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Driver slams ‘appalling’ £1,800 fine for overtaking cyclist too closely

The driver was offered course to avoid prosecution, but failed to attend

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GoSafe Wales

A driver has hit out at an ‘absolutely appalling’ fine after he made to pay out over £1,800 for closely overtaking a cyclist.

Wayne Humphreys, seventy-seven, had to fork out £1,887 and was given four points on his license after footage showed him narrowly overtaking a cyclist in his Audi Q8 in Bridgend, South Wales, in September last year.

The cyclist captured the incident on a GoPro camera, and later reported Humphreys to roads policing teams.

The warehouse boss was contacted by officials and offered a course as an alternative to prosecution for driving without due care and attention. 

GoSafe Wales

However, he failed to accept the course and later failed to comply with a fixed penalty notice, resulting in him appearing in Cardiff Magistrates’ Court on June 8th this year.

There, Humphries was found guilty of driving without due care and attention and received four penalty points on his licence as well as a £1,152 fine. He was also ordered to pay £620 costs to the CPS and a £115 victim surcharge.

The driver has continued to maintain his innocence, however, and slammed the decision as ‘absolutely appalling’.

He said, as per ITV News: “I think the fine is absolutely appalling. I am seventy-seven years of age and the last fine I had was thirty-five to forty years ago for doing 34 miles per hour in a 30 zone… Other than that I have never had a fine and I have had a licence for sixty years.”

Humphreys said he and his son measured the road in Bridgend, and estimated the gap he left for the cyclist was sufficient and safe.

He said: “Taking into account the cyclist and his bike there would have still been at least four foot space.

“I find it absolutely incredible this has happened. I don’t know whether to appeal it or not. It will probably just cost me more money.

“This has already cost me about £4,500 with the money for the court and the solicitor. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

A GoSafe spokesperson said: “The driver, Wayne Humphreys, from Pontyclun, was contacted and offered a course.

“The ‘What’s Driving Us’ course is offered to drivers and riders as an alternative to prosecution for the offence of driving without due care and attention. Mr. Humphreys failed to accept this course and later failed to comply with a fixed penalty notice.

“GoSafe regularly receives similar submissions through Op Snap and has worked closely with drivers and cycling groups to develop Operation Close Pass, which looks to educate both drivers and cyclists on how to stay safe on our roads.

“If you have information on close pass incident or other possible road traffic offence, you can submit the details, along with supporting footage, to GoSafe using Operation SNAP.”

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Man fed up with potholes fills them with Pot Noodles to get council’s attention

Just add boiling water!

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Pot Noodle

A man who was fed up with the UK pothole problem has decided to start filling them with Pot Noodles.

Mark Morell, from Brackley, wanted to tackle the UK pothole issue so he decided to fill the dreaded ditches in the road with Pot Noodles. Also known as ‘Mr Pothole’, Morell wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of the problem in the hope that councils would notice and do something about it.

Now he’s teamed up with the Pot Noodle brand to urge the government to fix the state of the UK’s roads. In a tweet on his Twitter page, he put: “Since #NothingFillsAHoleLikePotNoodle, who better to team up with to highlight the ridiculous state of the UK’s roads than @potnoodle.

“Send us pictures of your worst, local potholes using the hashtag and tagging your local council!”

As reported in The Metro, it’s not the first time he has tried to come up with unusual ideas to catch the attention of the council to sort the issue. His previous ideas of floating rubber ducks and feeding potholes cake on their birthday were unsuccessful, forcing him to think up new measures.

He told The Metro: “Potholes drive road users potty and me more than most. The pothole crisis across the UK is an increasingly serious issue and something I have been campaigning on for more than 10 years.

“During this period I have had to use my noodle with stunts to highlight just how bad potholes are, from floating plastic ducks in water filled potholes, birthday cakes, fishing rods and model submarines.”

Experts say that ‘rapid freeze and thawing cycles’ have made situation affecting the UK’s roads much worse. And Morell is not the only one who has been coming up with wacky methods to get potholes fixed in their local area.

In Manchester ‘Wanksy’ became famous for spray painting penises around them — which proved to be pretty effective — with council workers taking swift action to remove the profanity from the street.

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UK named 19th happiest country in the world as Finland comes first once again

Where are the happiest places to live?

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Bernard Spragg. NZ & Jorge Franganillo / Flickr

Here are the happiest countries to live in around the world — according to The World Happiness Report.

The report identifies the happiest nations as well as those at the bottom of the scale, and everything in between. It also looks at the factors that contribute to greater happiness.

Despite the current climate, it’s not all doom and gloom and there’s cause for optimism. According to the report, benevolence has risen about 25% since its pre-pandemic levels.

In an interview with CNN, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, John Helliwell, said: “Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022.”

It has also found that global happiness has not taken a hit in the three years since the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Life evaluations from 2020-2022 have been ‘remarkably resilient’ with global averages pretty much in line with the three years preceding the pandemic.

Jonathan / Flickr

As Helliwell added: “Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness.”

The report draws on global survey data from people in more than 150 countries, and is a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years — in this case 2020 to 2022.

