The Labour leader has been in Dover to explain how his party would tackle the issue of small boat crossings.
Sir Keir Starmer described it as 'one of the greatest challenges we face' and confirmed he would scrap the government's Rwanda scheme.
He was joined by Dover MP Natalie Elphicke who defected to the party earlier this week.
Also in the podcast, a leading Kent doctor is urging mums-to-be to get the whooping cough vaccine after a huge rise in cases.
Around 2,800 infections have been reported in England in the first three months of this year - up from just 858 in 2023.
The landlord of a village pub near West Malling says he's already lost £1,000 just days into a six-week road closure.
The King's Arms on Teston Road, Offham is still open despite UK Power Networks installing underground cables between Seven Mile Lane and Aldon Lane. Find out what the power company has said in response.
A fifth generation fruit farmer in Maidstone has dug up 80% of his orchard, because his business wasn't turning a profit.
James Smith, from Loddington Farm in Boughton Monchelsea, has been telling us why he's turning away from selling apples to major retailers and opening a farm shop.
In sport, the Gillingham managing director says he's convinced the new manager is the right man for the job.
Mark Bonner was appointed little over a week after Stephen Clemence was sacked after failing to make the league two play-offs.
And, a group of teachers are setting off on a challenge to run from Maidstone to Paris ahead of the Olympics.
Six of the staff at Bower Grove School will be completing the distance as a relay, running around a marathon each.
10th on top story is that the Labour leader has been in Dover today to explain how his party would tackle the issue of small boat crossings. Mr Keir Starmer described it as one of the greatest challenges we face and confirmed he would scrap the government's Rwanda scheme. They will get flights off the ground. I don't doubt that. But I also don't doubt that this will not work. A policy that will see just a few hundred people removed to Rwanda a year. Less than one percent of the people who cross the sea in small boats every year. Less than one percent for six hundred million pounds. That is neither an effective deterrent or a good use of your money. And then you look at the rest of our border system. And honestly, it's like a sieve. Just the other day the home office admitted it's lost track of thousands of people that they think have no right to be here. And yet still the government refuses to do anything that can focus all its time and energy propping up Rwanda, throwing good money off the bad, hoping it will get a few flights with what a couple of hundred migrants off the ground. Because it's symbolic for party management, for the election. It's gesture politics. Six hundred million pounds for a few hundred removed. That is gesture politics. And Britain can do better. Labor will do better. We will end this fast. We will restore serious government to our borders, tackle this problem at source and replace the Rwanda policy permanently. It was joined by Dover MP Natalie Elphick, who defected to the party earlier this week. She's been speaking to our reporter, Max Chesson. Well, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Kia Starmer and Evac Cooper to Dover and Deal today. I think it absolutely underlines the serious commitment to border security from the Labour Party. And Kia Starmer has set out a very compelling and clear plan about how he will tackle the small boats, crisis and illegal migration. I'm really delighted that he's been down here. I think he has such a positive message for our country. And I'm looking forward to him coming back again another time. Kent Online News. Other top stories for you now and a support worker at a school in Canterbury has admitted stalking her former therapist with hundreds of emails and voicemails. Magdalim Pitt, who mentored students at Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys began the harassment after her psychotherapist ended their sessions. The 46 year old who lives in the city sent nearly 800 emails in the space of six months. She's been given a two year conditional discharge. A man and teenager have been arrested. Following reports, a 12 year old boy was threatened with a knife near Cranbrook. The victims understood to have been pushed against a car and asked for money in Sissinghurst. A 20 year old and a boy are both out on bail after being questioned. Meantime, a man's due in court accused of breaching an order banning him from drinking alcohol in public in Dover. Michael Stringer had been given a community protection notice in July 2023. Following an investigation into anti-social behaviour, the 41 year old from On Floor Road has been charged with five counts of failing to comply. Now, a leading Kent doctor is urging moms to be to get the hooping cough vaccine after a huge rise in cases. Around 2,800 infections have been reported in England in the first three months of this year. That's up from just 858 in the whole of 2023. Five