A young man found dead in a Kent park following a suspected scooter accident has been described as kind and incredibly talented.
Police and paramedics had been called to Mote Park in Maidstone just before 5.30am last Saturday and Anatolii Cherevko was pronounced dead at the scene.
Also in today's episode, we've been told what it'll mean for patients in Kent after GPs voted to take 'collective action' for the first time in 60 years.
It's in a row about new contracts and means family doctors could limit the number of patients they see each day to 25. Hear from Dr Caroline Rickard who represents GPs across the county.
Former Kent MP Craig Mackinlay has told us about his readjustment to life after his arms and legs were amputated.
He's been given prosthetics after a battle with sepsis late last year and now wants to be known as the 'Bionic Lord' after being granted a peerage.
A mum from Faversham has designed a map to help families struggling with food poverty over the summer holidays.
Erin Byrne is a student at the Margate School, and was set a task as part of her art course.
And you can also hear from Sam Lawrie who's got a guide to everything going on in Kent this weekend.
10 - Kent Online News News you can trust This is the Kent Online Podcast. Nicola Everett Hello, hope you're okay. Thanks ever so much for downloading today's podcast. On Friday, August the 2nd, coming up, you can hear from Kent's Bionic Lord. Plus, we've got details of everything going on in the county this weekend. But first today, a young man found dead in a Kent Park following a suspected scooter accident, has been described today as kind and incredibly talented. Well, Lucy's got more for the podcast. Well, police and paramedics had been called to Mote Park in Maidstone just before half five last Saturday morning. As you say, Anatoly Chirevco is thought to have been involved in a scooter crash and was pronounced dead at the scene. The 24-year-old was born in Ukraine and moved to England in September 2021. And friends have been paying tribute, Lucy. Yes, they've told us Anatoly was incredibly talented and despite having a difficult childhood, they say he was always positive and strong in spirit. They've recalled how at school he showed a talent for being on the stage and was also very artistic. In fact, he wanted to become an artist and was athletic. And do we know what he'd been doing since arriving in Kent? Yes, he'd been working at the Waitrose Distribution Centre in Aylesford and before that he packed apples for a company called Bard's Lee. He'd been saving money to help his brother and sister join him in the UK. The fundraiser has been set up so his body can be returned to Ukraine and more than £5,000 has already been donated. Money will also go to his family. Such sad news. Lucy, thank you ever so much. Kent Online News Other top stories and if you follow Kent Online or socials or head to the Maidstone pages of the website today, you can see pictures of a man police are hunting after teenage girls were approached in the town. Two 16-year-olds in Watman Park were asked to take explicit images of a man. Two other girls were targeted in St Peter Street. It's been confirmed. More than 140 jobs have been lost after the sudden closure of Folkston Sports Centre. We told you in the podcast earlier in the week that the charity running the facility had announced it could no longer afford to remain operational. Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for the facility to be reopened. The podcast has been told what it'll mean for patients in Kent after GPs voted to take collective action for the first time in 60 years. It's all in a row about new contracts that means family doctors could limit the number of patients they see each day to 25. The British Medical Association claims those new GP contracts will leave surgeries struggling to stay financially viable. Dr Caroline Ricardo represents GPs across the county. She's been speaking to Bartholomew Hall. In Kent and Medway, we know that practices are under extreme pressure. We have had years of underfunding and we have the lowest number of GPs in the country. We are well below the national average, which it's acknowledged is too low. So just for us to meet that national average in Kent and Medway, we would need around 260 extra full-time equivalent GPs that start working tomorrow. Some of the other media outlets have picked up on the 25 patients a day and this has been a BMA policy for some time that practices could have implemented at any time. The 25 patients per day is based on safe working guidance. The reason the practices might be considering reducing that appointment contact number for their GPs is to increase patient safety. As patients need to become more complex, we are seeing greater numbers of patients with more complex needs. We want to be able to spend more time with those patients and make sure that we're working safely. The ultimate goal is that we increase funding to practices which would mean they could employ more GPs. So if you have two GPs seeing 25 patients a day, rather than one GP seeing 30 to 40 patients a day, overall you will eventually have more appointments. The family of