Latest news with #Spalding
The Independent
12 hours ago
- Business
- The Independent
No money left to finish road connecting £50m ‘bridge to nowhere', Lincolnshire council admits
A UK council that spent £50 million building a ' bridge to nowhere' has admitted that it cannot afford to complete the project without external funding. Lincolnshire County Council finished building the bridge last year as part of a £110 million project to ease traffic on the A16 route around the west side of Spalding. On Monday (June 2), the council confirmed that £33 million was missing from the budget to complete the connecting 6.5km sections of the Spalding Western Relief Road. Original plans for the project, which started construction in 2022, proposed a '7.3m-wide single carriage road in five sections'. The council budget for 2025 to 2026 allocated £27.7 million in funding towards finishing the southern section of the road. Estimated costs to complete this section of the relief road are between £50 million and £60 million. According to the council website, no funding has been identified for the southern or middle sections of the relief road. 'Contributions from developers are expected to be the primary source of funding for both,' it adds. Aerial pictures show the route comes to a quick stop at the end of the completed bridge. The project is not expected to be finished until at least 2030 as the council looks to secure funding. A spokesperson for the council's highways department said: 'Construction of the north section of the Spalding Western Relief Road was completed in October 2024. 'In the approved 2025/26 council budget, there is currently £27.7m earmarked towards building the southern section of the Spalding Western Relief Road in the future. However, the current estimated cost of building this section is between £50-60 million, which means external funding will be needed. That is why we are continuing to work closely with South Holland District Council to identify funding opportunities, including remaining in touch with Homes England. 'In addition, no funding has yet been allocated or secured for the middle sections of the relief road as these are intended to be built in the long-term, as outlined in the South East Lincolnshire Local Plan.' The council added that the northern section of the relief road had opened up land allocated for an initial 1,100 homes as outlined in the South East Lincolnshire Local Plan.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
BCB After Dark: Might the Cubs need a Snake?
It's another Monday evening here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and join us. We're so glad to see you. There are still a few tables available. The show will start soon. Bring your own beverage. BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon. Advertisement The Cubs were off today. They're currently tied with the Mets for the best record in the National League. Last week I asked you about a proposed Cubs trade for Pirates ace Paul Skenes. The majority of 58 percent of you wouldn't do the deal that would cost the Cubs Matt Shaw, Cade Horton, Kevin Alcántara and Juan Tomas. I suppose that it's good that you wouldn't do the deal because I'm fairly confident the Pirates wouldn't do it either. Thus the problem with trading Skenes anywhere, at least at the moment. Here's the part with the music and the movies. You can skip that if you want. You won't hurt my feelings. Tonight we have a performance from the Polar Music Prize ceremony from last week. Herbie Hancock was one of the honorees and bassist Esperanza Spalding was there in Stockholm to honor him. There are a few performances to choose from, but I thought tonight we'd feature Spalding and Leo Genovese performing Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now' in honor of Hancock's tribute to Mitchell album from 2007: River: The Joni Letters. Spalding and Genovese even sneak in a few notes from Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage' in this performance. Shockproof, the 1949 noir directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Cornel Wilde and Patricia Knight, is one of those movies that starts out so promising then fizzles into an incoherent mess. Even Sirk's direction, which is normally so obsessed with small details, seems to give up somewhere in the second half of the movie. The stars, Wilde and Knight, have little chemistry, which is ironic since the two were married to each other at the time they made the movie. (Although it may explain why they were divorced two years later.) The biggest reason to watch Shockproof is for students who want to trace the development of Sirk and the film's co-writer Samuel Fuller, who are starting to develop themes they would employ more successfully over the next decade. Advertisement Wilde stars as Griff Marat, a straight-arrow parole office who is assigned Jenny Marsh (Knight), who just got out of prison after serving five years for murder. Griff warns Jenny to stay straight and to stay away from Harry Wesson (John Baragrey), her mobster boyfriend whom she committed to murder for. Spoilers, I guess. Griff decides that Jenny needs to understand the simple pleasures of an honest life and introduces her to his family, including his blind mother (Esther Minciotti). Meanwhile, Harry has tracked Jenny down and makes plans for the two of them to run off together. Jenny apparently has some sort of loyalty to Harry because he waited for her while she was in prison. Although it seems like Harry was the reason that Jenny went to the big house in the first place, but they wisely leave the details mysterious. Of course, it's clear to everyone that Griff has fallen in love with Jenny and Jenny begins to feel the same for him. But Harry decides that Griff's infatuation