A man has been left needing six stiches following an unprovoked attack while visiting Canterbury.
Sergio Pagliarini was walking back to his car after dinner when a man punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground.
Also in today's episode, a horse rider has spoken out about the moment her pony was attacked while she was riding with her family in Medway.
Shannon Edwards had taken her seven-year-old son Alfie for his first ride at Riverside Country Park on Tuesday when a dog rushed at them.
After a hustings in Canterbury earlier this week, we have been chatting to a first-time voter to see what he thought of the debate.
18-year-old Luca Fasulo says there wasn't enough of a focus on young people.
Elsewhere, JLS star and Kent Farmer JB Gill is urging the next government to continue the conversation about sustainable food production
A new survey has found two-thirds of supermarket shoppers are more concerned about how products are sourced.
Footage has emerged showing the moment an Ashford drug dealer was arrested during a police raid.
The 31-year-old was part of a county lines gang that sold cocaine and heroin, and has now been sent to prison.
And Maidstone is set to host its first ever Pride event this weekend.
There will be a parade, party and live performances in the town tomorrow.
10. Kent Online News News You Can Trust This is the Kent Online Podcast. Lucy Hickmott Hello, hope you're okay and ready for the weekend. Thanks for downloading today's podcast on Friday, 21 June. First up, a man's been left needing six stitches after being knocked unconscious in an unprovoked attack in Canterbury. Sergio Pagliarini was visiting Kent with his partner when it happened last weekend. Kate has more details for the podcast. Well, it was about 11 o'clock on Saturday night when the 62-year-old was assaulted. He had just been out for dinner with friends and was walking back to his car when he saw a young couple in Burgate near the junction with Canterbury Lane. He's told Kent Online the man walked across the road and punched him in the face, causing him to fall on the floor, hitting his head on the cobblestones as he got up and moved towards the attacker, the man ran away. And what sort of injuries did he suffer? He had a cut on his face, which needed stitches, and he spent seven hours at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital where medics treated his wounds and monitored him for concussion. He says he still has discomfort while chewing, although they've ruled out a fractured jaw. As well as the physical injuries, Sergio says the random act of violence has left him feeling shaken and nervous before the attack. He'd been telling friends how calm and tranquil the city was as he was visiting from his home in Warwickshire. So what do we know about the person who carried out the attack? Well, Sergio says he looked like he was in his early 20s and was with a very young looking lady. He's urging police to do all they can to catch the suspect. He says they weren't many people around, so it should be easy to narrow it down and review CCTV footage. Police have told us an investigation is ongoing and a verged witnesses or anyone with information to get in touch. Now, one positive thing to add is the response from passers-by who helped Sergio after the attack. He says a group of young lads who walked by within minutes were lovely and very supportive. He's also praised the way he was treated by staff at the hospital. Thanks, Kate. Kent Online News. Police have been called to a beach in Witsdable after a body was found. Part of the coastline was called and off following the discovery in the early hours of yesterday. We're told the death of the man is not being treated as suspicious. An Ashford man's been jailed after strangling a woman just four days after being released from prison. James Carneyer had invited her to his home on Green Lane in Bedesden in January but passed out drunk and mistook her for a man when he woke up. The 72-year-old had previously served a sentence for driving while disqualified and has now been locked up for three and a half years. A horse rider has spoken out about the moment her pony was attacked while she was riding with her family in Medway. Shannon Edwards had taken her seven-year-old son Alfie for his first ride at Riverside Country Park on Tuesday when the dog rushed at them. Here's a clip from the video which you can see at Kent Online. Steady now. Steady now. Steady now. The dog can be heard panting as it jumps up at the pony's legs and the owner is trying to call it off while her friend films for evidence. Shannon's young son can also be heard getting upset and frightened. Some listeners might find this next clip distressing. It's not right now. She's okay. She's fine. She's fine. The man eventually got his dog under control but the pony was left with bite marks and scratches. Shannon is urging owners to keep their pets on a lead. Police say they were caught at the scene and spoke to the victim as well as the person responsible for the dog. Kent Online reports. The Conservative election candidate for Dover and Deal is facing calls to be suspended after a post on social media was called anti-Semitic. Stephen James shared the cartoon on X. It's now been deleted and he's apologised. Labour want Rishi Sunak to condemn his actions. The Tories say he's been spoken to and reminded of the party's code of conduct. Elsewhere a man's been caught on CCTV camera defacing promotional boards belonging to the Green candidate in Tumbridge. He was seen at around 4am on Wednesday morning. Another board has been completely smashed up and others vandalised school teacher Anna Cope says she's disappointed but refuted claims the Reform UK candidate is behind it. Now after a hostings