麻豆约拍

The number of drivers using the Dartford Tunnel has fallen by 3.5 million in the last year. Despite this, the income to the government from the crossing has continued to rise.

Fewer than 51 million vehicles used the tunnel last year. Experts believe the recession has forced people to alter their driving habits, whilst unemployment and the increase in the toll prices in 2008 are also believed to be behind the drop.

Paul Watters from the AA and Steve Dawe from the Kent Green Party try to make sense of the figures (07.07) and John Burden, Leader of Gravesham Borough Council, where a proposed second Thames crossing would be built, offers his views on transport across the river through Kent (08.08).

Also on the programme, the widow of a former Kent painter and decorator who died of asbestos-related cancer is appealing to his former workmates from the 1970s and 1980s to come forward.

68 year old Anita Jacobs wants to establish how her husband Ted came into contact with the deadly substance. She believes he'd worked with asbestos guttering and artex while employed by Swale Council.

Ted died less than a month after being diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2011. Swale Council have offered their sympathies but felt it inappropriate to comment.

Anita's solicitor Alice Humpreys from Irwin Mitchell talks John and Clare through the legal standing of a case like this (07.23) and Chatham MP Tracey Crouch explains how she has rebelled against her own government to secure extra legal help for mesothelioma victims (08.22).

And a Kent man says he is frustrated and dismayed that his hospital appointment was cancelled five times in six months.

73-year-old Anthony Phillips from Borough Green was due to undergo tests at the urology department at Maidstone Hospital, but it was repeatedly postponed.

Before each planned appointment he had to stop taking his medication, which left him in pain.

Managers, who have now apologised gave a mixture of excuses ranging from staff holidays to poor correspondence for the cancellations.

We hear his story at 06.40.

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