Peter Robins

Local interest | 26 August 2011

A couple in Merthyr transformed their front room into a shop selling cannabis and diazepam in order to pay off a loan on a mobility scooter. The woman was jailed for 10 months; the man, whose scooter it was, for 15. (South Wales Echo)

An allotment-holder in Stourbridge has grown a 25lb cabbage. The secret, he says, is feeding them with liquid comfrey – and adding urine to the compost. (Express and Star, Wolverhampton)

A six-year-old girl from Rushey Mead, Leicester, has received a B in maths GCSE. A girl of five took the same examination in east London, but she only managed an E. (Leicester Mercury)

A 33-year-old man from Barrow-in-Furness has told magistrates that his cry of ‘Come back, you fat bitch!’ was directed at his dog, a pregnant Staffordshire bull terrier, and not at the woman whose cat it had just mauled. He was nonetheless fined £100 for threatening behaviour. (North West Evening Mail)

Cambridgeshire county council has abandoned plans to build wind farms on land it owns near Ely and in Huntingdonshire. It will pay less than £10,000 in fees for dropping the scheme, but forego up to £1 million a year in revenue. (Cambridge News)
 
The World Black Pudding Throwing Championship will be held in Ramsbottom, near Bolton, next Sunday. (Bolton News)

A 75-year-old man in Ernesettle, Plymouth, has been given a conditional discharge after punching a teenage boy in the face. The boy was playing football outside the man’s home and he worried that the ball might hit his wife, who had just returned home after a hip operation. (Plymouth Herald)

An engineering student found carrying a knife on the streets of Manchester at 4 a.m. the morning after the riots told a judge at the city’s crown court that he had only wanted to help tidy up. The judge said he was “unable to reject” this story, and gave him 150 hours of unpaid work. (Manchester Evening News)

Two rare marsh harriers have returned to breed in the Mersey estuary for a second year. Wildlife volunteers have seen two chicks flying beyond the nest. (Liverpool Echo)

No one has yet claimed ownership of an African Grey parrot that was found wandering a housing estate in Fintry, Dundee. (The Courier, Dundee)

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