in Canterbury earlier this week, we've been chatting to a first time voter to see what he thought of the debate. Most of the main parties were represented but the Labour candidate decided not to go. Nicholas has been chatting to 18-year-old Luca Fusulo who says there wasn't enough of a focus on young people. As a student and a young person, it was a hustling that was organised. That's a university and yet it sort of really felt like we weren't the focus of the debate. We did get mentioned a couple of times but it took until pretty much right near the end there to be a question sort of specifically on us. But as ever, I do think that hustlings are a very important tool for constituents to reach out to their PPCs. So it was also disappointing to see that Rosie Tuffield wasn't there but you can sort of understand the reasons why. Rosie decided, she initially said she was going to go but she decided not to go because of security concerns. It's a shame, isn't it, when not everybody gets that equal opportunity then to have their say. Do you think it made a big difference that she wasn't there? I think absolutely. There was lots of debate throughout from all the candidates but when we got to the end of it, you heard the Conservative Party candidate sort of say, well actually it's just between two parties so the fact that Rosie wasn't there made it quite difficult for her. So I think it does really influence it because actually you want to be interrogating your current MPD, you want to be asking them what they're doing and why you should keep them. And if you can't do that, it's very difficult to sort of stay on track. Lots of different topics were discussed last night. Was there anything you heard from any of the parties that you thought, oh actually, that's an interesting stance on that particular issue and maybe you'd want to go and have a look at their policy on that or research it a little bit more? I think just the Green Party at large really. I don't know how popular they've been in Canterbury in recent years. It's not been something that I've really spotted but actually throughout the whole debate, the Green Party candidate really carried himself really well and calm and concise, was very supportive of migrants and refugees for the benefits they bring and not actually attacking them, was very supportive of young people in the fact that actually a lot of the policies and systems around us make it difficult for us. You were very supportive of when talking about house building, building the right houses in the right places for the right people. So there's a lot of debate in Canterbury at the moment around building some luxury houses on some fields. And he's actually saying and his party starts is that you don't need luxury houses, you need apartments and flats for younger people and others that need smaller spaces that are affordable and easy to live in. After hearing all of that and thinking, oh actually, I kind of, I relate to that, would it ever change, do you think how you would vote come the 4th of July? It's a very difficult question and it's difficult because of things like tactical voting. So if we were in a system where we had proportional representation or we were able to sort of rank our candidates, then it would have absolutely changed my mind. But at the same time we're living in a system where you could in theory have a minority of the vote still be the person that wins. And because of that, I think it's really important to look at things like tactical voting and sometimes that means you have to actually vote against your heart. As a first time voter, that must be quite a difficult decision because this is the first time you're going to get to put an X on a bit of paper. So do you go with your heart or do you go with your head telling you, well come on, I've got to think five years down the line, what do I want the country to look like and will it be better under this party or another party? It's a big choice, isn't it? It is a big decision to have to make. It's a huge choice. I mean, there's so many young people that are so disenfranchised from the system already and are actually continually disenfranchised because by the time they get to put an X in the box, they just think, what's the point? Because their voice won't be heard because you have to pick, at least in my constituency, one of the two. So it is very difficult. I would love to be wrong. I would love to on results day find out that actually we were a really marginal seat and that someone else has swung the vote. But at the moment, I think I live very much in a two party constituency and for a lot of young people that does cause them not to really want to vote in the first place. Sticking with the election, JLS star and Kent farmer JB Gill is urging the next government to continue the conversation about sustainable food production. A new survey is found two thirds of supermarket shoppers and more concerned about how products are sourced. JB has been telling Kate how things can be improved. Understanding how we all approach food and how we consume food, the topics and the things that are really important to us. I think goes a long way in the conversation about how we can be sustainable and how we can continue to produce and support our society with the food demands. I think for me, you're seeing that younger people, especially, are much more keen to buy food sustainability or happy to pay extra or more, should I say, for food that is sustainable? I think that's great because, actually, we produce incredible food here in the UK, two incredible standards and, actually, especially during the summer months, we're quite lucky that we have four different climates and we're able to produce food across all four seasons in the UK. That's a