Usually the news is phim sex pona pretty depressing business.

Every now and then there'll be something mildly positive squeezed in between articles about death and political turmoil, but for the most part it's a near-constant stream of misery.

The local news is different, though.

Hidden in the corners of small British news sites and in the back pages of local papers are stories that are, quite simply, glorious.

Like this one:

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That image is one of the many excellent examples of local British news stories shared by the Twitter account @CrapLocalNews.

The account was set up by 33-year-old creative manager Nicky Poole (@peachesanscream) last December. Poole works for a social media agency called @ThatLot. She initially started the account as part of a competition with colleagues.

"In the name of some healthy rivalry we all set up Twitter accounts in December to see who could get the most followers in one month," Poole told Mashable. "I chose @CrapLocalNews because local news is bloody funny.

"My mum used to cut the funny stories out of the local paper and pin them on the fridge when we were growing up. Her favourite two were ‘woman attacked by crow’ and ‘bus driver stopped for portion of chips’."

Poole's claim that local news is funny is impossible to deny:

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Poole collects her material from local papers, which she checks every week for funny stories.

"People have started to send me them too, which is nice," she said. "I got a bit excited about it at first, and found loads of good stories, so have enough content to last me until July at the moment."

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So what kind of things does Poole keep an eye out for, in particular?

"I personally like anything involving cats, seagulls and pensioners," she said. "Ideally all three. Typos and corrections are normally good too.

"The ones I find funniest very rarely get the most RTs," she added. "Everyone else seems to like slightly rude stories, or anything involving a sausage dog.

"But these ones made me hiccup with laughter…"

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Personally, we like all of them.

For more spectacularly niche stories you can follow @CrapLocalNews on Twitter.