with Jenny is an opportunity. Griff has political ambitions and even in the forties, parole officers really aren't supposed to be dating the parolees. So Harry tells Jenny to lead Griff on, seeing the opportunity for blackmail later. Advertisement This is the most interesting part of the film, where Jenny is torn between her affections for her straight-arrow parole office and her glamorous mobster boyfriend. This could be straight out of the luscious technicolor melodramas that Sirk would direct in the fifties. It's a simple love triangle. But this is also where the film goes off the rails. Jenny finally makes her decision to stick with Griff and dump Harry. But Harry won't go quietly and calls Griff in an attempt to blackmail him. But before Harry can get far into the call, Jenny apparently shoots him dead. Griff then loses it at this point, knowing that committing another killing is at least life in prison for Jenny and maybe the chair. So he decides that the two of them are going to go on the lam in a wild attempt to get to Mexico. Jenny thinks she should turn herself in, but Griff won't hear of it. They become celebrity fugitives on the front pages of the newspapers and on magazine covers. Griff starts stealing food and cars to keep one step ahead of the police. Oh, and it turns out that Harry isn't dead, just badly wounded. Still, Jenny shooting him would be enough to send her back to prison for life on the parole violation alone. End spoilers. The interesting twist here is that while Jenny is the femme fatale that drives Griff into a life of crime, she's an unwilling femme fatale. Rather than being manipulative like a normal femme fatale, Jenny is the one that is constantly being manipulated. In fact, she very much wants to turn herself in and for Griff to go back to being a parole officer, but Griff has gone nuts over her and throws himself into the life of crime, using the knowledge he's learned as a parole officer to keep the authorities from catching them. Advertisement The problem is that there seems to be very little reason for Griff to get this nutty for Jenny. I mean, she's beautiful and all, but she is also a convicted murderer out on parole. She doesn't seem to be the type of woman to throw your life away on—especially since she is specifically asking Griff not to and she was lying to him about not seeing Harry. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't too impressed with the chemistry between Wilde and Knight, even if they were married to each other in real life. Fuller and Sirk wanted to do this 'good guy goes bad' story, but I think they needed to do a better job of setting up the fatal seeds within Griff and giving him more reasons to fall in love with Jenny other than she's gorgeous. To be fair to Fuller, he had written a much better and more fitting ending, but screenwriter Helen Deutsch, at the direction of Columbia Pictures, had to tack on a rather nonsensical Hollywood ending on what could have been a dark classic. So don't necessarily blame the soon-to-be-great Fuller for the mess the second half of this film becomes. The unused ending might have just saved the film, because the first part of the film, with the love triangle, is pretty strong and if it had a punchier ending, we might have been able to forgive Griff's sudden and inexplicable descent into madness. I don't have a trailer for Shockproof, but heck, here's the entire movie. I assume the film is in the public domain because there are like half a dozen copies of the entire thing on YouTube. Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies. Advertisement It's no secret that the Cubs' biggest need at the moment is starting pitching. With Justin Steele out for the season and Shōta Imanaga still probably three weeks away from returning, the starting pitching is thin. It's pretty fortunate that the bullpen, something we once thought of as the team's biggest weakness back in April, has turned out to be one of the best in baseball in May. (The Athletic sub. req.) But if another starting pitcher goes down, well, there's not another Cade Horton to call on in Iowa. The Cubs rotation would be hurting bad if that happened. So picking up a starter should be team president Jed Hoyer's top priority at the trade deadline. Today, Jesse Rogers claimed that the Diamondbacks could be sellers at the deadline. The Diamondbacks have fallen on hard times since early April when they played the Cubs tough. They're three games below .500, eight games back of the Dodgers in the division and five games out of a Wild Card. Ace Corbin Burnes is out with an elbow injury and the team is holding their breath as to the upcoming results of an MRI. But the Snakes have two more right-handed starting pitchers who will both be free agents at the end up this upcoming season: Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen. Brett Taylor over at Bleacher Nation did a good job of summarizing up both Kelly and Gallen. Kelly is having the better season, although Gallen has the better career track record. Kelly is 36 already, a partial function of him not reaching the majors until he was 30. Kelly doesn't throw hard—his fastball comes in at around 92—but that's where he's always thrown. He's not losing any velocity as he ages. But he is throwing it less—only around 25 percent of the time these days. He throws his 88-mile-per-hour changeup almost as often as he throws the fastball and he works in a cutter, a slider and a curve. Advertisement This season, Kelly has a record of 5-2 with a 3.78 ERA. His underlying xFIP (expected fielding independent pitching) is even better at 3.49. He's still throwing strikes and getting swings and misses at the same rate he always has. Taylor makes a point that Kelly has made nine very good starts and