a Chatham teenager left brain damaged after jumping into the sea have released incredible videos showing his recovery. Fifteen-year-old Jack Dolan was injured while performing a flip from Stonegate here in Margate in June. Now a scan initially showed no brain activity, but he's been filmed moving his arms and legs and looking around a room. You can see that footage by heading to the website. There's a warning not to leave shiny objects near windows after sunlight. Hitting a mirror started a fire at a house in Rochester. We've got pictures at Kent Online actually. They show the extent of the damage to the property on St Margaret's bank. Two crews were sent to tackle the flames at the time. They also managed to rescue a pet cat. One of Canterbury's most prolific LGBT advocates has died at the age of 55. Tributes have been flooding in for Tyrone, Alexander, who passed peacefully in his sleep last Friday. His partner of seven years, as told as Tyrone, was loved by so many, as well as appearing on the show Blind Date. Back in the day, he was well known for setting up one of Canterbury's first gay venues, Bar 11. Kent Online reports. Next today, and former Kent MP Craig McKinley has been telling us about his readjustment to life after his arms and legs were amputated. He's been given prosthetics after a battle with sepsis late last year, which almost took his life, and he now wants to be known as the Bionic Lord after being granted a peerage. Craig has been speaking to local democracy reporter Simon Finley on the Kent Politics podcast. You know where these artificial arms and legs? I mean, how did you find that transition? It's certainly not easy. I can tell you. I mean, I'm on sort of mark two legs at the moment. They sort of start you through various ones. First ones are very, very bulky, and they don't have an ankle that moves, which makes going up and down stairs and up and down slopes, very, very tricky. But as you go through the journey, you get better and better ones. I've now on ones that have got an ankle that moves a bit, it's sort of a hydraulic ankle. And yeah, the walking isn't too bad. It's not comfortable, comfortable, but I regularly do over 6,000 steps a day, which even for someone able bodied is probably up there with what most people do on a daily basis. So the legs aren't really an issue, and you see people with artificial legs, and you wouldn't even know that they've got them. And I must say, if I have long trousers on rather than shorts, I'm sure to find what comfortable, obviously, in this weather. You wouldn't particularly know that I've got artificial legs to mine. My gait is pretty good. You might think I've got a sort of stoning my shoe, that's about all really. But the arms and hands are very different. I mean, they're good as far as they go, and you can pick things up, pick glasses up. You can do a few things, but they're not as good as the real thickness as it were, not as good as the original hands and arms and fingers, nowhere like. But they're better than what the NHS have currently given me, which is frankly a bit of a sort of rubber hook, which I'm not entirely sure what he meant to do with two of those, and hence that's going to be part of my campaign. This rather silly that the NHS will give you the multi-articulating, sort of clever, barnock arms in time, but you might wait three years for them. And you think, well, why make people wait for three years for something you will provide anyway, when they can get on with a bit more of a normal life, and not an issue for me, mental health issues, I'm more cheerful. But for some, three years with two rubber hooks, I don't think it's going to take you to a very good place, because you can do very little for yourself with those. So it's not just getting people back, feeling better, looking normal, or as normal as you can, but it's perhaps getting them back to work and doing something productive. And that then I think is important. I thought that is part of what the NHS is trying to achieve and is there for. Are you going to use your new position as a law to push for that? And what effectively? Very much. What effectively can you do? Well, it's like many things. What can MPs, back then, MPs do? Well, not a lot. What can lords do? Well, not a lot, but they do have a voice. And you've got hands-on, and the media does follow what's happening in the house. And you get the opportunity to go on programs like yours. And others, where there's an interest in a storyline, because it is somewhat unusual. I suppose it's made that much more unusual that I'm going to become a peer of the realm. So yes, it's an opportunity to have a voice. And obviously the new health secretary, I've got his phone number, I'll no doubt be sitting down with him and explaining to him the experience that I've had. And with the hope that he'll say, yep, that's really not quite right. Let's see if we can do something better. So if what I've gone through can actually make people coming down the track who are yet to be afflicted with sepsis, and yet to have what I've had, and there's not many a year, there's only about half a dozen, because most people tend to die. Well, they certainly did