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.

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

#VEGANsausageroll thanks Greggs

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.

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.

 

[Long and sneaky]

It illustrates in a nutshell the postiion that quangos occupy in the UK, and the managerial class that have been a drain on the state for the last 30 years.

Why is everything in this country just webs upon webs of greedy bastardry suffocating the life out of everything? Why do we even need quangos? Get rid of them all and take the money back.
Sick to death of hearing about soulless management drones ruining everything and making people suffer pointlessly.

 

[Kane Lives]

It illustrates in a nutshell the postiion that quangos occupy in the UK, and the managerial class that have been a drain on the state for the last 30 years. Someone in a reply responded with this.

More like fifty, innit? Old enough that it got into a Yes, Minister episode, so definitely at least that old.

 

[Clem Fandango]

I'm a few pages behind, so I hope the conversation hasn't moved on too much. But there was a bit in the music video for "Mi Chico Latino" where Geri Halliwell would surface from underwater tits-first. The song got pretty frequent rotation on UK Play back in summer 1999.

Kids these days will never know what we had to do with before the Internet. Still, we need to return to those times. As a nation. Bin the smartphones!

 

[Crunkle]

There'll be no sweeping this one up, it's not a little bit of expenses fiddling it's outright corruption and they have the receipts too

Story is starting to snowball. Whoever is orchestrating this is doing a great job. Softly let it out at the weekend, slowly reveal more and more damning evidence, also pulling Labour's top lawyer into this.

They have now released a leaked email from Labour lawyer Gerald Shamash, in which he advised McSweeney to drop his claim that he had been told he did not have to declare the donations, adding that he hoped to minimise publicity for the rule breach.

“My advice, but it is in practice the only realistic route, we are being and have to be seen as transparent as possible,” Shamash wrote. “The amounts of the late reported donations is £739,492 and there are, in my view, no easy way to explain how Labour Together finds itself in this situation.

“If Labour Together cannot deal substantively with questions I pose then perhaps simply best to base our case as to the non-reporting down as admin error.”

It was only after McSweeney’s departure from the organisation that his replacement, Hannah O’Rourke, found almost three years of donations had not been declared and filed a series of late declarations to the watchdog.

I believe I was correct over how serious this story is and I think it ends up with the collapse of Keir Starmer regardless:
A) McSweeney / No. 10 come out and say "all legal advice was followed to the letter", party moves on him and forces him and McSweeney out. Could even get as serious as an inquiry or a police investigation.
B) McSweeney sacked, Starmer's entire team disintegrates beneath him and he's forced to resign eventually as the backbenchers bully him over every single piece of legislation, will make a budget fucking impossible.

 

[Le b0wski]

Elsewhere, someone is moving against McSweeney. The Mail on Sunday ran a story on how the think tank Labour Together, which was founded by McSweeney in 2017 as a vehicle for taking the party back from Corbyn, banked over £700,000 in donations between 2017 and 2020 but only declared one to the Electoral Commission, worth £12,500. In 2019 McSweeney approached Starmer with this warchest and said it would be his if he promised to run for the leadership after the general election. When McSweeney left Labour Together to become Starmer's full-time puppeteer, his replacement found the hidden donations and alerted the EC, who investigated. Labour Together insisted that it had been a genuine oversight on their part and were fined about £15k - a slap on the wrist.

The new element of the story on Sunday is that someone leaked to the Tories that LT were lying, that they knew full well that the donations should have been declared and that a friendly lawyer, Gerald Shamash (made a peer by Starmer in 2024), advised them to claim that the failure to declare was a mistake rather than deliberate and guided them on how best to do this.

Today, the Tory chairman published the email on X.

https://archive.ph/6gWW5 (Original MoS story)
https://xcancel.com/kevinhollinrake/status/1970544480278515897 (screenshots of email)

I don't know my way around Labour groups but I know Labour Together/Labour First/Labour to win/Progress and a bunch of others came together off the back of Tony Blair/New Labour to back Starmer. While Labour Together is getting the press coverage I suspect it's Labour First members pushing to ditch Starmer+Sweeney as the only thing they have is "make Labour more electable"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_First

Steve Reed is also weirdly absent from the news despite being the person who worked with Sweeney decades ago and got him in with Starmer and has benefited ever since.

 

[Otterly]

This is not just a small amount of money; it is nearly £1 million in undeclared funds that appears to be linked to most of the cabinet.

Who is the money FROM? Before LT, what is the source of it?
If I was in charge I would have a Bonfire of the Quangos that would make a supernova look like a campfire. Nobody can fix anything as long as this parallel power structure is in place.

 

[Coolio55]

I'm a few pages behind, so I hope the conversation hasn't moved on too much. But there was a bit in the music video for "Mi Chico Latino" where Geri Halliwell would surface from underwater tits-first. The song got pretty frequent rotation on UK Play back in summer 1999.

Kids these days will never know what we had to do with before the Internet. Still, we need to return to those times. As a nation. Bin the smartphones!

Youtube is starting to crack down on the original "Boys" music video where Sabrina's in a far too small bikini

 

[indigoisviolet]

Why is everything in this country just webs upon webs of greedy bastardry suffocating the life out of everything?

