10 operation is the sort of snakepit you may expect to find in the Kuntsevo Dacha 15 minutes after Stalin was discovered on the shagpile. I would even go so far as to say it could rival a breakfast television studio. I had to forcefully press my challenge buzzer when I heard Starmer explain to BBC South East that he was “completely in control”. Oof. Once upon a time that was what Eamonn Holmes thought.

Moving on to the choice of donors, can we really judge a man by the man he lets smother him in high-end glasses? Let’s hope not. Lord Alli was ennobled by Tony Blair – who, until he became one of them, was always pathetically impressed with very rich people – and is now the purchaser of the Starmers’ wardrobes and arsenal of fancy specs. This latest piece of beneficence seems to have earned his lordship at least a temporary Downing Street security pass. As for the type of person we’re dealing with … listen, I don’t want to say Waheed Alli “divides opinion”, because you know what? This week I asked several people in the know about him to give their opinion and they all said the exactly same thing. Unfortunately, it’s a single word that we don’t use in the Guardian unless it’s in reported speech.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...l-without-new-probity-rules-worse-will-follow

That all this should be taking place in the final weeks of a three-month scare buildup to the budget seems at best unfortunate, and surely something that either one’s chief of staff or political adviser or tailor should have spotted as a danger area. Even while he was wanging on about his corporate hospitality, Starmer was declining to discuss next month’s doom budget on the basis that, “I don’t want to risk putting the fear of God into people.”

Well, it’s a bit late for that. Labour took office and immediately declared things to be so dire that they were going to have to do awful and painful things to combat them – but will have left it three months before they finally explain what those awful and painful things are. This, as the former chief economist to the Bank of England Andy Haldane and many others have pointed out, has created a sense of “fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers, among businesses, and among investors”.

Truly the hat-trick. The current freebies row taking place during that particular information vacuum consequently feels even worse. It suggests that Starmer is a guy who talks to the public like an undertaker but in private likes the finer things in life. More than that, he feels entitled to them. That is no one’s favourite combination.

Having said that, I don’t think it’s the within-the-rules odour of impropriety that is the biggest problem for Starmer, although it is definitely a problem. Taking essential things away from those with not very much at all while giving the appearance of being perfectly happy to help yourself to luxuries is not a great look. But the much bigger vulnerability, in my appraisal, is that thing that maps on to what a lot of people are always, always prone to thinking about Labour: that they’re very free and easy when they’re spending other people’s money.

According to Ipsos polling in the FT today, half of British voters say they are disappointed in how Labour has governed so far, with Starmer’s approval ratings worse than those of any of his predecessors except Liz Truss. Considering that this comes more than a month before the doom-budget outlines their plans for our money, Starmer may find the next set of ratings well worth misplacing his many pairs of spectacles for.
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Labour desperately spamming devolution deals to try to accelerate collapse. I can almost hear someone saying "it worked for Scotland."
Four areas will receive more power from Westminster in the latest step in the government’s devolution revolution, which will deliver real change by boosting economic growth across the country.

The government has today (19) signed off on agreements for regional mayors in Greater Lincolnshire and in Hull & East Yorkshire, and to establish combined county authorities in both Devon & Torbay and Lancashire.

The agreements signed today will mean local leaders have the power to make decisions in areas such as transport, adult education, and housing, boosting economic growth and opportunity, which are at the heart of the government’s agenda.

Mayors will be elected in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire – the last part of Yorkshire to be covered by a devolution deal – in May 2025 and will have control over transport, housing, skills, and investment to shape the future of their area.

For Devon & Torbay and Lancashire, combined county authorities will be established in early 2025 handed the responsibility for adult education. Ministers are encouraging local leaders to deepen these devolution deals and take strides towards mayoral devolution as a gold standard.

Subject to parliamentary approval and local consent, the devolution agreements will mean local leaders can make decisions that benefit their communities and harness the unique opportunities of their areas.  

Devolution is central to the government’s mission to economic growth, but only around half of the people in England currently benefit from these arrangements. The Deputy Prime Minister wants every area to have the opportunity to benefit from new powers.

At the heart of the government’s drive to shift powers away from Westminster is the flagship English Devolution Bill, which will be introduced to give new powers to mayors and combined authorities – and roll out Local Growth Plans designed to maximise opportunities for growth. 