years ago, but with medical advantage, you've got a better chance of survival. If I can get one of those people in the future getting better prosthetics earlier, then I'll see that as a job well done. There's also a job of work to do in recognizing sepsis. Sepsis is one of the biggest killers in the UK. I mean, granted, some of them are like the sort of thing that you dialed when you're when you end of life, you know, if it wasn't sepsis that killed you, it'd probably be, you know, chest infection or something. You know, many of those are what you might call end of life infections that you could probably do little about. But there will be many, many thousands of younger people who will die of sepsis every year. And in my case, I don't think much could be done because it came on so unbelievably quickly. But the usual route is that you get a few days grace, where you're feeling increasingly unwell. If we can, during that period, have family friends go, do you know what? I'm more aware of sepsis, and I'm concerned that is what you might have. You might be able to get to people earlier, get them into the hospital, and that does know what to do with sepsis. I feel like Ben and Titus, where, you know, the awareness have been injected, especially in children, is so much greater than it was. Absolutely. And also, if you think of the stroke campaign, the fast pain, I mean, that's now entrenched with. And so, I think perhaps if I can be part of making people think more about sepsis and saving a few people from getting to the stage that I'm in, or even worse towards death, then that will, again, be a job well done. You know, perhaps there are other things going on here. I mean, my mother passed away with an autoimmune disease. It was rheumatoid arthritis shouldn't really kill you, but in some people, if it's very serious, it does. Does that mean that I had an autoimmune deficiency within my genetics? Is there a genetic test of which we hear of so many more now for all different types of ailments and illnesses that perhaps would have recognized are you are likely to be more susceptible to an autoimmune disease like sepsis, because that's what it is. It's your body going with completely berserk at the response to an infection. So perhaps you're about to have a more of a risk list of people. And further than that, you see what we managed to achieve with COVID with rapid testing, and we had test kits at home. And what we have with glucose tests for those who are diabetic in a very easy prick finger test, is there perhaps some type of easy test that we could have that would be recognizing a markers of likely sepsis? And I know lactate, lactate levels are one of the measures. And I had that test, and that was what confirmed it to a midway hospital. You know, are there these sort of easier tests that people were able to go, right, let's do a fingerprint test. Are you, you know, you're on the pathway here to sepsis? So, yeah, perhaps, perhaps what I've gone through will be a force for good amongst the health service and across the country to actually save a few lives in the future. And that'll make my life very well worth living. Craig goes on to chat about the election and the defeat for the conservatives. He also says who he thinks could be the next leader of the Tory party. You can hear that episode in four at im-listening.co.uk or wherever you get your podcasts, just search for Kent Politics podcast. Ken's online reports ahead. Teachers paid tribute following the death of a 10-year-old boy from Broadstairs following a seizure. Louis Dauncy Jones was a pupil at St. Peter in Fannett, juniors and had been waiting for an MRI scan following a history of similar attacks. His classmates have made a booklet of happy memories while a fundraiser has been set up for his family. There are calls for a ban on barbecues on some of Kent's beaches. It's a mid-consense. People can be injured by stepping on them if they're still hot or buried under the sand. Now, our local councillors put forward the suggestion. A ban on disposable barbecues is already in place in Whistable and Herm Bay. I'd like to know what you think. You can comment on the story or you can get in touch via our socials. In the meantime, there are calls to tidy up Canterbury after residents described part of the city as shabby and neglected. Members of the South Canterbury Association claim litter is on the rise, which encourages antisocial behaviour. The city councils told us the issue is a priority and always welcomes litter reports so they can be resolved swiftly. The bosses at a food bank in North Kent say they're relieved to be staying open after finding a new site. Swanley and District Food Bank was given notice to leave its Lindenway home by the end of November. After months of searching for a new venue, it's relaunching today in the high street. In the meantime, mum from Favisham has designed a map to help families struggling with food poverty over the summer holidays. Erin Byrne is a student at the Margate School and was set a task as part of her art course. She says she wanted to focus on something that impacts her local community. And I've been chatting to her all about it. As