Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
The ULEZ scrappage scheme has closed as of yesterday.
TfL says that a total of £186million has been paid to almost 54,000 successful applications to get rid of the more older and polluting vehicles.
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was proud of the scheme as it “supported so many Londoners to switch to cleaner, greener vehicles”.
Any drivers who live in a London borough could claim up to £2,000 per car and £7,000 for a van or minbus – if they were non-compliant.
Data up until 4th August confirms that of the 74,993 applications for cars and motorcycles, more than 36,000 were approved. As for vans and minibuses, 17,936 were successful from the 61,208 applications.
Crazy News
A professional stunt driver went bungee jumping inside a Nissan Qashqai e-Power in the bid for a Guinness World Record.
Taking place in Paris, Laurent Lasko was inside the car which was dropped from a crane at 213 feet and 3 inches – the exact target set by the record company to create the new record.
The Nissan Marketing Director, Jérôme Biguet, says this was the next extreme sport for the car to take part in – after it has been featured in TV commercials skateboarding and paintballing.
Happy News
A nine-year-old boy who was given a 1% chance of surviving a shot in the head is participating in a 5km (3.1mile) walk to raise money for the hospital that saved his life.
Harry, who is from Bristol, is taking part in the Grand Walk for Grand Appeal alongside his father, Edward who says: “What I want people to take from Harry’s story is that there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel”.
Back in 2016, Harry was shot by family friends who thought they fired an unloaded air rifle to stop him from crying – the man who fired was jailed. Harry has since been left partially blind and suffers from epilepsy and is a few years behind in development, but is “fully aware of what happened and what it’s done to him”.
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