Builder who won £1million on lottery scratchcard swaps his forklift for a Range Rover Sport and books holiday to Barbados
Adam Lopez, 39, said he 'stopped to pick up a drink' before purchasing the ticket and was left 'stunned into silence' by the win.
He has now booked a holiday to Barbados and taken a break from work after his bank balance increased 'from £12.40 to £1,000,012.40'.
Mr Lopez had purchased the scratchard for £5 from a Premier store in Reepham Road, Norwich.
After hearing about the win, he travelled home to the house he shares with his mum, Danica, and stepdad, Andrew, to share the news, adding the call to claim his prize was 'the best call I've ever made'.
Discussing the moment he realised he had won, Mr Lopez said: 'Once in the car I played the scratchcard and when I saw the £1 million, I didn't know what to do with myself, so shoved the scratchcard in the glovebox without even thinking.
'I always thought I'd scream if I ever won big but when it actually happened, I was stunned into complete silence!'
He added: 'It was the most surreal moment when the lady from the National Lottery confirmed that I was a millionaire! My mum went off like a balloon she was so excited for me!
'Seeing my balance go from £12.40 to £1,000,012.40 was a real "pinch me" moment!'
Mr Lopez has now swapped the forklift he usually drives at work for a Range Rover Sport and treated his mum to a Range Rover Evoque.
The builder said: 'Sadly we lost my dad eight years ago, he always said that he'd take care of us, and I think in some way this win has come from him.
'So, when I treated myself to my dream car, I knew I had to make mum's dream come true too. Seeing how happy it made her when she got behind the wheel of her new car was even better than when I found out I had won!'
Mr Lopez has also booked a family holiday to Barbados for next year with his winnings.
He added: 'Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen to me, I feel so blessed. I've given myself a budget to have fun, a pot to treat people I love and the rest I'm saving for the future.
'I plan to use this time to enjoy myself and get fit, as I want to travel more next year. The trip to Barbados is going to be amazing and I'm also hoping to visit friends in New York.
'Who knows, I may even book a first-class ticket as I've always wanted to turn left on an aeroplane - thanks to this win I can make that dream a reality too!'
When the £1,000,000 landed in Adam's bank account he took a screengrab, so he had a lasting memory of the moment
It costs £5 to play and there is a one in 3.33 per cent overall chance of winning a prize, with prizes ranging from £5 to the top prize of £1 million.
The National Lottery generates on average more than £30 million each week for National Lottery-funded projects.
It has awarded more than £95 billion in prizes and created more than 7,400 millionaires or multimillionaires since its launch in 1994.
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The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
Have we really become a nation of HMRC snoopers?
Has HM Revenue & Customs been running a Royal Corps of Dobbers-In? Fraud report numbers suggest that the troops are doing a fine job, if so. The tax authority received a record number of fraud tips in the 2024/2025 financial year – 164,670 in total, a handy increase on the previous year's 151,763. Britain is good at sneaking. It sometimes feels as if British society features a small army of tin-hatted bureaucrats armed with iPads, ready to investigate Mrs Miggins' loft conversion for a minor breach of the forms or the accidental failure to pay a fee somewhere. No more pocketing a fistful of cash-in-hand tenners for fixing the pipes at number 35 for you, Mr Plumber. Of course, the problem here is that all those cash-in-hand payments for fixing pipes add up. The sums can get quite substantial if our plumber is running half the business off the books. And what if it's a whole company of plumbers doing that? I'm not just getting at plumbers here. The practice is widespread, highly illegal, and highly problematic, not least because if we want even a semi-functional NHS, the money's got to come from somewhere. As things stand, there is a sizeable chunk of money that is not coming in. HMRC estimated that the total UK tax gap for the 2023 to 2024 financial year came to 5.3 per cent of total theoretical tax liabilities. That racks up to £47bn in absolute terms. By customer group, small businesses were responsible for a 60 per cent share of the total. Wealthy individuals accounted for just five per cent. While there have been some notably high-profile incidents of wealthy celebs getting called out on their tax avoidance schemes, this runs counter to the narrative that the UK's problems are solely down to the idle rich not paying their share and that cracking down on them would immediately fix it. Now, not all of the gap is accounted for by fraud, and we should remember that people make honest mistakes. Certain forms, and the way some taxes work (looking at you, VAT…), make this all but inevitable. But making a dent in it would deliver a hefty chunk of money to the Treasury that would fund an awful lot of schools and hospitals and more besides. If the tax gap were plugged, the £40bn hole in the public finances Rachel Reeves is grappling with would be filled without the need for any more tax rises. Whisper it, but maybe the snoops are on the side of the angels. One thing worth noting: the amount of money paid out in rewards for people shopping the fraudsters actually fell last year despite the increase in reports. Rewards are discretionary, whereas in the US, they're statutory. There, if you shop a tax cheat, you get a percentage of the take. Something to think about. The government probably is. Some would argue that it has only itself to blame for the level of cheating that goes on, and if taxes were lower, people would be more willing to pay up. This is not an argument that I find terribly persuasive. Just look at the US tech giants, which make billions in profits but are allergic to sending anything more than chump change to the countries in which they operate and scream bloody murder if someone suggests adding a couple of quid to their bills. Time for some hard truths: the country is broke, or as good as. That is partly because many of us had wages subsidised during the pandemic, and energy prices were capped during the subsequent price spike. So I'm afraid that it is incumbent on us to refill the coffers if we want the NHS to work, pensions to be paid, and schools to educate a new generation of taxpayers to prevent the system from collapsing. However, one thing the government could do if it wants Britons to be more conscientious about paying up is to start treating us like the customers we are when it comes to using the services it taxes us to provide. The question of why one is paying for service X regularly springs to mind when almost every interaction with the state feels like having your teeth pulled. Sort that out, and maybe we wouldn't need so many snoops. Just ask the best retailers, who are well aware that if they care for the customer, then the customer will pay up and care for them.
