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.

 

[Made In Wales]

About an hour to go until the result.

Regardless of if Reform UK win or not, the message to Labour in Cardiff and Westminster from Caerphilly cannot be ignored. There is going to have to be serious changes and both Eluned and Sir Keir are going to have to grow up and realise their gravy train is about to come off the rails.

Reform UK have enjoyed a lot of highs, but will have to accept the lows and bounce back stronger when things don't go our way - since 2024, we've been on an upward curve and we are in a good place compared to a lot of our rivals.

Plaid are going to push us in Wales at the next GE and the Lib Dems and Greens are strengthening too in England. Not too sure if the SNP can bounce back after Sturgeongate.

However, I am more than confident that Reform UK will win more than they lose, and that the change we need as a country is beginning tonight in a town famous for its cheese, Amy Dowden and Tommy Cooper in South East Wales.

I'll be gracious in both victory and defeat - what will be will be.

 

[Tony Martin's Force Ghost]

Reform councillors in Worcestershire seem to be asking for a 10% council tax increase, despite campaiging on scrapping council tax. Did the other Reform council in Kent have issues like this as well? They seem to be fucking incompetent so far.

In fairness, Worcestershire County Council is incompetent as fuck. They overspent millions due to the private school tax, and due to no spaces being available, fully paid for them, spent 85 fucking million!. They get given about 1 billion annually and spend frigging 90% of that on social care and migrants. They're grossly overstaffed, and too big a county. What is even worse, they were cut down in 1997 as they used to cover Herefordshire also. There are some places that should not be covered in their territory, but Birmingham would not pick them up because they're predominantly white areas, such as Redditch and Bromsgrove.

Worcester County council is so big that it has had to be divided up into 4 different councils to maintain. They were also in deficit last year by 110 million, most likely because of the surge of immigrants there.

I feel bad for them because they're trying not to axe jobs, but they will have to.

 

[Heinrich Maneuver]

Worcestershire County Council is incompetent as fuck.

It also spends about 1/3 of the year underwater I swear half the inhabitants have webbed fingers and toes.
Funny (?) worcestershire story: they tried to build a new footbridge over the River Severn, but ran out of money and left a half bridge sticking out over the water, completely unattended. So many people jumped off this partially done bridge they had to get a security guard for it.

 

[Made In Wales]

It also spends about 1/3 of the year underwater I swear half the inhabitants have webbed fingers and toes.
Funny (?) worcestershire story: they tried to build a new footbridge over the River Severn, but ran out of money and left a half bridge sticking out over the water, completely unattended. So many people jumped off this partially done bridge they had to get a security guard for it.

The same council allowed a fraudster called Jason Whittingham to invest in Worcester Warriors.

He also bought Morecambe FC, on money siphoned from the Warriors, and almost succeeded in shutting them down as he did the Warriors.

Worcester Raiders FC were also funded from Warriors money, however they've now 'ground swapped' with Worcester City who now share Sixways Stadium with the reformed Warriors.

 

[BongoMongo]

Lots of lawyers in the UK survive by working legal aid claims and the set amount they get won't go up 20-30% to match the new/different tax. I can see big parts of the already fucked courts system just grinding to a halt.

Good. Lawyers taking on legal aid cases are among those taking our money to facilitate illegal vermin staying here.

Fuck the lot of them.

 

[April Ryan]

Well that could be a sign of things to come, all the labour voters voting tactically to stop reform.

 

[Made In Wales]

Breaking news: Plaid Cymru win the Senedd seat of Caerphilly

Congratulations go to them and their candidate Lindsay Whittle.

Hard lines for Reform UK, but it was always going to be a close battle and victory for neither side was guaranteed.

It looks as if the Left solidified behind Plaid to stop Reform UK - this is something Reform UK will have to live with and overcome in time for the next GE, as the Left will try everything to prevent their march to power. I personally thought that the Left vote would be more split, but there we go.

497 - Steve Aicheler, Liberal Democrats

117 - Anthony Cook, Gwlad

516 - Gareth Hughes, Green Party

690 - Gareth Potter, Conservatives

12,113 - Llyr Powell, Reform

709 - Roger Quilliam, Ukip

3,713 - Richard Tunnicliffe, Welsh Labour

15,961 - Lindsay Whittle, Plaid Cymru

 

[femboy fart huffer]

Conservatives

Lol the tories are in with the fucking greens and ukip. They have truly become a joke. I'm surprised labour weren't down there with them considering the last local elections where they were grouped in with 'other'.

 

[Made In Wales]

Lol the tories are in with the fucking greens and ukip. They have truly become a joke. I'm surprised labour weren't down there with them considering the last local elections where they were grouped in with 'other'.

