There are calls for younger children to be better educated on the danger of knives after an eight-year-old boy was threatened in Margate.
He was in the canteen at Cliftonville Primary School when another pupil held a piece of cutlery to his throat.
Campaigners have been reacting to the Chancellor's Budget after he set out the government's spending plans.
Jeremy Hunt announced a 2p cut to National Insurance, a new tax on vapes and a freeze on fuel duty.
It is feared it could cost millions of pounds to clean up waste from an illegal dumping scandal on Sheppey.
Hundreds of lorry-loads of rubbish was fly-tipped from cliffs and onto beaches at Eastchurch, until officials blocked access to the site.
Former Kent miners say they have no regrets - 40 years after going on strike.
Workers at Tilmanstone, Snowdown and Betteshanger collieries walked out as part of a nationwide fight to save them from closure.
Two critically endangered Sumatran orangutans are settling into their new home in Kent well.
The brothers have relocated from Switzerland to Port Lympne near Hythe, and could one day be relocated to the wild.
And in football, Gillingham have once again slipped out of the League 2 play-off places after losing to Barrow.
The Gills were beaten 2-0 last night - their first defeat in four matches.
10. Kent Online News News You Can Trust This is the Kent Online Podcast. Lucy Hickmott Hello, hope you're OK. Thanks so much for downloading today's podcast on Wednesday the 6th of March. First a day there are calls for younger children to be educated on the danger of knives after an 8 year old boy was threatened in Margate. It happened at a school Lauren has the details. Jake Bird, whose autistic was eating lunch in the canteen at Cliftonville Primary School when another pupil grabbed his head and pressed a piece of cutlery to his throat. A dinner lady reportedly intervened to take the knife away, but Jake was still left with a mark on his neck. We're told the metal knife in question was a piece of school cutlery given to children to eat their lunch with and wasn't sharp. I understand the boy's dad has raised concerns about what happened. Yes, Stephen says his son was really shaken by the incident and told his mom he was scared. They wanted the child responsible to be suspended and were worried the school wasn't taking it seriously enough. Jake's dad is also calling for children to be educated about the danger of knives at an earlier age. What response have we had from the school? Well, head teacher Claire Witchcord says the matter was thoroughly investigated and appropriate follow up actions were taken. She also told Stephen she delivered the most serious consequence for the pupil that was available to her. The school is rated outstanding by Offstead. Kent please say they regularly visit schools across the county to speak to children about any safety concerns. Thanks Lauren. Kent's online reports. A man in his 50s has died after a car overturned and landed in a ditch near Tumbridge. The vehicle left the A-21 southbound carriageway between the Morley's Roundabout and Quarry Hill yesterday afternoon. Emergency crews including the Air Ambulance were called but the driver was pronounced dead at the scene. Two teenagers have been locked up for a stabbing in Gillingham which left the victim needing life saving treatment. The pair who was 16 and 18 didn't know their victim when they attacked him in the high street in March last year. They admitted wounding with intent and have both been sentenced to four years and three months behind bars. Other chancellors been setting out the government's spending plans as he delivers his spring budget. Jeremy Hunt announced a two-piece cut to national insurance which should make the average worker around £450 a year better off. There'll also be a new tax on fapes and a rise in tobacco duty. Meantime of freeze on fuel duty will be extended. That's being welcomed by Howard Cox from Cranbrook who's the founder of Fair Fuel UK. I've been lobbying for the last six months the Treasury and with the help of some very good Tory MPs and peers who we sent a letter to the Treasury to Jeremy Hunt calling him to cut it in fact. This half of me is very pleased it's not going up keeping the 5P cut that Rishi soon had introduced when he was transferred two years back but I would like to see in a cut. It's good in part so I'm happy that we're not putting more on to the cost of living for most hard-pressed drivers but in essence we could have gone further. How much further would you like it to go? That's a question that is how long is a piece of spring in many respects but I would like because it's a general election year I think he could have been quite radical and actually cut it significantly not as far as 20 pence per litre because that would mean something like a £12 saving per family car filling up at the four courts. That would be incredible and that would really have brought down inflation rapidly and more to the point it would actually stimulate the economy and therefore more investment for businesses because they'd have more profit so there'd be more growth taxes all those sorts of things. We could have tried it for a few years back, about 2017 I think, she reduced VAT for a period of time just to try what would happen and I