“This is only the first step of our major ambition to drive forward our devolution revolution, and ensure we empower more communities and strengthen the existing powers of our brilliant mayors.”

The government is also minded to progress with the four non-mayoral ‘Level 2’ Single Local Authority devolution agreements with Cornwall Council, Buckinghamshire Council, Warwickshire County Council, and Surrey County Council, subject to further statutory tests being met. These agreements are an important step for places to see early benefits from devolution in the short-term. However, in making this downpayment in good faith, the government is encouraging these areas to continue working to explore the next steps towards deeper and wider devolution.

Today’s announcement comes after the Deputy Prime Minister’s letter inviting councils to share proposals for new devolution agreements over sensible geographies. The letter kickstarted the devolution revolution and the government expects more deals to be announced in the months to come. 

The government strongly believes that the benefits of devolution are best achieved through the establishment of combined institutions with a directly elected leader. Mayors should have a unique role in an institution which allows them to focus fully on their devolved strategic responsibilities, working hand in glove with council leaders who will vitally also focus on the delivery of the essential services for which they are responsible. Conflating these two responsibilities into the same individual and institution, as is the case under the mayoral Single Local Authority model of devolution, would risk the optimal delivery of both and is not in line with the government’s approach to English devolution.

The government will therefore not proceed with the mayoral deals with Norfolk County Council and Suffolk County Council agreed with the previous government in December 2022 and instead intends to continue discussions over devolution in Norfolk & Suffolk.

The government will publish further detail on our approach to devolution in due course.
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I suspect a shockingly prescient remark from the Met. Admittedly it is of the "water is wet" quality of insight.


Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has said the Notting Hill Carnival is a "poorly run event" and has "deep concerns" about crowd risks.
He said the annual carnival was "not run by experts in event management" and feared a "mass fatality event" through crushing, like the Hillsborough disaster.
Sir Mark was speaking during a meeting of the London Policing Board , externalat City Hall on Thursday.
The organisers, Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, have said they had "experts from all areas of event organisation" and had 3,300 stewards this year to help manage crowds.

It is estimated up to one million people attend the annual event over the August bank holiday
Sir Mark said he had "complete support" for the event but was "deeply concerned" about its safety, with an estimated one million people taking to the streets of west London.
The commissioner said police should "only be at an event to deal with crime and disorder issues" and that the crowd management of any event was the responsibility of the event organisers.
He added: "They struggle to discharge their responsibilities effectively and we try to rescue the situation. So we put in mitigations to try and reduce the risk of a Hillsborough-type event."
He said this was not an effective way to manage or police the carnival.
His comments come after Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said the organisers "did not have enough stewards" on shift over the carnival weekend.

​

Sir Mark said: "With crime, it is less about the numbers than the severity. It was over 300 arrests, there were two murders at this year's carnival and I think there were six other stabbings, and 60-70 weapons recovered.
“This is a very different arrest profile to what you would see at even at the most difficult football matches or Glastonbury, or something like that,” he added.
"Crime control is much harder because it’s a poorly run event. It’s not run by experts in event management in the way that most big events are."
He told the board that the Met had a "very positive" relationship with the event organisers and that officers had met with them, together with the local authorities, to work on a "reset" on the way carnival is organised.

​

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, responded to the comments by telling the board: "It’s really important the commissioner airs his concerns."
He emphasised that the carnival was not run by City Hall nor by the Metropolitan Police.
He told the board: "I’ve seen things (at carnival) that I can’t un-see and the commissioner has briefed me on things we can’t pretend we don’t know about.
"We’ll be working with organisers to try and address these concerns," he added.

​

The organisers of the carnival, Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, have said there are inaccuracies in the Met's response. It says the carnival is overseen by a number of events management experts and safety advisers.
In terms of crowd control, a spokesperson told the BBC: "We do not recognise any situation in which it was required for the police to be called in to help with crowd management."
They added: "When the police did take these actions, it was not always communicated across the organising team, which is vital to how the event runs.
"And it was not done under consultation as was agreed in the event plan. When the police did act, it had a negative impact, causing greater crowding issues."
The spokesperson told the BBC: "We have lost the trust in the Metropolitan Police as a partner in the running of Notting Hill Carnival. Their ongoing rhetoric suggests they are not a co-operating partner."
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Another teacher who likely needs to be lynched.