three really bad one, which I think you can read either way. It should be noted that two of those three bad starts have been his last two starts. (The other one was at Yankee Stadium back in early April.) Gallen is the bigger name, of course, having been an All-Star and having finished the season with Cy Young Award votes three times, finishing as high as third in 2023. He also doesn't turn 30 until after the trade deadline, so he's a younger arm if that means anything to you. However, Gallen is having a crappy season. So far, he's 3-7 with a 5.54 ERA. His xFIP is a little better at 4.31, but it's still not good. Gallen's velocity is down a touch this year, but the bigger issue is his control: he's throwing fewer strikes and more balls. That means fewer strikeouts and more walks. He's also giving up more hard contact and he's giving up more fly balls. Still, Gallen is the guy that just two years ago finished third in Cy Young balloting and he wasn't a whole lot worse last year. If you think he's just someone in a funk that will snap out of it, there's a real chance for a bargain here. Advertisement I don't think either Kelly or Gallen would cost an arm and a leg in terms of prospects, since they are both in the last year of their deals. They'd be two-month rentals. (Hopefully three months with a long playoff run.) The Cubs wouldn't get either one for a bag of balls and cash, but they likely wouldn't need to part with a top-5 prospect either. I know that a lot of this is dependent on cost, but assuming the cost for Kelly and Gallen is roughly the same, which one would you rather the Cubs trade for? Do you go with the solid and unexciting older guy in Kelly, or would you rather go with the struggling former ace? (I actually think Gallen would cost more, but that might not be true if he continues to pitch as poorly as he has into July.) I will let you vote 'neither.' However, it's completely possible that these two pitchers are the best two starting pitchers on the market in July, especially if the Marlins decide to hang on to Ryan Weathers (and they certainly might as Weathers is not a free agent until after 2028). Advertisement Thank you for stopping by. We hope you enjoyed yourself. Please get home safely. Tell us if you need us to call a ride for you. Don't forget your card. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark. More from
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Residents hit out at £50million bridge 'to nowhere' after local council ran out of MONEY while building it
Residents have blasted a council for building a £50 million 'bridge to nowhere' after it ran out of money while building it. The bridge over the planned Spalding Western Relief Road in Lincolnshire was constructed between 2022 and 2024. However it will not be finished until at least 2030 because the county council cannot afford to complete the project. The bridge was built as part of a £110 million project to provide a new route around the west side of Spalding to ease traffic on the A16, which sees lots of lorries driving between Peterborough, Boston and Grimsby. One section of the road, consisting of 0.6 miles of road, a T-junction where the road will later be extended, and the bridge, was finished last year. The aim of the bridge was to carry the road over a busy railway which runs from Peterborough to Doncaster, but for now new aerial pictures show the route comes to an abrupt stop. Lincolnshire County Council aimed to secure the rest of the funding while this section was being built and raised £28 million - but in 2023 they announced they had re-allocated this to other roads and the project wouldn't now be finished until at least 2030. Cllr Richard Davies, executive member for highways, said in 2023: 'The past three years have been a turbulent time within the highways sector, including costs increases due to Covid; growing inflation rates; and the country entering into the recession we're currently in. 'Unfortunately, because of these and other issues, we announced during our annual budget meeting in February that we've had to re-allocate the £27.8 million of county council funding dedicated to the Spalding Western Relief Road's southern section to help offset increased costs for other major road projects. 'That means it's unlikely that we start work before 2030 since that's the earliest we expect to be able to allocate funding towards this phase of the project. 'However, we'll look at bringing that date closer if external funding can be identified.' A Highways spokesperson for Lincolnshire County Council said: 'Construction of the north section of the Spalding Western Relief Road was completed in October 2024. 'In the approved 2025/26 council budget, there is currently £27.7 million earmarked towards building the southern section of the Spalding Western Relief Road in the future. 'However, the current estimated cost of building this section is between £50-60 million, which means external funding will be needed. 'That is why we are continuing to work closely with South Holland District Council to identify funding opportunities, including remaining in touch with Homes England. 'In addition, no funding has yet been allocated or secured for the middle sections of the relief road as these are intended to be built in the long-term, as outlined in the South East Lincolnshire Local Plan.' The council said the northern section of the Spalding Western Relief Road had opened up land allocated for housing in the South East Lincolnshire Local Plan (an initial 1,100 dwellings). It also said the new SWRR roundabout on Enterprise Way had already unlocked land for housing on either side of the railway and a significant start had been made on-site, with these houses soon to be added to the available housing stock.
