Steel Panther.

Remember you read it here first. The next big thing in popular music are going to be retro 80's L.A hair metal band Steel Panther. Trust me. Imagine Poison and Motley Crue, mixed with Whitesnake, and with a touch of Bon Jovi added, then all turned up to 11 with the Dobly turned on. Totally shameless and utterly brilliant. Any band with songs like "Eatin ain't cheatin'", "Fat girl - thar she blows", and "Party all day - f*ck all night" have to be heard to be believed. The disclaimer on the back of their album states "The CD you are about to listen to contains material that features foul language, adult content, Satanic imagery and depictions of sexually deviant fantasies that may offend the religious right, the unreligious left, fat girls, skinny girls, metrosexuals, animal lovers, animal haters, hippies, skinheads, the current Presidential administration and people with ears. The record company and its' parent companies do not endorse or support the opinions of Steel Panther. They just think they f*cking rock!" Quite. You can read the BBC's rave online review of their album, "Feel the Steel" by clicking here. I bought the album yesterday, and I have had it on almost continuous play ever since. Real feel good, old fashioned rock and roll; great tunes and superb musicianship - and then there are the lyrics... Ahem.



Anyway, back to more mundane matters; Morrison's in Erith have introduced four self service checkouts - an exceedingly brave move in my opinion. These automated, self scanning tills tend to be successful in prosperous middle class areas in shops like Waitrose, but in impoverished, run down hell holes like Erith I predict the levels of shop lifting will rocket. I give the whole enterprise six months before they are removed as not being cost effective. What usually happens is that the store has to employ extra security guards, who cost more per hour than check out staff, and the whole thing gets written off as too expensive. Personally I don't see why I should have to check out my purchases - that in my opinion is a job for their staff - after all, you don't have a dog and bark yourself.

Erith Riverside Centre had a visitor yesterday - Titan the Robot, who scared the kids and some of the adults too - according to Ian who took the following photograph.

Nice to see something unusual happening in the area; it will be interesting to see what coverage the event gets in the News Shopper. Plenty of still empty units in the centre though; a pity that after over two years of opening, the place is still hanging on by the skin of its' teeth.

That dreadful rag the Daily Mail (in my opinion the worst national daily newspaper, consciously aiming its' appeal primarily at white, middle aged, middle class women) has been running a campaign that for once I can actually sympathise with. They are campaigning against the use of domestic wheelie bins, and the compunction of residents to act as unpaid litter sorters, bearing in mind the profits made by many councils in selling the pre - sorted waste on to recyclers for cash. I have decided not to play the game at all. Every day I take a small bag of my rubbish from the previous 24 hours round the corner to the waste recycling site in Morrison's car park - usually I do this on my way to work in the morning, after picking up my daily copy of the Times. I then pop round to the recycling point, drop off my rubbish, then head onwards to the railway station, and thence to London. No wheelie bins, stroppy and uncooperative dustmen, or smelly clutter despoiling my front garden - and a Zen like sense of completing the circle; All my food comes from Morrisons, and my waste returns there for recycling. The bonus is that in a very small way I feel that I am for once beating "the man".

The comments I made last week about the future of short wave radio sparked quite a bit of interest; I wonder if anyone remembers the excellent proto commercial shortwave news, technology and current affairs station Radio Fax that broadcast in the early nineties, only to be crushed by the government. You can read all about Radio Fax here.

This weeks' video clip is a little longer than usual; it shows twelve minutes from the pilot episode of "Virtuality" - the new sci fi drama series from Ronald D. Moore, producer and writer of the truly ground breaking remake of "Battlestar Galactica". Here is a sneak peek at his new show...