part of my course, we've been asked to create a design intervention. So a lot of the thinking at the Margate School is about how to use design to address social and environmental problems. So as I lived in Favisham, I was really keen to look at something that particularly affects Favisham. There's a lot of child poverty in Favisham and also I was aware because I've got my own daughter who's six years old. He goes to school in Favisham. That actually free school dinners is not available obviously in the summer holidays and it's a really long stretch. So I was really keen to do a project about helping families access free food in the summer holidays. So I came up with this idea of creating a map. Basically, it's quite a simple idea. So that meant collaborating with all the community groups and face organisations in Favisham and getting all the information into one place because actually that's the thing that's missing. Often families have to do quite a lot of research themselves. So it was just about trying to make that information as accessible as possible basically and visually beautiful. So I tried to make the map something that's engaging. Yeah, I was going to say them. The map is great and it's really good for young people as well, particularly little smaller children. There's activities for them to get involved in. Because it's your hometown, how much has that kind of added to the project and made you really passionate about it? I mean, I think my partner, my husband, Chris, thought I was obsessed. I think the fact that it was local to me and the fact that I was able to meet so many local organisations and people who were also very passionate about the project, I think made me feel even more and more excited about it because I think I had the idea originally and I thought I wasn't sure if it was a good idea. But then the more people I spoke to in Favisham, the more I was, you know, the feedback was so positive and everyone seemed to have a connection to the subject because with the cost of living crisis, actually, you know, the poverty line is actually affecting more and more people and also everyone's having a tough time, especially over the summer holidays, you know, trying to keep kids active and out of the house and providing food for them is really difficult for anyone. So yeah, so it just felt like something that lots and lots of people were interested in getting involved in. So I think that made it even more exciting because I think it started off as a project just for me, but then it became much more about all these kind of relationships that I built and yeah, meeting lots of new people around a really important problem, basically. Yeah, and would you say that Favisham is doing quite well in supporting people now that you've had a chance to go out and see what organisations are providing free meals or where the food banks are? Do you think Favisham's doing a pretty good job in helping as much as it can? I think that's a really interesting question because when I first had the idea, I didn't know anything really about the subject and I had the preconception. I think a lot of people have that Favisham is quite affluent and is doing fine and it's a market town and actually, you know, that couldn't be further from the truth because, you know, there are a lot of people who are actually struggling and it's kind of an invisible issue in Favisham food poverty. So yeah, so I think first as well, I approached the town council because I said there was only one doing anything about this and they suggested I went to the Favisham Community Network in group meeting. So that's something I had never heard of, but basically it's a group of 17 organisations who all come together every month and they kind of target key issues that are facing the town. So they're two big items are food poverty and social isolation as well as other issues. So I turned up at their meeting and they were a bit sort of surprised to see a kind of student designer but it was amazing really to hear about everything that was going on. So I went from having a blank piece of paper and slightly panicking that I was going to have a map with nothing on it which would be a very sad story as well for the children and families of Favisham and actually having all this information and it went from being, I thought it was going to be an easy graphic design project and it turned into kind of a directory. I mean, I've got it in front of me here and it was just going to be a map and now it's like absolutely covered in information. So I think yes the answer is yes. I think it's absolutely amazing that the two things that I learned through doing it which I think was really interesting is that because I originally was targeting primary school age kids but there was all this information about teenagers and actually it's great support teenagers in Favisham because you've got two youth clubs and the West Favisham Community Centre actually provide, if you're a young person in Favisham you can have a free meal every night of the year apart from Christmas. I couldn't believe that. I thought, wow if I'd known that, it's incredible the offer that's there for young people and then for