The Happiest Nations

Released on Monday March 20th (World Happiness Day), it revealed that for a sixth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country — taken from its rankings based largely on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll.

The Nordic country and its neighbours Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings which include: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support, low corruption, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.

Eujenijus Radlinskas / Wikimedia

So, what can other societies learn from these rankings? What are they doing that others aren’t? Helliwell, who is a professor emeritus at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, said: “Is it, are they doing things that we wish we’d seen before and we can start doing?

“Or is it something unique about their climate and history that make them different? And fortunately, at least from my perspective, the answer is the former.” The report says: “The objective of every institution should be to contribute what it can to human wellbeing.”

Since last year, Israel has moved up to number 4 from number 9.  The Netherlands (No. 5), Switzerland (No. 8), Luxembourg (No. 9) and New Zealand (No. 10) round out the top 10.

Australia (No. 12), Canada (No. 13), Ireland (No. 14), the United States (No. 15) and the United Kingdom (No. 19) all made it into the top 20. 

The Archive Team / Wikimedia

Lithuania is a new entry breaking into the top 20 having had a steady climb over the last six years all the way from 52nd place. It replaced France which dropped down from 20th place to number 21.

The Least Happiest Nations

At the very bottom of the list lies Afghanistan at number 137. Lebanon is only one place above at number 136. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown both countries into the spotlight since the war broke out last year — when the report was also released. In this year’s rankings, Russia is number 70 and Ukraine is number 92.

It says: “despite the magnitude of suffering and damage in Ukraine, life evaluations in September 2022 remained higher than in the aftermath of the 2014 annexation, supported now by a stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence, and trust in Ukrainian leadership.”

Looking forward, the pandemic has spurred a lot of reflection. “People are rethinking their life objectives,” Helliwell said. “They’re saying, ‘I’m going back, but what am I going back to? What do I want to go back to? How do I want to spend the rest of my life?’”

Bernard Spragg / Wikimedia

He’s hoping this ‘move towards thinking about values and other people more explicitly’ will affect not just factors such as which jobs or schools people choose, but also how they operate within those environments.

He added: “It isn’t really about the grades or the salary, it’s about cooperating with other people in a useful way. And of course, that’s useful for the world, but the whole point of this happiness research is that it’s also good for the people doing it.

“In other words, you do end up feeling better about yourself if you’re actually looking after other people rather than number one.”

World’s Happiest Countries 2023

  1. Finland
  2. Denmark
  3. Iceland
  4. Israel
  5. Netherlands
  6. Sweden
  7. Norway
  8. Switzerland
  9. Luxembourg
  10. New Zealand
  11. Austria
  12. Australia
  13. Canada
  14. Ireland
  15. United States
  16. Germany
  17. Belgium
  18. Czech Republic
  19. United Kingdom
  20. Lithuania 

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UK cities with the sexiest accents revealed and it’s bad news for Manchester

Which UK accent do you find most attractive?

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Exit Festival / Flickr 7 Ronnie Liew / Wikimedia

A survey of 2,000 adults has revealed which UK cities took the top spots for having the sexiest accents — find out if the Mancunian accent made it onto the list.

As many will know, the UK has a variety of weird and wonderful accents. In some cases, you only have to travel a few miles down the road for people to start sounding like they speak an entirely different language altogether.

Some are considered cute, some a little too high in pitch and others are so thick they’re not easy to digest. Aside from looks and other factors, accents are also important while considering a potential match in the dating world. 

But the recent survey conducted by Preply revealed which accents are considered most attractive — we bet you’ll be surprised by some of these!

Dilliff / Wikimedia

Stealing the top spot was the vague accent of London. From a Cockney cab driver to an RP broadcaster on the BBC and plenty in between — who knows? This proved more so for women, with 21% of women voting for the London accent compared with just 15% of men. 

The runners up were Liverpool with their more obvious and recognisable style of speaking — ya wha? As 10.4% of the population voted this melodic charmer of an accent as the next best one they like to hear.

Next up was Newcastle’s Geordie accent — the Geordie Shore has a lot to answer for! Apparently, more men than women like the sound of this bouncy Northern dialect. While just 9% of women voted for it, 12% of men seemed to find it sounds pretty hot.

Chris Clarke88 / Wikimedia

The Manchester accent only came in at number five – below London and Liverpool, embarrassingly – with only 8.7% finding the Mancunian accent attractive.

Regarding regions, Yorkshire and Humber are not feeling the spark when it comes to UK accents, with 52.12% not finding them attractive at all. However, nearly half of Greater London (47.18%) think that Londoners have the most attractive accent – there’s nothing like backing yourself. 

For the Northern Irish, 17.54% think that the Liverpool accent speaks the language of love, whilst 34.15% of people in the North East lust after the Newcastle accent.

Preply

Here’s the full ranking of the UK’s sexiest accents:

  1. London
  2. Liverpool
  3. Newcastle
  4. Cardiff
  5. Manchester
  6. Glasgow
  7. Birmingham 
  8. Bristol 
  9. Leeds

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