babies have also died. I've been speaking to Dr Julian Spinks, who's a GP in Medway. Hooping cough is one of those diseases where we get outbreaks every few years and that's because we get a buildup of people who aren't immune and then it happens. But this seems to be particularly bad at the moment and we're seeing deaths from it and that is not something we want to happen. It's particularly a problem in children on the age of six months and yet we do have ways of dealing with this. Mothers who are pregnant are offered a hooping cough vaccine and that will protect their children over the first few months and then the child of vaccines of two, three and four months will immunise against hooping cough. Can you just describe what hooping cough is and how youngsters get in, why they are particularly susceptible? Hooping cough is a bacterial infection and it's passed quite easily from person to person. It starts off, I'm afraid like an awful lot of diseases, looking rather like a cold with a runny nose and a mild cough and so on. After about a week they start to get this severe cough and you get this bounce in adults and children where they cough until they run out of there and then they gasp in and that's the hoop that people talk about. It's not always a hooping sound and in smaller babies often they cough until they vomit. It's unpleasant in adults and can lead to complications like lung problems but in the under six month olds they're much greater risk of getting things like pneumonia or encephalitis inflammation with the brain and as a result we have to have quite a low threshold to admit them to hospital. We can give antibiotics but the antibiotics don't completely get rid of the cough. The main reason for giving the antibiotics is to reduce the spread of hooping cough to other people in the family and elsewhere. Why do you think we are seeing particularly high numbers at the moment? Can we put it down to anything or is it just as you say these things happen every so often? I certainly think that there are additional factors at the moment. We've seen a fall off in the number of children having their vaccinations and in particular ones who are having their preschool vaccinations and that means there's more children around who can pass it on to their younger siblings or their babies and so on. The other thing I think is we still have a slight COVID effect in that the things we did to protect against COVID actually protected against a lot of respiratory diseases and so that means people didn't catch it and so there's a larger number of people who can go on to get it. You can also read this story by clicking on the trending pages of Kent online. In other health news new figures show smokers in Kent are costing the county over £1 billion a year in fires at care costs and loss productivity. The number of smokers in the county sits at around 13 percent. That's slightly higher than the national average of 12.9. It comes as Kent County Council was given nearly £2 million in funding last month as part of a government initiative to help people kick the habit. Kent Online reports. Motor Sport business in Kent has been fined after inspectors found health and safety breaches. Darkford-based Hispec motor sport had machinery that wasn't properly maintained and wasn't doing enough to protect workers' health. They've been fined £6,500 in order to pay more than £9,000 in costs. Elsewhere, the owner of a rubbish removal company has been fined after items linked to it were discovered at an illegal waste transfer site in Northleat. Can a hand contract has limited admitted failing in its duty of care to carry out relevant checks to prevent flight tipping offences? They've been ordered to pay almost £10,000 in fines and costs. And its thought a load of fly-tipped waste on a country lay near Darkford could be linked to organised crime. The car parts are blocking Dean Bottom in South Darrant, the road set to be shut for a week while the environmental agency investigates. Now, a warning to drivers, part of the M25 will be shut this weekend for the second time this year as work on a multi-million-pound Junction 10 improvement scheme continues. We appreciate this isn't in Kent, but if you are heading outside of the county this weekend, it's definitely one to be aware of. It's going to be closed from nine o'clock tonight until six on Monday morning. That's between Junction's nine and ten. It's so cruise can lift concrete beams and another large gantry into place. Now, the landlord for Village Pub near West Mollings says he's already lost £1,000 just days into a six-week road closure. The King's Arms on Teasom Road in Hoffen is still open despite UK power networks installing underground cables between Sephamar Lane and Alden Lane. Well, landlord Matthew Scullion is worried potential customers don't realise they can still get to the pub, as many seem to be avoiding the area completely. Since they started the road works on Tuesday, traders dropped massively, so we normally do around 30 covers, but for the last couple of days it's been doing