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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.

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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Fair. I guess my point is that this would be really, really easy to do if protecting kids online was something they had any interest in whatsoever. But we all know that their push to protect kids, is about controlling adults and stopping us from free discussion.
So would more impactful things like saying no more suspended sentences for distributing child porn. It would be incredibly easy to have a lot more impact than just parental controls. But they won't do that. They won't properly prosecute. They won't let you use parental controls. They won't do anything at all no matter how big or small easy or hard. They do not care. They can easily fix things if they wanted to. It's not because any of these things are actually hard, they just want to say they're hard because that's a better excuse than them admitting that they don't give a shit what happens to your children and care more about you insulting the rapist than any actual justice.
 
Reform has already had to suspend 6 councillors
If the Greens held themselves to the same standard as the moron suspended for the Nigerian comment they'd have suspended high end double digit councillors by now for remarks about Israel.
Reform councils also tend to do badly as they'll talk a big talk and then flail from shitty candidates (e.g. the ones who said they'd scrap DEI officers only to discover there weren't any, or the ones who said they'd end ten minute cities/low traffic neighbourhoods and then discover they didn't have any).
Reform controlled 10 councils prior to this election for less than a year. Looking over them I decided to go with reporting from the Independent, no friend to the party.

Over the past few months, both Labour and the Conservatives have claimed Reform UK and the party’s leader Nigel Farage MP have broken promises made during last year’s local elections that Reform councils would cut council tax.

Mr Farage has denied this, saying repeatedly that he never promised to cut council tax, while Reform has defended its record, claiming that it has implemented lower council tax increases than other political parties and that some of its councils have delivered a “real terms tax cut” by increasing council tax by less than the rate of inflation.

So did Reform break its promises? We couldn’t find any evidence that Mr Farage had explicitly promised to cut or freeze council tax, but some local Reform candidates did say they would (including some now running local authorities), and that has not yet happened.
Did Nigel Farage promise to ‘cut council tax’?

Both Labour and the Conservatives have cited a leaflet circulated widely by Reform UK during the 2025 local election campaign with a pledge to “reduce waste and cut your taxes” next to an image of Mr Farage, while the Conservatives also highlighted a speech Mr Farage gave in March 2025, in which he said “we will cut taxes”.

Neither of these specifically mention council tax, and while it could be reasonably assumed that during a local election campaign references to cutting taxes might be taken to mean council tax, there’s also some evidence that this pledge referred to what Reform would do at a national level were it to be in government.

For example, the mention of cutting taxes in Mr Farage’s speech came during a section where he talked about what his party would do if it won the next general election, and was immediately followed by a specific commitment to increase income tax thresholds (which are not set by local authorities).

Similarly, the leaflet pledge to “reduce waste and cut your taxes” doesn’t specifically mention council tax, and is listed alongside two other commitments (to “freeze immigration and stop the boats” and to “scrap Net Zero to cut your energy bills”) which are clearly national pledges. (Mr Farage said in March 2026 that all three of these commitments referred to national policies).

We’ve asked both Labour and the Conservatives if they’ve any evidence of Mr Farage specifically referencing cutting or freezing council tax during the 2025 local election campaign, but have not received a response from either.
What has actually happened?

Council tax increases have now been confirmed for 2026/27. Among upper-tier councils, every single one has increased council tax, and three-quarters increased it by the maximum allowed without holding a referendum (4.99%). None of the upper-tier local authorities mentioned above where Reform explicitly pledged to freeze or cut council tax have done so.

Currently, Reform has majority control of nine upper-tier local authorities—the council tax increases for these are:

– Derbyshire (4.9%)– Durham (1.99%)– Kent (3.99)– Lancashire (3.8%)– Lincolnshire (2.9%)– North Northamptonshire (4.99%)– Nottinghamshire (3.99%)– Staffordshire (3.99%)– West Northamptonshire (4.95%)

Reform has minority control of three upper-tier local authorities—the council tax increases for these are:

– Leicestershire (2.99%)– Warwickshire (4.44%)– Worcestershire (8.98%, with special permission from the UK government to increase beyond 4.99% without holding a referendum).

One local authority, Doncaster City Council, has a Reform majority, but is nominally controlled by Labour under its directly-elected mayor. A proposed increase of 4.99% was lowered to 2% by a Reform amendment.

Based on the current rate of CPI inflation (around 3%), three councils controlled by Reform (Durham, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire) have implemented effective real terms decreases.

How does Reform compare to other parties?

Reform claims to have delivered the lowest average council tax increase of any major party, at 3.94%. Looking specifically at upper-tier councils where one party has majority control, this is correct. The nine upper-tier councils controlled by a Reform majority increased Band D council tax for 2026/27 by an average of 3.94%—lower than the overall average increase of 4.86%.
When the Independent is forced to admit council tax increases are lower under Reform councils that's suggesting it's not been a complete failure. There's clearly a lot to do but a sweeping statement that they all do badly because there's no waste to cut when they have delivered lower increases than any major party, even allowing for a massive outlier in one council, that suggests otherwise. So which sources told you they had hiked council tax over what every other political party did when even the Independent says otherwise?

