Journalism.

Back at the end of September, I wrote an article highlighting a problem with the declining standards of journalism at the News Shopper newspaper. A journalist at that publication had written a review article on several cafes in the London Borough of Bexley. Unfortunately, there was a major inaccuracy in the article, which said that the Mambocino coffee shop and cafe in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre was one of the most highly rated in the borough. It was apparent that the author of the article had merely looked online on some popular review websites rather than actually visiting the outlets highlighted in the article. The reason for this was that the Mambocino had been closed after going bust almost 2 years before the newspaper article was written, and the retail unit is now home to to a Gregg's bakery and coffee shop. Several News Shopper readers had commented on the article, correcting the author but the article was not amended to rectify the error. The same thing has now happened again, but this time in respect of a review of Belvedere and the various facilities available to local residents there. The same author of The erroneous Mambocino article has written the similarly incorrect article on Belvedere and its leisure facilities. The author has mentioned a number of local pubs including the Great Harry without bothering to check the facts. The Great Harry has been closed for nearly 5 years and has been boarded up ready for demolition and redevelopment for well over 2 years. It would appear not only did the journalist get things wrong, but the editor of the newspaper did not pick it up, and published it without verification. There are a number of reasons for this. The quality of journalism at the News Shopper is very poor due to the lack of resources and poor pay for the very small number of staff the newspaper still has. Secondly, it is not locally based and the journalists have little or no knowledge of the local area. It would appear they are so thinly spread that they pick stories up from social media and popular review websites and publish them unchecked. I feel that the News Shopper is now going into a death spiral. People stop reading it because they tend to get most of their news and information online, which causes a reduction in advertising, revenue, and thus financial resources. As that reduction happens, the quality of staff declines and the standard of journalism goes down with it. This causes a loss of readership. Another problem is that the News Shopper has put its online presence behind a pay wall, only allowing a handful of page views before it asks for a payment for any further viewing. The website is so full of advertising and clickbait that it can cause problems when viewing via older mobile devices and computers, thus discouraging viewing. It is not uncommon for local news websites to use pay walls but it generally is unsuccessful, as many people are unwilling or unable to pay for news content. Thus, it becomes counterproductive, as advertisers see the reduction in page views and are reluctant to post adverts, thus once again reducing the revenue of the newspaper whether in physical print form or online.

There is a second story here. The whole reason why the Great Harry was closed and is now scheduled for demolition and redevelopment; the pub was never an outstanding venue. It was always what is called a flat roofed pub, even though it wasn't actually flat roofed. This means a pub in a residential area, usually in or near a housing estate, built after World War II on a very tight budget and not one that is treated as being a traditional watering hole. I visited the place on quite a few occasions in the late 1980s and 1990s, although it was never a favourite of mine. It offered a very minimal selection of real ales and I spoke to a couple of people who had worked in the place who said that some of the clientele were not people that they would want to deal with on a regular basis. The area around the pub is relatively wealthy, and I think that the Great Harry was not the venue of choice for many of the local residents. As I have written before, I think the UK pub trade is going to be divided into two sections. This will be firstly the very cheap discount pub chain such as Wetherspoons and secondly the high-end pub offering extremely good quality food and drinks at a premium price, such as The Robin Hood and Little John in Lion Road, Bexleyheath. The mid price venues I feel will disappear, as is already proving to be the case in many areas. An alarming number of venues are closing their doors for good, with industry figures showing that hundreds of pubs are being demolished or converted into accommodation annually. This trend is not just an economic concern; it represents the slow erosion of a vital social institution. 

Did you know that the humble wine box is sixty years old this year? The Australian invention, known over there as a “goon”, has been occupying wine drinkers fridges since it was first developed back in 1965. The wine box actually owes a lot to the space race and NASA. The bladder that is located inside the cardboard outer box is made of a material called Mylar – or more correctly, Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate. This form of polymer was originally invented back in the mid 1950’s by American chemical giant DuPont, for use in early spacecraft. The inert, tough and flexible plastic has since found hundreds of uses in everything from drum skins, the magnetic media in recording tape and computer floppy disks (remember them?) to tiny flecks of it being added to nail varnish to make the varnish “sparkle”. It is a very versatile material that is tasteless and impervious to liquids and gases, thus making it an excellent choice of material to form the wine containing bladder that sits within the reinforcing cardboard box. The clever concept of the wine box is that the Mylar bladder collapses as wine is drained from it, so air does not seep into the container  - which would cause it to begin oxidising and would seriously shorten the shelf – life of the wine once it was opened. As it is, wine inside a wine box remains drinkable for around six weeks once the seal has been broken. Having said that, I don't know of anyone who has managed to make a wine box last anything like as long as that! At one time wine boxes were thought of as being suitable only for student parties and barbecues; nowadays the quality of wine found in boxes is far higher, and they have achieved greater social acceptability. The problem with wine boxes is that Mylar is pretty much indestructible and also very hard to recycle. It has been estimated that a Mylar bag or balloon will take at least 450 years to decompose. 

