Angry Lincoln man cleans £12m High Street footbridge littered with junk

Celebrated Lincolnshire actor, comedian and author Robert Webb will sashay onto the in Strictly Come Dancing 2021 stage, producers have confirmed.

Boston-born Webb, best known for his double act with David Mitchell in TV show Peep Show is no stranger to the dance floor – he won Let’s Dance for Comic Relief in 2009.

The BAFTA award-winning star said: “I am ludicrously excited to be taking part in Strictly this year.

“It’s a big, generous, joyful show and I can’t wait to get packed into a spandex onesie and fired from a glitter cannon directly at Claudia Winkleman. At least I think that’s what happens.

The first celebrities have been confirmed for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing

“My goal is to try to survive from week to week without causing serious injury to myself or innocent bystanders. I know it’s going to be a challenge. To do well in this competition is a test of character, although mainly it’s a test of dancing.”

The show will kick off this autumn, and Webb will join the likes of McFly’s Tom Fletcher and TV presenter AJ Odudu.

2012 winner of the Great British Bake Off John Whaite will also be part of the first all-male couple on the show.

Robert Webb spent much of his childhood in Woodhall Spa and attended school in Horncastle.

He spoke to The Lincolnite in 2019 about growing up in the county, masculinity and lessons from his career.

Listen back to the podcast in full here.

In 2018, Webb received an honorary degree from the University of Lincoln.

On collecting the honour at Lincoln Cathedral, he advised graduates to “find something you love and take every opportunity to practice it.”

Changes to the government’s travel list will see fully-vaccinated passengers from France no longer having to isolate.

The new rules, which come in from 4am on Sunday, August 8, will see Austria, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia move to green list on the government’s traffic light system.

Meanwhile, Bahrain, India, Qatar and UAE will move to the amber list from the red list. And Georgia, Mayotte, Mexico and Reunion will move to the red list.

The move aligns France with the rest of the amber list, now that the proportion of beta variant cases has fallen in the country.

Arrivals from popular holiday destination Spain, and all of its islands, don’t need to quarantine either, but are now advised to use a PCR test as their pre-departure test wherever possible.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “We are committed to opening up international travel safely, taking advantage of the gains we’ve made through our successful vaccination programme, helping connect families, friends and businesses around the world.

“While we must continue to be cautious, today’s changes reopen a range of different holiday destinations across the globe, which is good news for both the sector and travelling public.”

The changes mean the total number of green list places will rise from 29 to 36.

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said: “As we learn to live with this virus, we are continuing to take steps to safely reopen international travel based on the latest data and expert public health advice.

“The vaccines have already prevented around 60,000 deaths and 22 million infections in England and, with over 7 in 10 adults in the UK now double-jabbed, we are building a wall of defence against the disease.

“As well as moving more countries to the green list, today’s announcement also demonstrates the need for continued caution. Further countries have been added to the red list to help protect the success of our vaccine rollout from the threat of new variants.”

A litter picking group has said they are horrified by rubbish being dumped on a Lincoln roadside, which they described as “the street that the council forgot”.

Scattered litter and rubbish bags, a trolley, fly tipped whitegoods and a dumped office chair were a sorry sight on Portland Street on Wednesday, August 4.

The problem was first reported to Lincolnshire County Council under the fly-tipping option on the FixMyStreet website back in April, they said.

It was flagged up again by the group to the city council on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the group said the city council has responded saying it will be passed on to the relevant team.

The rubbish was found on Portland Street in Lincoln on August 4, 2021. | Photo: Wombles of Lincoln

Even a discarded shopping trolly was found among the rubbish. | Photo: Wombles of Lincoln

A spokesperson for the Wombles of Lincoln told The Lincolnite: “We are horrified by the state of the street in our city centre. It is like the street that the council forgot.

“Visitors to our beautiful city will be enjoying these following sites. This is shameful that in a county that is deemed first world people are living next to this. I just find it so heartbreakingly frustrating.

“Some of it was fly-tipping, much of it was general detritus from split bags and dropped litter. It needs a preventative solution and a lot more action to tackle it.”

The problem has been ongoing since at least April 2021. | Photo: Wombles of Lincoln

An old chair was found discarded amongst the other shocking rubbish down Portland Street in Lincoln. | Photo: Wombles of Lincoln

The group says more action is needed to tackle to tackle the problem. | Photo: Wombles of Lincoln

The litter problem has been described as “heartbreakingly frustrating”, | Photo: Wombles of Lincoln

The group, which now has around 800 members, used social media to come together and tackle the littering problem in the area.

It was set up at the beginning of March 2021, inspired by the 1960s fictional characters The Wombles who taught children how to recycle properly. The group was created by Rebecca Dunn, Alice Kinloch and Rebecca Sinclair, in an aim to clean up the streets, parks and roadsides of Lincoln.

City of Lincoln Council were contacted for a statement of response, but there was no reply by the time of publication.