When has it not been so since 1066?

The only thing that has changed is adding oligarchy to the mix in the modern era. When a man can take a billion pounds of tax money for housing "refugees" you can be sure that the 5% interest he makes on it will be deployed to ensure a never-ending supply of "refugees". That's just one man who was indiscreet enough to get himself identified. Look at the chap who presided over the OFCOM office that pushed the bullshit Online Safety Act, who then magically side-stepped into one of the largest Digital Identity companies on Earth. None of this is illegal, all of it encouraged by the very structure of the system to keep it in motion.

 

[Smyrna]

Who is the money FROM? Before LT, what is the source of it?

The sources appear to be normal big-ticket Labour donors who were not donating to the party itself whilst Corbyn was leader. The concealment appears to be driven by a desire to keep knowledge of the fundraising away from the party leadership - if Corbyn's lot knew that this avowedly anti-Corbyn internal group were raising hundreds of thousands then there would be retaliatory action to nip them in the bud.

It obviously does not justify the criminality, but that is their excuse.

 

[Crunkle]

if Corbyn's lot knew that this avowedly anti-Corbyn internal group were raising hundreds of thousands then there would be retaliatory action to nip them in the bud.

Are they really going to claim that withholding nearly a £million in political donations that change the course of our country and world events is some kind of whistleblowing thing?

Please, please do that. That's exactly what mandatory political donation reporting is set up to protect from.

 

[Overly Serious]

How is 12 months jail time a fitting sentence for raping children? You get more time for kicking over a wheelie bin.

Or saying that you wouldn't care if the place he lived burned down.

 

[Kofi Drinka]

Labours a bunch of bent puffs constantly taking bribes and trying to cover up their dealings? Well I'm shocked! I would never have guessed!

 

[Overly Serious]

Who is the money FROM? Before LT, what is the source of it?
If I was in charge I would have a Bonfire of the Quangos that would make a supernova look like a campfire. Nobody can fix anything as long as this parallel power structure is in place.

At the 2:20sec mark of @Kier Starmer 's video above, Paul Holden says it's a string of wealthy backers but namechecks two in particular. Sir Trevor Chinn who is notable for he very pro-Israel lobbying and Labour Friends of Israel and received the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honour for his services to the country. The other big donor a hedge fund owner named Martin Taylor whose interests are apparently in Health Care, but information on that guy was more sparse.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

I'm a few pages behind, so I hope the conversation hasn't moved on too much. But there was a bit in the music video for "Mi Chico Latino" where Geri Halliwell would surface from underwater tits-first. The song got pretty frequent rotation on UK Play back in summer 1999.

Kids these days will never know what we had to do with before the Internet. Still, we need to return to those times. As a nation. Bin the smartphones!

I just watched that video and noticed two things; Halliwell's tits are a British treasure and the video is about a bunch of fighting age brownoid men on a boat lusting after a lone white female.

Predictive programming?

 

[Kofi Drinka]

I just watched that video and noticed two things; Halliwell's tits are a British treasure and the video is about a bunch of fighting age brownoid men on a boat lusting after a lone white female.

Predictive programming?

They're Europeans with a sun tan mate. They aren't browns.

Geri always seemed a bit of a munter to me. Bunton was the hot spice girl and none of them had a chance against Sophie Elis Bextor.

 

[teriyakiburns]

The other big donor a hedge fund owner named Martin Taylor whose interests are apparently in Health Care, but information on that guy was more sparse.

His investment firm has a share in HCA healthcare, which is an enormous global healthcare provider. They have a bunch of locations in London, which he dismisses as "a fraction" of the global enterprise, but IIRC they're looking to expand massively in the UK in the next few years. I expect he wants the NHS to continue operating in crippled and inefficient state, in order for private healthcare, like HCA, to soak excess referrals at extortionate prices.

 

[Otterly]

At the 2:20sec mark of @Kier Starmer 's video above, Paul Holden says it's a string of wealthy backers but namechecks two in particular. Sir Trevor Chinn who is notable for he very pro-Israel lobbying and Labour Friends of Israel and received the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honour for his services to the country. The other big donor a hedge fund owner named Martin Taylor whose interests are apparently in Health Care, but information on that guy was more sparse.

Ah. Nevsky capital was his old gig, they were heavily Into gazprom and made bank in the Russian utilities. His new one is crake capital, and they’re very into private healthcare, they were bidding for a billion quid a worth of end of life care.
Wholesome.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

They're Europeans with a sun tan mate. They aren't browns.

Geri always seemed a bit of a munter to me. Bunton was the hot spice girl and none of them had a chance against Sophie Elis Bextor.

They're brownoids. Look at the facial features. And boat people are europeans as well

Tell me your experience of 90s Britain is from Google, without telling me.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

His new one is crake capital, and they’re very into private healthcare, they were bidding for a billion quid a worth of end of life care.

Ah, getting a back bencher to push that makes even more sense now. When that gets properly uncovered Keir needs to be very insulated.

 

[Kofi Drinka]

Ah, getting a back bencher to push that makes even more sense now. When that gets properly uncovered Keir needs to be very insulated.

Is the thread about to dox all the labour backers and have Welshy pass it onto the Reform propaganda arm?