think it could have been done and we're always seeing Rishi soon saying you know we need to lead the world on various issues. I'd like to see him lead the world on being the lowest tax motorist in the world and that would have been something I would have applauded. Obviously he didn't have the guts to do that and he won't have the guts to do that because he'd be attacked very much by the environmentalist, the green bobby, those sorts of people which but the point is none of people drive cars aren't anti-cleaning the environment up or breathing clean air. What they want to do is actually put food on their table at the moment and that's the sort of thing we need to balance and what we need to do is invest in clean a fuel technology without hitting people in the pocket. The Chancellor claims the measures he set out will deliver more opportunity and more prosperity but the boss of a Kent charity says not enough support is being offered to those who are struggling the most. Neil Charlick is from Gillingham Street Angels which helps people living in poverty. A number of people use our services at the moment up to 25,000 people a month for coming for food so we'd really like to see some kind of help for these people. Generally budgets tend to help people who have already got money which is not really no good to the people I deal with. I deal with the people who are struggling, vulnerable families, homeless people, people in temporary accommodation and those people are struggling and the numbers are just rising. It's a sad situation that they're in and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Our numbers are growing monthly. Every month our numbers just go up and up and there's not much really seems to be done about bringing it down or trying to tackle this problem. Most of the people I deal with can't afford a car so a fuel cut is not going to help those. Stamped you either talking about it's not going to help those and they most of them can't get a job so they can't get a job income tax being reduced or national insurance being reduced isn't going to help them. I think the kind of the people who are struggling the most in society are the ones who really need help and they're the people out there who are struggling. Originally we were just just homeless people and then it's people in support with accommodation. Now it's people in full-time employment. I mean there needs to be something across the board. There's people even like the wind of fuel allows things like that. That goes across the board. Everybody gets that. Even people who don't need it. There seems this money needs to go to the right kind of people to make this worthwhile for the people that struggle already. Elsewhere, Labour's say announcements made in the budget won't undo the damage the Conservatives have done to the economy over 14 years. Kent Online News. A jury inquest is going to be held into the death of a man who reportedly fell into an open manhole on a building site in Thanet. 36-year-old David Archer had been working on the site in Mansten near Ramsgate when he was fatally injured last November. Witnesses will be called including the Health and Safety Executive Inspector, a play area in Folkstance being called and off after another landslide. Cliffs have collapsed above the Lower Lees coastal park. Cracks have also appeared in newly laid tarmac on Madeira Walk. Council bosses say works underway to stabilise the path which will reopen when it's safe. It's feared it could cost millions of pounds to clean up waste from an illegal dumping scandal on Sheppy. Hundreds of lorry loads of rubbish was fly tipped from cliffs and on to beaches at East Church until officials blocked access to the site. MP Gordon Henderson says it went on for nearly three years. We've been lobbying the Environment Agency for all that time and it was only that part last year that we actually could say that as far as we are aware the dumping has now stopped. I live in Warden Road. I live in East Church so I was witnessing the dumping of the Dumpelories anything up to 50 a day going up through the village and up there and causing chaos. We're still suffering the results of it from the looking state of the roads and the pavements where the lorries were abusing the road. The aftereffects are still being felt. The aftereffects of the dumping particularly from Third Avenue where they were dumping general waste over there which is still being washed up on the beach at Showness and Warden and far away as minster. We've got to be on our guard because the court order was only for six months. That's been renewed for another six months so we've got to be on our guard in the future and I can assure my constituents that not just because I live in the area by the way I would have done it anyway. I will immediately contact the environmental agents and get action again should it reoccur. What we've got to do of course is we are still suffering the effects of what happened before and one way or another we've got to try and ensure we get that cleaned up as quickly as possible and I very much hope the environmental agency and/or Swower Council can come up with an answer to that particular problem with the best will in the world. Undertaking that is a mammoth task and I'm not clear. Swower Council I'm