A teacher who kissed a student on an unauthorised camping trip has been banned from the profession.
Physics teacher Simon Mumford was taken to a disciplinary panel accused of behaving inappropriately with the the girl, referred to as Pupil A.
The misconduct hearing was told the 55-year-old organised an overnight trip to Priests Hole Cave in the Lake District in June 2021, where he was said to have touched the pupil's leg, kissed her cheek, put his arm around her and told her he loved her.
The physics teacher at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School in Lancashire was suspended in 2023 after the girl informed the school about his behaviour.
In a written statement, she said it was during a period of lockdown in the coronavirus pandemic when Mr Mumford gave her the “idea” that she should go on a camping trip with her family, before suggesting he could take her by himself.
He said he wanted to show her "the views and what it is like to experience sleeping under the stars”, she said.


Pupil A said her parents gave her permission to go on the trip but only on the condition another person, referred to as Individual A, also went.
The panel found "under no circumstances, should Mr Mumford have arranged a personal camping trip outside of the school setting" and in doing so he "encouraged a relationship which went beyond a professional teacher and pupil relationship".
It heard the pair also messaged each other online out of school hours, when Mr Mumford had "encouraged an inappropriately personal discussion".
In her spoken evidence, Pupil A said Mr Mumford had kissed her cheek twice on the camping trip, one after the other in a “fatherly” manner, rather than romantically, but the panel said such behaviour was "inappropriate in all circumstances".
Mr Mumford said he had made a “huge error of judgement” but did not do so because of any sexual motivation.
He said it was a “wholly misguided” attempt to support a pupil.
The ban means that Mr Mumford is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England.
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Labour donors demanding censorship of media they don't like.
Daniel Martin Deputy Political Editor. Jacob Freedland
20 September 2024 1:57pm
One of Sir Keir Starmer’s most prominent donors demanded a crackdown on “bullying newspapers”.
Lord Alli, the Prime Minister’s largest personal donor, called for restrictions on the number of newspapers that a proprietor could own.
He also called for a new offence of “corporate intimidation” to tackle what he called the “bullying” of public figures by newspapers.
On Wednesday night, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said she had not met Lord Alli to discuss any of these ideas, and said she had no plans to tighten regulation of the press.
The forthright comments by the peer may heighten fears that the party could give into his demands to restrict press freedom in return for his donations.

​

Lord Alli, who made his fortune in the TV industry, has given Labour almost £1 million in donations, including clothes for Sir Keir and his wife worth in excess of £25,000.
He also allowed Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, to stay in a $2.5 million flat in New York over New Year’s Eve, which is listed as his current residence.
In a speech in the Lords in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry into the British press in 2013, he proposed making it a new offence for the press to coerce individuals into giving them information about their private life.
“Like others, I am a little disappointed by some elements of the newspaper industry, who have deliberately misrepresented the report in order to scare the public in pursuit of their own self-interest,” he said.
“I would like a new offence on the statute book to deal with the issue of press intimidation. When a newspaper group uses information on an individual to coerce them into revealing details of their own or others’ private lives in return for protection or non-publication, it feels to me like blackmail, and we should make it a criminal offence.
“The lobbying of newspaper groups on their own behalf in their own papers needs to be looked at again.”
He also used his speech to argue for a state-funded press regulator.

​

A year later, in an interview with the Financial Times, he criticised Tony Blair’s New Labour for being too close to tabloid newspapers.
“I think we [in New Labour] started it, and we got it wrong,” he said. “In that rush to feed the 24/7 media, we just forgot to regulate it, and it forgot to regulate itself.”
He said politicians had let journalists intimidate them in the same “shameful” way that Militant once intimidated Labour, adding that he had spoken to party colleagues about his idea of instituting a new offence of “corporate intimidation”.
“When companies or newspapers use their power to intimidate individuals or politicians, it is no more acceptable than when the Mafia does it to a shopkeeper,” he said, adding: “It is blackmail.”
He also said he wanted to change media ownership laws so that no company could own three or more newspapers, “because it just upsets me”.
He added: “The thing about Rupert Murdoch that’s so brilliant is, before he walks in the door people are trying to work out what to give him.”
Lord Alli also defended the licence fee in the Lords, saying: “The licence fee system, where we as citizens jointly pay for the BBC, should remain in place.
“It is right that the licence fee should be increased in line with inflation through the charter review period. I believe that there is a strong case for more money to be invested in the BBC.”
A source close to Ms Nandy said there are no plans for further legislation on press regulation, and Ms Nandy is opposed to the idea that politicians should be telling the press what they can and cannot say.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/20/why-britain-is-so-reluctant-to-take-on-the-powerful/
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Well, I was wrong (shocking, I know). The BBC has flipped back to covering for Starmer, at least when it comes to his record of protecting paedophiles and rapists in high places. All the stories coming out about the CPS not prosecuting Mohamed al Fayed for being a rapey bastard mention that Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions during the period in question. All except the BBC, who neglect to mention Starmer entirely.