children, you've got the Umbrella Centre offering free pet lunches from Tuesday to Friday. So that's really amazing offer that a lot of people don't know about and there's another one called Make Lunch which is at the Alexander Centre and that's not just providing free food which is on Mondays and Tuesdays for three weeks out of the summer holidays. They also provide crafts, activities and it's all free you know and it's really, it's very open, it's very inclusive and I was absolutely amazed yeah so I was a very loved answer to your question but I think the answer is yes I was really impressed at what's going on in Favisham and it just has inspired me as a member of the public to really want to be part of it and to work out you know to volunteer or to somehow offer my services in some way. It's a fantastic project, thank you so much to Erin for being on the podcast. Now the map has details of where parents can get help as you heard including actually Favisham food bank. Now they're going to be getting donations from the Tons of Tins campaign which is currently running over on our sister radio station KM FM. If you head to KM FM's website you'll find details of how you can donate. We've got one more week left before we start delivering those donations across the county and now for a roundup of everything going on in Kent this weekend here's Sam Laurie. It's shaping up to be a scorcher this weekend and I don't know about you but I'm very much looking forward to soaking up the nice weather. If you want to make sure your weekend doesn't go to waste we've got some brilliant ideas to get you out of the house over the next couple of days. From today until Sunday the Margate's old festival returns to Kent's popular seaside town. The event is one of the biggest and longest running soul festivals in the country and boasts more than a hundred live performances. There will be live music on the beach and at some of Margate's indoor venues as well as late night DJ sets, a record fair, a sunset bike ride, street food stores and a beach clean. If you're a petrol head there are a couple of great car shows that you won't want to miss over the weekend. First up it's Campafest which has a new name and a brand new location. The three-day car show previously known as the Kent VW Fest has a new home at Burchington's Quex Park and is celebrating all sorts of camper vans this year. There's also a fun fair food and drink stores and an on-site camping ground if you feel like staying overnight. It starts today and runs until Sunday and then on Saturday and Sunday the supercar weekend returns to Heaver Castle showing off some serious the impressive motors. High performance vehicles like Ferraris and Lamborghinis will be pulling up on the lawns of the castle and amongst these fancy cars you might spot a very familiar looking yellow three-wheeled van that's a bit more like an old banger than a racing car. Now something for the whole family is the Pirates weekend at Dover Castle. On Saturday and Sunday you can meet some of history's most infamous pirates and his swashbuckling stories from the high seas. There will also be interactive shows and hands-on activities and going back a few decades the Kent 50s festival will return to Sandwich for a third year bringing with it rock and roll music swing dancing and retro fashion. There will be free outdoor performances and ticketed concerts inside the Guildhall on Saturday. Finally it's time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community with Tumbridge Pride. There will be a colourful parade and live entertainment from musicians, singers, singers and drag artists at Tumbridge Castle on Saturday. So don't forget to bring your rainbow flags. Now drink lots of water, use plenty of sun cream and have a fabulous weekend. Ken's online sport. Jenny's first up in Kent's Emma Radikanu goes for a place in the semi-finals of the Washington Open tonight. She's taking on Spain's Paula Badossa in the last eight. The 21-year-old from Orpington chose not to represent Team GB at the Olympics to protect her fitness ahead of the US Open. Now we have got some Kent athletes in action at the Games in Paris. Do make sure you're checking the sports pages of Kent online for the very latest on how they've got on. Moving on to football and Gilling Emma back in friendly action this weekend. They're travelling to take on Woking in their final warm-up game before the start of the new season. The Jills get their League 2 campaign underway against Carl Lyle at Priestfield on August the 10th, not long now. And in cricket, Kent take on Middlesex in the one day cup on Sunday. It's two wins out of three for the Spitfires so far in the competition. Play at Beckenham is due to get underway at 11. But that's all from us for 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 your email each morning via the briefing to sign up to that. You just need to head to kintonline.co.uk and whilst you're on the site today, don't forget to check out the latest review from our secret drinker. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. We'll be back with the podcast on Monday. News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast.