The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
Why the students not getting into uni this year could be the lucky ones
Two summers ago, Joe Thorp woke up on a hot Thursday in August to take part in a rite of passage familiar to most British teenagers: A-level results day. While many of his classmates lay awake worrying about university offers, Joe already knew he wasn't going. He had a plan – and it didn't involve lecture halls. He calmly opened his results to find he'd got an A in accounting, an A in Level 3 core maths, and two D*s (distinction stars, the highest grade possible) in his Btec business diploma – and went home to celebrate. In the weeks that followed, as friends loaded duvets and saucepans into cars bound for campuses across the country, Joe stayed in his childhood bedroom making cold calls, building his own vision for a new business specialising in social-media marketing for tradeworkers, such as local building and electrical firms. Joe's decision wasn't based on his grades not meeting the requirements of his chosen university – nor was it made on a whim. Quite the opposite: he had spent the months prior to results day researching his higher education options, much like everyone else in his sixth form; filling in Ucas application forms and imagining life away from his family home in Somerset. 'There were quite a few things about uni that a lot of people go for – like going out all the time, for example, or living on their own away from home – that just didn't seem like big enough pros for me,' he explains. What's more, the highly changeable jobs market, rapidly contorting around the increasing impact of AI, felt unreliable against the cost of university. 'You can't rely on a job existing in three years just because it exists now,' says Joe. 'Instead, I liked the idea of building something – I'm learning lots of skills and different job roles in one go now, not just aiming for one specific job that can be taken by AI.' 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Now, degrees can rarely guarantee the careers they once did: graduate role openings are at their lowest level for seven years according to recent reports, and junior or entry-level jobs are rare, the spectrum of these roles being reshaped beyond recognition by AI. And it's a global issue: last week, business magazine Fortune declared that, while 'college used to open doors, now even grads with master's degrees are sending 60 applications per month with no luck'. August 2025 may go down as the month when artificial intelligence started to show up in the jobs data, and experts predict the rate of change is only going to speed up as AI models double in power every few months. 'AI is dissolving the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, especially in economies and industries where information work dominates,' Ignacio Palomera, CEO of Bondex, a leading Web3 professional networking and jobs platform, explains. 'This is not a binary story of jobs lost vs jobs gained, but rather an asymmetrical transformation where tasks are being obliterated faster than the market can absorb or reskill the displaced. The first casualties are disproportionately early-career professionals and operational generalists.' Last week, Microsoft published a study showing the 40 jobs that are most (and least) at risk from AI. Among those facing the greatest threat were data scientists, web developers, financial advisers, management analysts, and those with jobs in advertising and PR. Political scientists, historians, interpreters and mathematicians were also deemed to be at high risk. Large consultancies and some law firms are also reporting the automation of entry-level jobs. These are all roles that students go to university to get. Which is why many are starting to wonder whether the cost of going to university (the average graduate debt stands at £53,000) is worth it. As the increased cost of living means that maintenance loans will now only cover half of what an individual needs to survive their three years of study, the 'university experience' has become a rare privilege. More students attending higher education are now living at home (30 per cent in 2024/25), which means institutions are spending less on things like freshers' socials; halls are now often reportedly built and run by external commercial firms, and with no cap on university intakes, class sizes are large enough to make for a lonely environment. For parents watching on, imagining their teenagers enjoying exploits similar to their own decades ago, the last few years have been just as much of a rollercoaster. Joe tells me that his parents, who both went to university, had always urged him to work hard at school so he would have that same opportunity. 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Get a trade, or fly the nest abroad, not down the road in Leeds.' 'There have been a lot of false promises,' Chloe Combi, author and Gen Z and Gen A expert, explains. 'For example, I've been speaking a lot recently to young coders and people who went into computer science and IT – an area that, it was promised, would offer six-figure salaries and be on the frontier of the best kinds of opportunity. But with the advent of AI in the last couple of years, those breaks have completely fallen away.' Quite quickly, says Combi, across most industries, the career ladder is 'becoming a race to the bottom'. And AI affects the entire process. 'I can't tell you how many young people I've spoken to recently who have been interviewed as job candidates by AI.' But there is a flip side to it all, she says. 