The Sun
3 days ago
- Health
- The Sun
Shocking moment huge GECKO fell out of tin of Lidl sweetcorn in front of terrified dad as he cooked kids' tea
A GRANDFATHER was left with a sour taste after discovering a dead lizard in a tin of sweetcorn. John Shier, 53, was cooking a meal for his wife and son last month when he uncovered the fully preserved body of a gecko stuck to the can's lid. 6 6 6 The sales manager, of Spalding, Lincs, did a double take after spotting the seven centimetre-long creature and likened the discovery to something out of a "bushtucker trial". Pictures show the squashed lizard sitting on top of the yellow veggies and a visible imprint of the animal under the ring-pull lid. Dad-of-two John purchased the tin of Freshona sweetcorn from Lidl as part of a multipack and admitted he had some concerns over the contents of the remaining containers. Speaking to The Sun, he said: 'I thought I was on I'm a Celebrity, it was like a proper bushtucker trial challenge. 'I just wanted the sweetcorn, I didn't really want a seven centimetre gecko to go with it! 'I was just cooking at home and making a usual stir fry, which means I normally just throw everything into a wok. 'I had already added one tin of the sweetcorn, but in the process of opening the second one this thing just caught my eye. 'I did a double take and saw what was sitting right on the top of the tin. I've never seen anything like that before in my life. 'That was it after that, I didn't want to eat any of the ingredients I was eating because I couldn't be sure what was in there. None of us wanted to eat any of the food. 'It's lucky I spotted it really, I might have missed it or it could have been buried beneath the sweetcorn. 'If I had missed that and thrown it into the meal, or if it was buried in the tin, one of us might have ended up eating it. 'It's safe to say that every tinned item I've opened since has been sieved before use.' And John accused supermarket giants Lidl of 'not taking it seriously' when they offered him a ten pound voucher after being presented with the evidence of his extraordinary find. In a statement, Lidl said: 'It is never our intention for our customers to be dissatisfied in any way. 'We take matters of this nature extremely seriously and pride ourselves on the rigorous quality assurance processes we have in place across our supply chain. 'Reports of this kind are exceptionally rare – we've received no other customer complaints, and we believe this to be an isolated case. 'Nonetheless, our Quality Assurance team is in contact with the customer directly on this matter.' He added: 'This isn't a fly or a small insect, I would understand that because they are so miniscule. 6 6 'But this is a lizard, which is fully intact and measuring seven centimetres. 'I'm shocked at their response, I thought they would take it more seriously. 'I don't know the toxicity levels of a gecko but it could have been really poisonous. I certainly wouldn't want to take the risk of eating one. 'It's a bit of a joke. It's bad enough I could have served it to my wife or son, but one of my grandchildren could have been eating that meal. 'I spend money in that store religiously every week and there is no recognition of my loyalty in their response. 'I have been offered a measly ten pound voucher. I'm not sure if I'm more disgusted at the lack of empathy or the ridiculous gesture. 'I will not be shopping there again.' Exclusive by Summer Raemason THIS is the disgusting moment a massive spider crawls out of a family's Aldi bananas. Christopher Kirk picked up the fair trade produce at a supermarket on Carnation Way, Ashbourne, in the Peak District during the Easter holiday. When they got to the hotel, Christopher was alerted to the huge arachnid by his screaming two-year-old daughter. She shouted "spider" while her four-year-old sister also recoiled in terror. A stunned Christopher took the, thankfully unopened, bananas straight back to Aldi. He asked the store for a replacement which was accepted. The dad-of-two also uploaded images of the eight legged crawler onto an insect-identifier app. It generated results indicating it was a Huntsman Spider, which is a venomous species found in Asia. Christopher told The Sun: 'The holiday wasn't really disrupted - we just wanted our kids to be able to eat something healthy. 