Some people would seemingly still vote for a turd if it had a red rosette in Wales.

Some takeaways from this c/o Wales Online:

1) Welsh polling by YouGov is projecting that Labour will slip to third place in the Senedd election in May with Plaid Cymru and Reform fighting it out at the top to take the most seats.

If the result in Caerphilly had been a total outlier compared to those polls it would have deeply undermined those projections. But that didn't happen.

The result in the by-election adds yet more evidence to projections - both anecdotal and from polling - that May will be a really hard election for Labour.

2) Any election partway through an electoral cycle almost always results in the ruling party receiving a drubbing. Keir Starmer's popularity, is, we know, poor. A series of missteps and unpopular policies haven't helped.

This by-election was held 15 months after he took the keys to Downing Street, and it would always have been a bad time to be asking people what they think of his administration.

Welsh political expert Professor Jac Larner, from Cardiff University said: "As a general rule, by elections have always been a chance to kick the incumbent party.

"For example, in Westminster elections between 2010 and 2019, there were 36 by-elections. On seven occasions a party other than the imcumbent won, but five of those reverted to the original party at the next general election."

So, victory for fleeting and the by-election result was not a good guide to the subsequent general election.

Take, for example, the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election in August 2019 when Jane Dodds won the seat for the Lib Dems from the Conservatives. At the general election four months later, it reverted to the Conservatives.

In Senedd terms, by-elections are rare and there have only been four (excluding Caerphilly). In three of those, the incumbent party won, and in the other Labour was defeated by an incumbent.

Voters of an incumbent party are also less likely, Prof Larner said, to turn out at a by-election.

3) It's important to be aware though that huge changes are coming into force for May's election. This election was fought on the existing constituency boundary and on a first past the post system, so one person who got the most votes won. However, that is changing for May.

In May next year, Caerphilly will be part of the Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni constituency which also incorporates the Blaenau Gwent constituency.

This super constituency, one of 16 around Wales, will return six politicians to Cardiff Bay. They will all be chosen by a system of proportional representation being brought in as part of the expansion of the Senedd from 60 to 96 members.

4) Parties are allowed to spend £100,000 to direct campaign in a by-election so those who have campaigned in Caerphilly this time could not exceed that.

In May's election, the maximum amount a party can spend is based on how many candidates you are standing in each constituency.

The spending limit is a national limit, which means you do not have to attribute your spending to particular constituencies and there is no constituency spending limit but for each constituency you are standing in, you add between £52,500 and £70,000 to your spending limit. So, if you stand at least six candidates in a constituency, you will get the maximum of £70,000.

We don't yet know what any party spent, but many believe Reform UK spent heavily and perhaps close to the £100,000 limit. Plaid Cymru won by spending a fraction of that, something more in the low teens would be an educated guess.

It means the assumption that Reform UK's pockets would help it win should be taken with a pinch of salt.

5) Labour had a horror of a start to this campaign.

Firstly, many of its local campaigners were being asked to go out in an election campaign which occured because of the death of one of their friends, Hefin David.

Then, their council leader quit, expressing publicly how he couldn't support either the UK leader, Keir Starmer, or the "Johnny-come-lately" candidate Richard Tunnicliffe.

While people do, broadly, expect Labour - a well established and well funded party machine - to do better in May next year than the polls currently suggest, the biggest issue the Caerphilly drubbing could cause them is that it further feeds into the ongoing narrative that the party is going to be defeated in Wales.

That impacts donors, to some extent, but more crucially those campaigners who would otherwise be out knocking doors over the winter months ahead of May's polling day, who might now think twice about whether it is worth their effort.

The consensus was that getting less than 12% in this by-election meant real danger for their hopes in May, when current Blaenau Gwent MS Alun Davies will be top of the list.

6) The budget just got harder to pass

Mark Drakeford summed it up when we asked him the importance of the Caerphilly by-election in terms of the vote in January on the Welsh Government budget. Passing the Welsh budget will be harder for Labour without holding the Caerphilly seat.

That's because in 2021, Labour won exactly half of the 60 seats, meaning it has needed at least one politician from another party to help it pass its budget. Plaid had supported it during the co-operation agreement and then last year Lib Dem Jane Dodds backed it.

Now they don't just need her on board - as she has indicated she will be - but at least one other politician.

 

[Strix454]

I've heard today that Labour is going to cancel all local government elections for another year. What the media continues to call their "sweeping landslide victory" with 30% of the vote seems to give them unlimited power to revise the basic structures of government without limit.