between two and four. Obviously, the signage for the road has been poor. It's completely covered the road, even though you can still access us from King's Hill West Mollings Way. So far we've lost around £400 in the last couple of days, and obviously, it was carrying on for six, seven weeks. That's going to be a lot of money. We're normally a very popular venue, so, you know, obviously, we're normally easily accessible, but obviously we still need to, still need the customers to survive through this period. So, obviously, when the road is back open, it's normal to still be here. Now, the energy company have said they're working to provide appropriate signage, which has been agreed with the local authorities' highways department. They've also apologised for the inconvenience. "Cance online reports." Got some house building news now, and plans to build 115 homes in the heart of a Kent village have been rejected. Developers want to build the newest state in Headcorn on land just off Mote Road, but the application received more than 100 objections. Planning officers agreed it would cause damage to the landscape and harm the character of the village. A former air-fielding Kent, which was used during the Second World War, has gone up for sale. The land, near the Kent Battle of Britain Museum in Hawkins, has planning permission for 110 homes. It's on the market for £4.5 million pounds. Campaigners are set to leaflet 14,000 homes as they fight against Prince William's plans for housing estate in Favisham. The idea of two and a half thousand homes off the A2 and M2 are being led by the Duchy of Cornwall, which is owned by the Future King. Critics claim it will see 320 acres of high-grade farmland lost and put extra strain on local services. And if you follow Kent online on socials, you can see pictures of what a proposed new McDonald's in Dover could look like. The plans for a 24-hour drive-through restaurant next to St James's Church have raised more than 240 objections from those who say it would blight the area. The application is now before planning offices at the District Council. Now, a fifth generation fruit farmer in Maidstone has dug up 80% of his orchard, because his business wasn't turning a profit. James Smith, from Loddington Farm in Borton, Moncellcy, is turning away from selling apples to major retailers and opening a farm shop to sell produce directly to the customer instead. They'll now grow and sell pears, cherries, apricots and asparagus. The shop will also stop produce from the local areas, such as coffee and beer. James has been telling us more. The main reason for it is that I want the farm shop to be a window to the way we farm. I've been in conversation with Richard, who now works for me. He was running a farm shop just down the road and I've been talking to him about what I wanted to do here. So we had planning permission to build it, but I said I didn't want to set something up here and try and compete with him. I'd always done my shopping with him. So in conversation, we decided to do this together. So we took over his business board here and then now we're working together to deliver what we're doing here, but it's fundamentally it's about shortening our supply chain and my vision is about reconnecting consumers with their food. So the farm shop here is a window to the way we farm on Loddington and the whole idea is that we can create as short a supply chain as possible. So we're in the process of pivoting away from supplying multiple retailers in the UK, pouring our heart and soul into production and getting very little back. Here we can talk to people about what we're producing. We can sell it directly to the consumer and it's a lot more fun. So you said you're making changes to how you farm. So I'm a fifth generation fruit grower and for the 20 years I've been back on the farm. We've really been trying to succeed as commercial fruit grows. And that's supplying the sort of a standard model. We grow everything, we store it, send it to a big pack house and it gets distributed around the country to various supermarket retailers. And with increasing risks and poor returns from supermarket retailers, it's just become too difficult and loss making at the end of the day. So we're trying to pivot away from that. I'm also trying to champion regenerative farming. So concentrating on the link between healthy soils, healthy food, healthy people and really just trying to be a much more diverse mixed farm business. And when you've got your own retail, you can grow whatever you need to grow and sell it directly to the consumer. So we've gone from a very monocultural approach to food production. So acres and acres of sweet red apples grown on their own on high performance trees. So now we've got livestock, we've got poultry, we've got cherries, asparagus. We still have apples, but everything is a much more complex and diverse farming operation. And now with the roundup of everything going on in what's set to be a glorious weekend in Kent, here's Sam Laurie. A real crowd pleaser is coming to the Maidstone