'There's been a real renaissance in skills that aren't often offered in schools, like Arabic, Japanese and Chinese; employers are also constantly looking for problem-solvers, people with can-do attitudes who are really good communicators. In many ways, it's going to make us look at, and value, what is human again.' Some predict that this sentiment – valuing human skills and, leading from there, manual work – could lead to a renaissance: the birth of a new working class. In the face of AI-driven disruption, manual trades are gaining new respect: a Zety survey reported by the New York Post found that 53 per cent of Gen Z view blue-collar jobs as more resistant to automation, while 65 per cent don't believe that a university degree offers protection from AI-driven job loss. The Microsoft study also documented which jobs are least at risk from AI, and that list included maids and housekeepers, roofers, housepainters, phlebotomists, and nursing assistants. Andrew Yang is an American entrepreneur, former presidential candidate and author of The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future, wrote in his Substack: 'An ageing population and the difficulty of automating phlebotomy or home healthcare and an ongoing nursing shortage suggest that maybe if you head to this field, your job will be safe. I certainly would feel more confident in someone pursuing a nursing degree than, say, a law degree.' The 'toolbelt generation', as it's begun to be known, is well and truly getting started. And, as society follows suit in acknowledging and reassessing the value of physical labour, or caring skills in healthcare, not just as 'something to fall back on' but as a meaningful career choice – it may well engender the sort of much-needed respect that has, for a long time, been reserved for more middle-class professions. 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While job postings mentioning apprenticeships are up by 5.3 per cent, according to LinkedIn, there are currently only around 5,000 listed on the Ucas website. 'We're in a really interesting time – but there are still way too many uncertainties and not nearly enough focus or investment in competent, viable routes aside from the university track,' adds Combi. Still, for Joe, the gamble is already paying off. 'I've learnt more in the last two years running my own business than I think I would have in three years of lectures,' he says. He's also saved himself at least £50,000 in debt, and has started making money instead. 'It's not that I don't think anyone should go to university,' he's quick to clarify, 'but for me, building something real made more sense. Even if it doesn't work out, going to a prospective employer having done this for myself feels more valuable.' Today, Joe's little brother, Barnaby, will take his turn waking up on results day and collecting that all-important envelope. But, just as for Joe, there'll be no scrambling for Ucas logins or anxiously going through clearing. Instead, Barnaby will join his brother in his business. 'I've already started full-time work with him – I did as soon as I left sixth form,' he tells me. The majority of his friends, like Joe's, will go to university, though some have been drawn to practical trades. 'I just thought, it's so expensive nowadays – that was a factor. And I could see that I would get more out of the hands-on business stuff and learning lots of skills than just paying all that money for a degree.' This year, as will inevitably be the case for many years to come, some A-level students will be told that university is the only 'proper', or 'right' route to success. But, in a world that's rapidly changing, where nobody knows what is coming, it's the class of 2025 who are leading the way – and rewriting the rules entirely.
BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
North Northamptonshire Council forecasts £9.4m overspend
A Reform UK-led council has forecast a budget overspend of £9.4m in its first quarter of the financial two-thirds of the overspend from North Northamptonshire Council sits with the Northamptonshire Children's Trust (NCT), which has exceeded its budgets year on year, with the council picking up extra costs of nearly £ trust's budget pressures were down to high costs and demand for placements for children in care, as well as spends on staffing, the council was Cheatley, executive member for finance, efficiency and change, said the forecast "reflects the increasing financial challenges that local government is facing around social care for both adults and children". According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the financial pressures on the council were down to growing demands for statutory services, which were often subject to expensive outsourcing costs to independent council also heard there was a £2.7m overspend in adult services for residential and nursing care, staffing and social care was almost £2m pressure due to higher demand for the council's Home to School Transport said the financial challenges facing the council were "a theme that we've obviously seen and had to accept over the last few years"."I am confident that the officers will continue to seek mitigations to provide efficiencies," he predicted spend for the year represents a 2.9% increase on the authority's £405m budget, which the former Conservative administration set earlier this UK took control of the council in the May local authority has set aside a contingency fund of just under £3m to combat "exceptional expenditure", which has not yet been could be employed later in the year to help balance the books, but that it will look to achieve alternative mitigations and efficiencies first, the authority said. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