'At the end of the day, I considered it a living creature and I didn't want to harm it myself. 'However, we are now very wary of picking up bananas in a shop and inspect bags of them closely. 'We are also especially wary of loose bananas as it could well have been the bag that contained them that stopped us having a situation where one of us, including our young children, had been bitten." Thankfully no family members were bitten, albeit very shaken up. An Aldi spokesperson referred to Paul Hillyard, a leading authority on arachnids and Science Associate of the Natural History Museum in London. He said: 'The families known for attaching their egg sac to a banana are harmless to humans. "These small spiders sometimes build their nest on a banana because the fruit provides a safe and shady location close to the tiny fruit flies upon which the spiders feed (the spiders have no interest in the banana itself). 'The nesting practices used by these small, harmless spiders are very different to those used by the sort of tropical spiders that might justifiably cause alarm (e.g. the large, agile, huntsman-type spiders and Brazilian Wandering spiders) - most of these carry their egg sac in their jaws or bury it in the leaf litter, rather than attach it to a substrate such as a banana.' An Aldi spokesperson said: 'While it is extremely rare for naturally occurring foreign bodies like this to be found on fruit, it can happen in exceptional circumstances due to outdoor growing conditions. "However, we want to reassure our customers that this type of spider is harmless and poses no risk to their safety.' This comes as other shoppers from supermarkets across the UK have made horrifying discoveries. One customer was left disgusted after discovering some-fin fishy crawling in his Sainsbury's cod - a two- inch parasitic worm. He was looking forward to the fish for his Friday night supper, but lost his appetite after noticing the creepy-crawly. Elsewhere, a couple who ordered a McDonald's to help with their hangovers were left feeling even more sick after discovering a giant bug inside one of the burgers. Cathy Suzuki, 25, ordered the new Homestyle Crispy Chicken and a triple cheeseburger through the UberEats app as she and boyfriend Craig How recovered from the night before. The pair decided to split the £18.80 meal, and cut the chicken burger in half so it could be easily shared. However, when they did, a whopping insect dropped out from between the buns. Meanwhile, another mum found a snail in her McDonald's chicken wrap. And, this is the horrifying moment a family discovered a 'snake-like' creature slithering out of a Sainsbury's potato bag. The stomach-churning footage showed a slimy invader hiding inside the superstore packaging.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
WKBN announces Female Student Athlete of the Year
WARREN, Ohio (WKBN) – Austintown Fitch senior Rachel Spalding was named the 2025 WKBN/WYTV Student Athlete of the Year on Thursday night. The award, along with a $1,000 college scholarship, was presented to Spalding at the annual Student Athlete of the Year banquet at DiVieste's Banquet Center. Spalding played five sports for the Falcons, carried a perfect 4.0 grade point average and was named class valedictorian. In athletics, she earned twelve varsity letters. She was a four-year starter in basketball, a team captain, and a First Team All-Conference selection. She was also a two-time Regional qualifier in track. Spalding was a three-year starter in softball and helped lead Austintown Fitch to three consecutive District Championships, and back-to-back State titles in 2023 and 2024. She vice president of both student council and National Honor Society, and a member of Interact Club, Link Crew, and Reading Discussion Enrichment Club. Spalding also amassed over 200 hours of volunteer service, including mission trips with her church. She most recently spent a week in Kentucky building houses. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