pretty sure haven't got the resources to be able to do that. Whether the environmental agency can do that is a matter for them. I very much hope that someone can do something about it but it does show the irresponsible nature of the dumping that took place and I would say that because it took so long for the environmental agencies to take action we are in that position now. I mean if they had taken action immediately I raised this with them almost three years ago now. The amount of stuff that was actually tipped over the cliff wouldn't be as much as it is at the moment. That's something that you ought to take up with the environmental agency. Well we did just that and got a statement from the organisation they say they are continuing with a criminal investigation gathering evidence and working with Kent Police and other agencies across Swale that includes regular visits to the site and the spokesman says they will continue to keep all enforcement options under constant review. Kent's online reports. A cleaner has been attacked while cleaning toilets in Hearne Bay. They were reportedly pelted with plastic bottles and cans at the facilities in William Street at around four o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Canterbury City Council says he will now be closing the public toilets at 2.30pm for the rest of this week. A chat and woman with more than 50 convictions has told a court she is moving in with her dad in a bid to stay away from class A drugs. Katie Stafford admitted several offences including taking a van without the owner's consent and driving without insurance or a licence. The 44-year-old from Gordon Road has been locked up for 18 weeks and banned from driving for a year. Former Kent miners say they have no regrets 40 years after going on strike. Workers at Tillman Stone, Snowdown and Betzhanger Collieries walked out as part of a nationwide fight to save them from closure. Reporters Sam Lennon has been speaking to Phil Sutcliffe and his wife Kay. Had you looked back on the whole episode now? With anger in some ways because of what was done to the mining communities but I think that we worked as hard as we could to try and keep the mines open and keep our community together. There was a lot of strife and a lot of suffering. Was it worth it? Definitely, definitely it was. It gave us a real insight into how the government were trying to destroy the working class really and unions. You know, as a miner's wife at one time you might have thought that you're not going to be involved in anything but then you understood how it affected families and communities everywhere and you had to join in and support things. We've been on strike to try and save our pit and the community and we lost the pit and the community has suffered as well as the consequence of that. We're still a united community and miners and the wives and families still stick together in Alsham but obviously with a fit gone things change. As I thought you know, I've been retired ten years now. I'll keep myself busy, I volunteer at the Alshammerity Centre and I've done since 2006. I also volunteer over the new Kent Mining Museum as an ex-minor taking people around as a museum guide. Would you do everything you do with an H-60 action you took? Would you do it all again? Yes, definitely. Right, why was that? Well, because it was important we had no choice. They were going to come and shut our pit. We said no, you're not without a fight so we put up a fight and try to save it. Despite the action, the mines all eventually closed. You can read our special report on this story over on the website. Kent Online News. Five people have been arrested after police stopped two suspicious vehicles in Deal and Sandwich. A van was stopped in Mungeon Road on Tuesday morning while a car which had earlier been travelling in a convoy with the van was stopped near the Discovery Park. Items including tools and torches were recovered as well as suspected stolen fuel. What all too critically endangered Sumatran of Rangatans are settling into their new home in Kent well. The brothers have relocated from Switzerland to Port Lim near Hive. It's hoped they could eventually be relocated to the wild. Daisy Fermer will be working with them at the animal park. The Sumatran of Rangatans like the Bornean is a critically endangered species so for these guys there's fewer than 14,000 left now. A lot of that is due to deforestation of habitat. So timber and logging has a really big impact on them but nothing to the scale of palm oil. So unsustainable palm oil plantations are clearing such vast areas of their natural habitat at a rate that this species just can't recover from, can't keep up with. It's decreasing the amount of food they have, it's decreasing their habitat so it's closing them in tighter together and it's also causing a lot of problems for people that are residents of those areas as well. So you get a lot of human wildlife conflict which means they're moving into farmland destroying farmland for food and it's causing big issues for humans as well as it is for a Rangatans too. So it's why sustainable palm oil is so important now. In general we are at a point now where you know we're in a mass extinction phase, we're facing a huge amount of conservation problems. Conservation