unique thing. That doesn't happen a lot across the world, actually. Typically, you tend to have two seasons of a dryer or a wet or a hot or whatever it might be. For me, I think we should celebrate that more. We are starting to do that. You're starting to see that pop up more in television shows, in popular culture, in education, people prioritizing, especially throughout the summer when kids are off school and stuff, whether it's free meals or a discount on meals and things like that. Continue to have that conversation. That comes from a number of different places. I think one of the key areas, of course, is from the farmers themselves, which is one of the reasons why I love doing what I do. We're very conscious about our impact on the environment here, which is one of the reasons why with the turkeys, of course, that's a seasonal story. Actually, that helps us to manage our land here. We tend to give a lot of our green spaces quite a bit of rest, so all our paddocks have rest throughout a 12-month period. It's not obviously not an intensive farming situation. However, of course, some farmers up and down the country don't necessarily have that luxury because of the demand within the area, but also within the industry. I think it's an ongoing conversation. It is improving. It is getting better. We always have to do a mile full of things like the food miles our food is traveling and so on. If we do things like incorporate seasonality into it, I think that actually goes a long way to help that. If we're not insisting on having strawberries in the middle of February for our dinner party with the friends or family, and actually saying, "You know what, we'll opt for something else because it's in season," or "We definitely won't have strawberries because they're not in season." Actually, we're minimizing the impact. We're reducing the demand and, of course, the retailers in response are able to tailor what they put on the shelves. Obviously, that's consumer-facing. Have you been following the election trail if you've got anything you're hoping for from the next government when they're elected? Yes, loosely. Of course, I think it's been a hot topic for absolutely everybody. Obviously, I have no idea what's going to happen. I think for me, whichever party gets into power, or we may even get a hung parliament or whatever, I think whoever comes into power needs to really continue the conversation with regard to our food. Our population is only going to increase. It's only going to, by default, be an increase in demand in terms of the food that we're consuming, and I think particularly them as the leaders of our country, they have to really take the front foot with it and on it and really drive that conversation. I think if we can do that, or they can do that, then actually, that filters down, as well as it coming from the bottom up, so to speak, from the consumer saying, "Well, actually, we're not going to place that demand because it's not right. It's not okay. We want to see this. We want to see that." I think that's one of the great things that this report through co-op is doing. It's asking people what they think, finding out how things have changed, and then, obviously, them as a retailer, and I'm sure other retailers will follow, are able to adjust how they do things in order to fit in. Don't forget, we've got all the latest election news for Kent, as well as lists of the candidates standing in each area over on our website. Kent Online News. A body's been found by police searching for a man reported missing from Hive. Jonathan Paul had last been seen in the Reachfields area at the end of May. The 64-year-old's family have been told about the discovery on farmland near the town. Kent's biggest hospital has breached rules about putting patients in mixed-sex wards almost a thousand times since the start of this year, according to new figures. Men and women have had to be kept on separate wards since 2010, and trusts have to record when that doesn't happen. Data shows Medway Maritime in Gillingham broke the rules more times than any other hospitals in the county. Their interim chief nursing officer has said staff work hard to maintain a patient's privacy, dignity and safety. Footages emerged showing the moment an Ashford drug dealer was arrested during a raid. Kristin Marshall was part of a county lines drug gang that ran cocaine and heroin through Ashford and also had links to Canterbury and London. The 31-year-old who lives in Arlington has been sentenced to five years and six months in prison. Another man from nine acres was also charged and sentenced to three years and two months. A man's been fined after selling a vape to a 15-year-old boy at a shop in Chatham. A volunteer was used to go into the candy shop on the high street following a tip-off disposable vapes were being sold to children. The director failed to check for ID despite an earlier warning. He's been told to pay more than £500. A road improvement scheme that was due to me's congestion in Maidstone has been put on hold due to a lack of money. Worked to widen the 8249 and expand a roundabout near Junction 7 of the M20 had already started. Bosses say there's no longer enough cash to continue. The manager of a village shop near Graves End says she's gutted after every unexpectedly stopped using it as a site for parcels. Cobham community stores were being monitored by the delivery company for around a year after a drop in the number of packages they were taking. Staff say no one told them they'd been decommissioned and they found out through customers who said it was no longer listed online. A spokesperson for every says the service was unviable. Late strictly come dancing judge Len Goodman has left against Children's Hospice a donation in his