Leisure Centre on Saturday. The Brick Building Festival, celebrating All Things Lego, will have a speed building competition, loose bricks, collectible sets and incredible large scale displays. It's perfect for families, whether you've got little ones who love playing with Lego, or some big kids who want to let their childish side loose for just one day. You can snap up the last few tickets online. This weekend also marks National Mills Weekend. You might not have heard of it before, but it's a weekend to explore some of the country's oldest watermills and windmills. Some of these historic attractions aren't normally open to the public, but over the weekend you can visit and learn all about England's traditional, agricultural and manufacturing heritage and take part in some fun activities. There are three Kent Mills open this weekend, and you can find out more about them and why we celebrate National Mills Weekend in this week's K.M. papers. If you've got a railway enthusiast in the family, the Romney Hive and Dim Church Railway is throwing its steam and diesel gala this weekend. There will be some visiting locomotives as well as returning steam and diesel engines that have been renovated and are back in work in order. You can journey between stations and enjoy snacks and refreshments, and that's on Saturday and Sunday. Now for some top theatre, because you know there's plenty going on in the county over the weekend. The one and only Tim Rice, who is the lyricist behind smash hit musicals like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar, and Disney films like Aladdin, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, is coming to Canterbury's Marlow Theatre. The Theatre legend is there tonight talking about his remarkable career, from working with Andrew Lloyd Webber to seeing his songs play out on the big screen, and the show features music from some of his biggest shows. Also, don't forget to book your tickets to see Pretty Woman at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley. The new musical starring Love Island winner Amber Davies and Strictly Champ, Oreo Duba, is still showing until Saturday night. And if you miss it, the touring production will return to Kent with a run in Canterbury this July. There's also a host of household names visiting over the weekend, as the Tombridge Wells Literary Festival boasts a packed programme of famous faces. The festival, which kicked off yesterday with a talk from Western singer Michael Ball, features guest speakers such as Monty Python actor and travel expert Michael Palin, comic relief founder Lenny Henry, best-selling crime novelist Peter James, and comedian Jeff Norcott, to name just a few. Now we couldn't talk about this weekend without mentioning the biggest night in music. I'm talking, of course, about the Eurovision song contest. The global singing competition returns on Saturday night, and you can watch artists from across the world perform on the big screen. Three Kent cinemas in Greenheith, Ashford and Sittingborne will be streaming the four-hour extravaganza live from Sweden, with BBC commentary from Graham Norton, and viewers are encouraged to dress up and sing along in true Europop style. You can find out more on what's on and Kent online if that sounds like your idea of a great Saturday night. Hopefully this weekend we'll see a win for the UK's entry years and years singer Oli Alexander, but even if we end up with nil part, there's still plenty going on this weekend to lift your spirit. Kent's online sport. The ball and the Gillingham MD says he's convinced the new manager is the right man for the job. Mark Bonner was appointed little over a week after Stephen Clemens was sacked after failing to make the league two play-offs. The former Cambridge 90 boss will spend the summer getting his team together. Our Gills reporter, Luke Cordell, has been chatting to managing director Joe Comper and new manager Mark Bonner. I think this was the key to the speed of the process really, was that we met on Monday morning, firstly decided whether we were going to make a change. We decided to make a change. We then went, "Okay, what's the criteria? What are we looking for in our manager?" And that helped because some names were coming up and you saw all that's impressive, but no, it doesn't fit the criteria. We were strict on that. So then when we all met Mark and we were like, "You've walked around the room." What was nice was that everyone has a different approach on it. Right, so Shannon isn't looking for whether we're paying her 4-3-1, a 4-3-1. She's not looking at that. What she's looking is for, "Okay, does this person fit our culture?" And as you go around the room, Kenny, obviously, is looking at the football detail. And after we met Mark, I walked him back to the car park and I'm looking back thinking, "This is great." I was excited and I'm hoping the room agreed and it walked in and they just looked at me as if to say, "Do you agree?" And we were all like, "Great." So that was brilliant. And yeah, I suppose the speed of which we got