is probably one of the biggest industries now that we need to focus on and we need to turn our attention to and looking after our natural habitats and making sure that as human beings we take on our responsibility of living sustainably. Yeah there is a chance that rapid deforestation is going to mean that maybe not necessarily that we're going to lose that species altogether because of how important wildlife parks are for making sure that we provide homes and that we then have the future potential for rewilding. So hopefully if that is the worst case scenario that it happens we can lean on places like this to have these numbers to then reintroduce when we have an opportunity to better those natural environments to protect those forests allow them that time for regrowth and then reintroduce. A pub near Canterbury is set to close despite the owners saying they gave everything to try and keep it open. The checkers in in Petem had been empty for three years before being taken over in 2022 but Paula Gilbert and Steve McHugh say support hasn't been there. It's now thought the property could be converted into a house. And a seaside amusement arcade on Sheppy is set to get a £3 million makeover. Plans for Jimmy G's in Laysdown include Adventure Golf, Augmented Reality Darts and a four-story soft play area. They're also hoping to add a show bar and suntaris that Council should make a decision in May. Football and Gillingham have once again slipped out of the league two playoff places after losing to Barrow. The Gills were beaten two-nil last night, their first defeat in four matches. Head coach Steven Clemens spoke to reporters after the game. I felt we was a little bit off it today. We haven't been at the levels we have done recently. I think obviously going to show up on a very heavy pitch the other day and putting in a great performance. Always when you play two away games on the spin it's difficult especially the amount of miles we've done in the last few days. I don't use that as an excuse but I did feel we was a little bit flat. I have to look at myself there. Maybe I could have changed the team. Should I have changed the team? Obviously I'll be thinking about that for the next 24 hours. The game is done now. I think Barrow is probably worthy winners. We didn't create enough. I think the first goal is always going to be important. Comes from a second phase in a set play and I think the second goal is a fairly decent finish from their centre forward. We dust ourselves off and we'll get ready to go again on Saturday and can we start a new run now? Absolutely. We gradually got more and posed ourselves during the second half and corners towards the end. It didn't fall for us in the final third where we needed it. We didn't create enough today. We had plenty of the ball and tried to change the system in the second half to see if that could open them up more. I have to say Barrow are very well organised. They're very tough to break down. They have been all season. That's why they've been in the top seven for most of the season. Obviously yeah. So it was difficult and I think we just didn't have that bit of spark about so they did what we needed. Midfielder Johnny Williams says the whole team is disappointed with yesterday's result. We've got a belief now off the back of a few good results that we can beat anyone in the league and again we have full of confidence to come here and get three points and we haven't and to be honest I think probably the better side one tonight which is hard to say but to be honest we'll beat by the better team. Sometimes you wait for that spark or that moment just to kick you into gear. We just didn't quite add that moment especially in the first half. Yeah no, definitely. The first goal is a psychopath. We're very good when we go 1-0 up and we've showed a couple of times when we go 1-0 down. We can come back on a couple of occasions and we still had that belief at half time but 1-0 we could come way of a point if not three. But yeah and I didn't come. The first goal was really scrappy. I think we got overloaded at the back post and didn't do much. I was overloaded at the back and they got a lucky bounce and cut a no chance and the second ones are a great strike to be fair out of the back of maybe a controversial decision going against walks the other end but we didn't get any decisions to make going my favours. I just think we've got to take this one on the chin and try me on Saturday. Let's start a new run. Yeah no, we haven't got time to feel sorry for ourselves. We're still well in the promotion back chasing a player of position so we haven't got time. We've got another big week coming up Saturday, Tuesday Saturday and a massive thanks to the fans that travelled all that way. We're going to choose a nice exception on and we were so thankful for that and yeah we're sorry we couldn't give them something to go home. They'll be hoping to bounce back when they host Tran Mirovas this weekend. That's all from us today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook X, Instagram, TikTok and threads. You can also get details on the top stories direct to your email each morning via the briefing to sign up just head to kintonline.co.uk News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. [BLANK_AUDIO]