will. Demelza in Sitting Born has been named as one of the beneficiaries and will receive £1,000. The dancer who lived in Seven Oaks was a long-time supporter of the charity. And Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney has celebrated his 82nd birthday at a Kent restaurant. He visited the 17th Century Boys Hall in Willsbury in Ashford on Tuesday. His wife Nancy and his five children were also there. Now it's an exciting weekend for Maidstone as the town is hosting its first ever Pride event. There will be a parade, party and performances. Kate's been finding out more from one of the organisers, Tess Salava Adam. She will be starting the parade from County Hall, which is right next to Maidstone East Station. So we've got sort of free tickets for that just so that we know who's coming. So we're meeting there just before 12 and then we're going to be parading, walking through the town centre through Weeks Street and then kind of finishing off at Jubilee Square where there will be a couple of performances and not big performances, just like small little tasters and then everyone's going to disperse. And then at two o'clock at Lock Meadow, which is where the cinema is, along the river in the sort of outdoor space behind it, two o'clock till 6pm. We're going to have sort of lots of performances. We're going to have stalls, food and drink, and it's just going to be a really nice atmosphere for the rest of the day down there. So yeah, that's what we're up to tomorrow. Is it a family friendly event so families can come down with their kids? There's going to be entertainment and stuff for the little ones as well? Yes, it's all of it. It's a family friendly event. So it's youth led. So it's been really, really pushed by younger people and anyone under 30 is really leading this. So it's all designed in fact with families in mind. And yeah, it's all going to be sort of things for little ones to see as well, the stalls that are going to have key rings and little t-shirts and all sorts of different things. So there is something for everyone there, definitely. We've got to Ashford as well have announced that they're going to be holding their first private. Obviously we had Canterbury not too long ago. Why are these sorts of events really important for the community? So it's amazing to hear that so many more places are having pride such as Ashford as well. The reason that they're important is because so much good it is going on at the moment but so much more does really still need to change. And it's a time where people from our community can gather together and we can all say we're here and these are the things that we're still needing to change and also showing a sense of community to people who maybe feel a bit isolated or alone in their journeys. So it's a really nice positive day to say look, we have people here who support you and are here for you and these are the people that are all looking out for each other but it's also a day to say let's strive for a little bit more as well because there's still a lot of change that needs to happen. So it's so important, it's really important at the moment especially with certain things that are going on in the background. And finally with a roundup of everything else going on in Kent this weekend, here's Sam Lorry. You've probably got lots of plans already filling up your summer calendar because let's be honest everyone's social life seems to suddenly become hectic when the sun comes out. But if you find yourself a loose end and you're looking for something to do this weekend we've got some great music and theatre that could be just the ticket. The ever-popular Margate Summer series continues with some top-notch performances coming our way. We've already had Bryan Adams, Limp Biscuit, Madness and Simple Minds but this weekend it's the time of singer Craig David who will be stopping by the seaside venue tonight. He'll be performing some of his biggest hits as well as his Ibiza D.J. set TS5. Then the Margate Reggae Festival will be taking over the outdoor venue with music from Julia Marley, Asward, The Beat and More all day on Saturday. The Summer concert series then continues over the next few months with artists such as Paloma Faith, Becky Hill, Na Rogers and Kaisa Chiefs all set to perform. You can find the full list of dates and tickets on the Dreamland website. There's also some fantastic outdoor theatre kicking off this weekend with this year's Summer Tour from the Changeling Theatre. The Chem-based theatre group are taking their two productions, this year it's played by Shakespeare and Noel Coward, to beautiful venues all over the southeast. It starts tonight at autumn on Chelsea Place but there are plenty of dates to choose from right up until August. There's also two more shows that you still have just about enough time to see this weekend. Unfortunate, a parody musical based on Disney's The Little Mermaid and Andrew Lloyd Webber's incredible Jesus Christ Superstar are both showing until Saturday night. Unfortunate, starring RuPaul's Drag Race UK star River Medway is at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley while the award-winning Jesus Christ Superstar is at the Marlow Theatre in Canterbury. And finally something to keep an eye out for next week is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which comes to the Churchill Theatre from Tuesday and stars East Enders Act to Charlie Brooks as the child capture. So there you go, there's plenty to keep you entertained this weekend, if you've got a moment to spare that is. Thanks Sam, 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 your email each morning via the briefing to sign up just head to kentonline.co.uk News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. [MUSIC]