I discovered an event that happened during Halloween 1974 in the local area. It involved what was the biggest band in the world at the time, hosting a large party in Chislehurst Caves. Led Zeppelin held a huge blowout bash with their, at the time, manager Peter Grant, at Chislehurst Caves. The party featured some drink servers wearing costumes as nuns, a woman lying down in a coffin completely naked while covered in jelly, and males acting up as wrestlers while naked. The guest list included some of the fresh new acts at the time who are under their label, called Swan Song Records – there attended, Bad Company, The Pretty Things (local band, and proto punk pioneers - whom I have written about extensively in the past) and Maggie Bell. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page said in an interview:- "We’d been thinking about it for a while and we knew if we formed a label there wouldn’t be the kind of fuss and bother we’d been going through over album covers and things like that,” Jimmy Page told a music magazine in 1977. “Having gone through, ourselves, what appeared to be an interference, or at least an aggravation, on the artistic side by record companies, we wanted to form a label where the artists would be able to fulfill themselves without all of that hassle. Consequently the people we were looking for the label would be people who knew where they were going themselves.” Paul Rodgers, lead singer of Bad Company recalled that signing with Zeppelin’s label was a blessing for them. “Well, it meant really that we didn’t have to worry about the business end of things at all. All we had to do was make the music, go in the studio to record the songs, go out and play them and just not worry about anything, All of the transport was taken care of, private jets and limousines on the tarmac and just everything was top of the line, which was something Led Zeppelin had worked to achieve. They had this sort of machinery in place, and we stepped right into that and it was awesome. All of their connections with the people who run the venues was all ironed out. We were a support act in the arenas the first tour we did. Immediately after that we were the headliner, which was a pretty incredible rise to fame actually.” Email comments to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Apart from scooter gangs, and the theft of vehicle registration plates - both of which I have written about in the past, the other most common crime encountered locally seems to be the theft of vehicle catalytic converters. Catalytic converter thefts are on the increase with more than 1,000 stolen from cars and vans in London so far in 2025 – five times more than were stolen the previous year. As a result of these thefts, victims are left with hefty repair and replacement bills which can add up to as much as £2,000 a time. A catalytic converter is located in the exhaust pipe near the manifold. It cleans the exhaust fumes emitted from the car and out into the atmosphere. Specifically, it converts pollutants such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides, into carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen, all of which are less harmful, though still large contributors to global warming. The metals which clean a cars’ toxic gases include Platinum, Palladium, and Rhodium, which are all highly valuable. Rhodium can command prices of up to £2,500 an ounce; twice the value of Gold. Palladium and Platinum trade at 130 to 190 per cent of the value of Gold. Individually they do not contain a great deal of precious metal. However, organised crime gangs steal them to order for shipment abroad to factories that will salvage the precious metal on an industrial basis. The stolen metals can be recycled for use in jewellery, dentistry and electronics. The catalytic converter is fitted on to the exhaust system so it is fairly accessible on most cars and vans. A professional gang can jack up a car and use a battery-powered steel cutter or angle-grinder to steal the catalytic converter within five minutes. Vehicles with a high clearance off the ground, such as 4x4s are most at risk. The Honda Jazz and Honda Accord have also been targeted because their older devices are particularly easy to reach. Police have said that German cars such as BMWs, Audis and VWs have also been targeted, as have many commercial vehicles. Incidents of catalytic converter theft had been in decline from its peak around eight years ago. That led to the introduction of current laws making it illegal to buy scrap metal for cash. Industry experts attributed much of the decline to a fall and bottoming out in metal prices but thefts are now increasing as prices jump to new highs, and the criminal gangs circumvent the strict UK scrap laws by sending shipping containers full of stolen catalytic converters overseas to be scrapped where no questions are asked. Police advise etching security details into the converters, but that is only going to help recover the converter once it has been stolen. The best you can do really is to slow the thieves down or to make it difficult for them to strike and perhaps put them off attacking your vehicle completely. You can fix them into place using extra bolts or fit a protective sleeve to make them harder to cut out. Defensive parking up against a wall or next to another low slung car may also act as a deterrent. Businesses or homeowners with multiple vehicles parked overnight are recommended to use CCTV, secure perimeter fencing and security lighting.

The end video this week is from popular transport YouTuber Jago Hazzard, and covers the introduction of double deck trains to some intercontinental travel routes; the video makes extensive mention of the historic double deck train service which ran on the Charing Cross to Dartford line until 1971 - something I have written about in the past. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.