I won't pay through the nose

A businessman has been fined £60 and had his driving licence endorsed for blowing his nose while stuck in a traffic jam.

Michael Mancini, a furniture restorer from Prestwick, Ayrshire, was given the fixed penalty and docked three penalty points after leaning over and pulling out a paper handkerchief to wipe his nose when stuck in Ayr High Street. Mancini said that his van was in neutral with its handbrake on, and that he was flabbergasted when he was signalled into a parking bay by an approaching policeman.

Matters became “a little bit surreal”, he said, when he wound down his window and was promptly charged by the stern-faced PC Stuart Gray, a man known locally as “Shiny Buttons” in recognition of his zealous attention to detail. “I honestly thought it was a joke,” said Mancini, 39, who was booked for failing to be in control of his vehicle.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding’. But he was absolutely deadpan. He’s a policeman, so you’re not going to start shouting abuse at him. I thought, ‘What is the world coming to?’ You pick the papers up every day and they are full of horror stories — but this bloke has nothing more to do with his time.”

Another amusing tale that, like the whisky thing below, got a huge number of hits on-line, and a very prominent place in the national edition of the Times. Read the rest here: Snot funny.

A huge row is brewing up around the Law Society of Scotland,the body that represents the country's 10,500 solicitors. Read about that here: Tesco law and no confidence vote.

Finally click here for more on this startling revelation: "Scotland even led the field in space sciences, Professor Glover said, though more dogs than Scots have experienced space travel so far."