I consider you an intelligent poster, don't ruin that by telling me you've started taking the Canary at face value. I'm already irked you forced me to defend a man who looks his best covered in a milkshake.
 
When the Independent is forced to admit council tax increases are lower under Reform councils that's suggesting it's not been a complete failure.
I think Reform are doing their best to commit to their baseline promise with regards to local governance. I think the problem is pretty much every local authority is close to bankruptcy, and most of them are due to factors out of local authority control.

Basically, I don't think in most cases you can cut council taxes without cutting most services further, and I don't think you can sustain council taxes without cutting most services further either.

Reform's falling down point is that they've posited that there's a lot of fat to trim from local authority spending, but they seem to keep finding out those budgets are pretty lean. They're not necessarily doing much worse than any other party, it's just they make a big noise and also tend to get elected into councils that are already falling apart. That and the aforementioned paper candidate problem.
If the Greens held themselves to the same standard
They're not going to because they're lunatics, and any Green majority council is probably dealing with constituents who prioritise ineffectual comments about Palestine over bin collections.
 
Reform's falling down point is that they've posited that there's a lot of fat to trim from local authority spending, but they seem to keep finding out those budgets are pretty lean. They're not necessarily doing much worse than any other party, it's just they make a big noise and also tend to get elected into councils that are already falling apart. That and the aforementioned paper candidate problem.

They're not going to because they're lunatics, and any Green majority council is probably dealing with constituents who prioritise ineffectual comments about Palestine over bin collections.
Both fair. But in your original post neither of these was positioned as Reform making the most of a terrible situation but as Reform doing uniquely poorly.

You described the Reform councils in a manner that suggested they are worse than those run by our major parties when the figures from an unfriendly source do not support that. You called them out for suspending councillors then admit they are actually holding themselves to a higher standard than one of the other political parties and one that our media is currently trumpeting as having experienced major success recently while glossing over the fact that they're two steps away from chanting, "gas the Jews" and have already made remarks that, like Ricky Jones, had it not been followed by "Free Palestine" would have seen them inside a cell.

Reform deserve a kicking. Any party Farage leads is a shit inside a sock. But I will take up the alleged Welshy's banner on this and say that if we are going to judge Reform's councils then we should be both remembering who had them for decades before and assessing them against every other council. In which light while still not great they are far from the worst.
 
Come on, that line about melting down Nigerians to fill potholes was legitimately hilarious. Reform need to rally round our new king, not leave him out to dry.
 
Both fair. But in your original post neither of these was positioned as Reform making the most of a terrible situation but as Reform doing uniquely poorly.
Fair enough, in my original post I did give a very broad strokes summary to someone who seemed to be an American, so I could have used a bit more nuance.
 
Streeting is akin to Charles Parnell. He sent tremors for a power grab but bottled it; he will be forgotten in the annals of history as a failure. Forever the person who could and should but was marred by his own O'Shea scandal with Mandalson in this matter.

Starmer could limp, but it's somewhat over at this point. He will either have more cabinet ministers leave in the next few days, or his premiership will be that of a despot now. I dislike him because he is utterly insane, but even fucking Milliband a week or so ago said, "he should leave for the good of the party." He is right, he has murdered the party for his own ego, but most importantly, the country.

Every scandal will create the same outcome, the Mandalson humble address part 2 is still lurching.
 
He will either have more cabinet ministers leave in the next few days, or his premiership will be that of a despot now.
I just don't know how we're going to proceed without a fucking Victims Minister. Seriously, how can this government even stumble on for a single day without that vital position being filled? Shouldn't they call a GE already? I dont feel safe.
 
The problem is that he is causing so much financial and political damage. The country is literally at his mercy, and he has none of our concerns. If there is a Southport 2.0 its ogre. Another aspect is that he has just topped up the public's discontent to a fever pitch. I had conversations with randoms about him going; they were talking with me, with glee.
 
I think Starmer is just gonna limp on. I'm all in on nothing ever happening.
He's got too much top cover from the WEF and other globalist elites to step down, no matter how much pushback he gets. Like Trudeau, Arden, and eventually Albanese, he's in place for a very specific purpose--to carry out their Migration Replacement plans, and then step down when the job is perceived to be finished.

I mean, how else can anyone explain this bullshit:
starmer.png

If a national leader was announcing a change of allegiance to a foreign invasion force, I can't think of any other way that such sentiments would be stated. Absolute traitorous behavior by this anvil-headed cockroach, and there's an entire party and media apparatus in the UK that's helping him do it out of sheer post-Cold War regret that the wrong side won.
 
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