The excuse the Cabinet Office is giving is a laugh. Apparently, despite being director of public prosecutions and therefore the most likely to make a decision on such a potentially high profile case, Starmer's office conveniently didn't "handle" the case and therefore he can't be held responsible for the lack of prosecution. Just like with Saville and the Rotherham gangs, and every other rich-or-diverse sexual deviant for whom there was conveniently not enough evidence to make a case.
 
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I saw this sentiment expressed online a few times and have to admit to laughing more than is reasonable.

For those who don't get it another famous child rapist in the UK was Rolf Harris, an Australian
 
I just saw that the latest BBC nonce got 6 months SUSPENDED and also hasn't paid back any taxpayer money that he took as a salary.

Let me get this straight...be an actual paedo, get off with a slap on the wrist and spend the rest of your life doing whatever you want on your savings and investments that are more than many of us will ever see.
Shout at a policeman and you're straight to the gulags.
 
teriyakiburns said:
No. You don't get to struggle-session me for thinking she's a moron who has no idea how our electoral system works.
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The point of my post, you unmitigated spastic, was that the majority of Brits didn't bother voting and the few who did make the effort voted Labour to get back at the Conservatives. Anyone voting Labour, given its disastrous history that includes covering up islamic rape gangs, deserves what they get. Handing power to Labour through apathy has sealed Britain's fate.

I'm not the "moron" in this conversation.
 
Morethanabitfoolish said:
I saw this sentiment expressed online a few times and have to admit to laughing more than is reasonable.

For those who don't get it another famous child rapist in the UK was Rolf Harris, an Australian
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Why did they have to include his licence plate.

This is easily offensive speech in the UK and this dudes getting deported to a prison in Estonia.

The point of my post, you unmitigated spastic, was that the majority of Brits bother voting and the few who did make the effort voted Labour to get back at the Conservatives. Anyone voting Labour, given its disastrous history that includes covering up islamic rape gangs, deserves what they get. Handing power to Labour through apathy has sealed Britain's fate.

I'm not the "moron" in this conversation.
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One thing Labour does exceptionally well, and has only in the past ten years started to weaken on in regards to the "Red Wall" and Muslims is convice red voters to not vote red makes you Hitler reincarnate, innately wicked, racist and eager to return the UK to the middle 1800s "doff your cap to your betters" culture. Even more than Democrats in the US, where at least Democrats at least try to give a positive spin to their less successful decisions not voting Labour is tantamount to being a Protestant in Mary's England.

I know pensioners who have been directly fucked by the most recent happenings who are still convinced that MPs retaining their heating allowance and their freinds losing their lump sums is a good thing, and that anyone who didn't vote Labour is a racist that needs to go to jail.
 
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CaptainAutism69 said:
I just saw that the latest BBC nonce got 6 months SUSPENDED and also hasn't paid back any taxpayer money that he took as a salary.

Let me get this straight...be an actual paedo, get off with a slap on the wrist and spend the rest of your life doing whatever you want on your savings and investments that are more than many of us will ever see.
Shout at a policeman and you're straight to the gulags.
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I mean, if you had a successful job yes?

You shouldn’t have to give up all of your money or become poor because you comitted a crime.

I’m rather sure that would fall under unusual punishment.

And if you did, the tax payer would be paying for them when they got out due to benefits.

You seem mad you didn’t have a job as good or made good investments.
Karen of Human Resources said:
Why did they have to include his licence plate.
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In fairness, he was out their showing it off in public. He clearly did not care. And this would not count as bannable yet.
 
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