 

[FedPostalService]

I've heard today that Labour is going to cancel all local government elections for another year. What the media continues to call their "sweeping landslide victory" with 30% of the vote seems to give them unlimited power to revise the basic structures of government without limit.

Hey, chud, don’t you understand that we need to protect democracy by destroying it?

 

[BongoMongo]

Some parts of this country, they would literally vote for the reanimated corpse of Thatcher if it had rosette pinned on it.

 

[Kane Lives]

I've heard today that Labour is going to cancel all local government elections for another year. What the media continues to call their "sweeping landslide victory" with 30% of the vote seems to give them unlimited power to revise the basic structures of government without limit.

Has this ever been done before?

 

[Strix454]

Has this ever been done before?

It was done during both world wars for reasons of national emergency.

But the legal foundation of doing it this time is one of Tony Blair's constitutional innovations from the late 1990s. Labour inserted a section into the Local Government Act of 2000 which gives the government unaccountable and nearly unlimited powers to determine the timing of local elections in the UK.

 

[Otterly]

I dont want women only train carriages. I want all the carriages to be safe, so that me, my husband and my children, the boys and the girls, can sit in peace. We used to have that. The train used to be quite nice to get, decent large rolling stock, clean, nice view.
Have a quiet carriage? Sure, great idea and when I’m not with the kids I’ll use it.
I do not want us turned into an Islamic country where the only way to be safe as a woman is to wear a bin bag and keep men at bay. That’s obscene.
Stop multiplying causes and fix the root issue - get rid of the people who can’t behave

Does this count as an illegal bonfire I wonder?

French cuisine

Plaid have said that they will not consider independence for the first 10 years of governance,

Welsh independence would be a disaster. How could Wales be economically independent? They don’t make anything

I've heard today that Labour is going to cancel all local government elections for another year. What the media continues to call their "sweeping landslide victory" with 30% of the vote seems to give them unlimited power to revise the basic structures of government without limit.

How is this legal? Oh of course, that fucking demon Blair. Quel surprise

 

[Overly Serious]

"For example, in Westminster elections between 2010 and 2019, there were 36 by-elections. On seven occasions a party other than the imcumbent won, but five of those reverted to the original party at the next general election."

I don't doubt his facts but I'd like to also see what the turn out is. I suspect that a reason for this is because those with their party in power don't see it as important to turn out. But Caerphilly (insert joke about how do the Welsh eat cheese), turn out was at just over 50%. Which is both high and apparently a record for Caerphilly specifically.

I'm afraid I lost nearly all respect for Plaid Cymru during Brexit, where they showed they're not pro-Wales, merely anti-English. They were more than happy to have their nation governed by Brussels, just not Westminster.

 

[FedPostalService]

Doesn’t the concept of a women’s only carriage create the dangerous possibility in the minds of retards that any woman not in the segregated carriage is asking for it?

“What was she wearing?” suddenly becomes “where was she sitting?”

if women aren’t safe then increase the policing and punish the retards not making them safe.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I've heard today that Labour is going to cancel all local government elections for another year. What the media continues to call their "sweeping landslide victory" with 30% of the vote seems to give them unlimited power to revise the basic structures of government without limit.

All? Last I heard it was a half dozen down south that are going to be "reorganised". I think Rayner going has messed up all their plans in that regard, but those Labour councils are happy to stay in power another year.

--

BBC is coping hard about the caerphilly election right now.

Chris Mason: Extraordinary Caerphilly by-election humbles Westminster's big beasts

The unspoken belief in the article is that Reform will be beaten by the greens or the lib dems, and never mind that they're polling so far behind that they only got a little over a thousand votes between them in this election.

 

[FedPostalService]

BBC is coping hard about the caerphilly election right now.

Chris Mason: Extraordinary Caerphilly by-election humbles Westminster's big beasts

The unspoken belief in the article is that Reform will be beaten by the greens or the lib dems, and never mind that they're polling so far behind that they only got a little over a thousand votes between them in this election.

They are acting like it’s a stunning defeat for Reform and that they’d held the seat for generations?

 

[Otterly]

Doesn’t the concept of a women’s only carriage create the dangerous possibility in the minds of retards that any woman not in the segregated carriage is asking for it?

Well yes. You’re safe, maybe but only in this segregated area. And don’t do that or wear that or say that.
I dont want to live in that world. I want to live in the world as it was before where I could go anywhere and be safe. I do not want to be restricted to women’s only public transport.
Women in the Muslim world are covered in burkas and exist in a regimented and closeted world because otherwise the men around them will harm them. I don’t want that world.
Fuck off with the women only carriages and police actual crime against women