things done shows that we went away and went, "Okay, let's sleep on it. Let's make sure we're happy." And then I either call with Brad and Kenny on Monday, which is back holiday Monday and we always like, "Yep, you're still happy?" We were. Brad flew back over the weekend, so we lost a day or two there. But yeah, I called Mark's agent. I think Mark's agent was like, "It's been called a day Monday." But we was like, "Yeah, yeah, we'll chat tomorrow." I was like, "What about tonight?" And we got it done and it was pretty much agreed Monday afternoon evening and Tuesday was signed. When you did get the call, what were you sort of thoughts and what were you doing with yourself, just chilling out? I can't even remember what I was doing. Where were you when all this started? I can't remember. But what I do know is I was really excited. Yeah, really excited because when you go through the process and you start thinking, "It's natural, I think. All right, okay, what I'm going to do if I get it?" And then it's that little disappointment if it doesn't happen or that uncertainty and things. So yeah, I was just excited and really grateful for the opportunity because I think when you get a chance to join a club that's got lots of history and really good people and things like that, those chances don't come along that often. It's only 72 jobs in the EFL. And if you can get one at a good club that's got good people in it, that's it. We've ruled stability in terms of like the ownership world and the financial situation and things. You just think, "You know what? It's a real good one to get." So it didn't take much thinking. Greg Hitting, Kent are going to be looking to build on their first win of the season. They're taking on Worcestershire after beating Lancashire last time out. Play is taking place at Canterbury. And a group of teachers are setting off today on a challenge to run from Maidstone to Paris ahead of the Olympics. Six of the staff at Bauer Grove School will be completing the distance as a relay running around a marathon each. They're raising money for a summer festival for SEM pupils and hope to inspire children to do activities of their own. Toby Starks is the creative lead at the school. They've been out on a few training runs together. I think some might have done a little bit more training than others, but most of them come from either a bit of a fitness background. They all enjoy and keep them fit. But I think for some of them, this is a challenge that I haven't really taken on before. That's the school. We've got quite a few things going on. We've got a big assembly. We're all going to be lined up on the field, waving them through with some banners and flags they were making, making sure we see them off. Yeah, and of course, it's still in fix this year as well. That's why you're going to Paris, of course. It's a bit inspiring this time of the year, isn't it, to this time of the cycle of the four years? Yeah, absolutely. I think as soon as you hear the Olympics coming up, everyone starts to think about getting involved or getting excited about it. We make sure the pupils are getting excited and making sure we share information with all the pupils and getting them involved. There'll be a few activities that the kids are getting involved in on the day as well. I think we've got a few different races and some sponsored walkie things as well, so yeah. Can you just tell me a bit more about Bower Grove as a school itself? And then ultimately, what this will mean to the children if you can put ahead the summer festival? Yeah, so it's a social emotional mental health school with a sort of focus on behavioral needs. A lot of our pupils will come from getting deprived backgrounds, and we, as a school, we really try to make sure they have as many authentic experiences in a range of things, whether it be sports, whether it be the arts, whether it be these authentic life experiences that make sure that not everyone gets to experience. But whilst they're here, we try and do our best to make sure they get some really amazing experiences and hopefully inspire them to do things, whether it be going to a music festival and going, do you know what? I'd really like to play guitar or seeing the adults do this amazing feat of running and go, do you know what? I might start doing some running. I might start doing some fundraising, just a little bit about inspiration. It's a little bit about different experiences. It should take around two days in total, and they're trying to raise £5,000, so that's all from us for today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget, you can follow us on FacebookX, 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 kentonline.co.uk. Oster on the site today, don't forget to check out the latest review from our secret drinker. You can also get the latest episode of the Kent Politics podcast, head to the podcast pages of Kent Online, or go to iam-listening or wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. We'll be back on Monday. News you can trust. This is the Kent Online podcast.
