Bankrupt.

I have to thank a number of readers, including Lincoln and Johnson for bringing the following story to my attention. The large and very influential BATT engineering company based in Fraser Road, Erith has recently gone bust. The factory which was located in part of the original Maxim machine gun works, manufactured intercontinental and local communications cabling, along with many kinds of other power and information technology interconnections. Locally it employed around 70 people, although I gather that there were a number of employees at other regional locations, totalling over 300 staff. The circumstances behind the insolvency are currently not yet clear, until recently, I was of the opinion that it was one of the most successful and profitable local enterprises, but it would appear that my assumptions were incorrect. What will happen to the location and the large factory and warehouses is also currently unclear. BATT have been in business for over 70 years, and it will prove to be a major blow both to local employment and the economy of the area.

Back at the beginning of August last year, just a few days after I was discharged after spending a month as an in - patient at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, I was listening to excellent local radio station Time 107.5 FM when the station manager announced that the whole radio station had been sold and was being relaunched by its new owner under a new name and new format. Subsequently all presenters and staff apart from the station manager were fired with zero notice. Time 107.5 FM was a small station based in Romford, but had a decent audience on the South side of the river, including many people in the local area. Their local news, travel information and charitable campaigns reflected this and many, including myself were extremely disappointed when the station was forced to close. Personally, I find its replacement - Nation Radio London unlistenable. I wrote about this at some length at the time, as regular readers may recall. It would seem that this somewhat unwelcome situation is happening again with another local radio station. It was announced last week that Made in Kent Radio, which was based within the Bluewater Shopping Centre is closing down. It concentrated on promoting goods and services in and around Kent and the surrounding areas. It primarily was available as an internet streaming service. Unfortunately, according to the press release its increase in running costs became unmanageable. Yet another local broadcaster is no more. I repeat an edited version of the the press release here:- "We are devastated to announce that Made In Kent Ltd, the company behind Made in Kent Radio has been forced to cease trading. Sadly, a major factor in our closure is that we have been repeatedly and severely let down by Dartford Borough Council. For over a year, we have challenged Dartford Borough Council and the government valuation office over incorrect and unfairly high business rates, rates that were higher than those charged to multi-million-pound corporations. Despite our evidence, despite our appeals, and despite their own public pledges to support small businesses, they persisted with charges that placed an unbearable financial strain on our station. Their failure to support us and their refusal to address these errors has played a significant role in making our situation unsustainable. On top of this, within the last month, PRS, the music licensing company, increased our annual licence fee by 2,678%. Like many online radio stations, we simply could not absorb such an extreme and unexplained rise. After five years of pouring our hearts, time, and personal resources into supporting local businesses, offering free promotion, showcasing local talent, and building a true community platform, we are heartbroken that these combined financial pressures have now made it impossible for us to continue with this platform in Kent. We are now looking to appoint administrators who will handle the Ltd Company on our behalf. As for the Radio Station output, this will currently continue to broadcast, with advertising & sponsorships continuing to broadcast, whilst new ownership opportunities are explored". 

I recently have seen much debate on various online discussion forums about the state of NHS patient catering. Quite a few of the contributors have said that the food offered to in - patients in hospitals in London and the southeast is barely edible, and no better than school dinners in the 1970s. My own experience in the last year is somewhat at variance with this view. Personally, this is not what I have found. Last July, when I spent a month as an in - patient at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, I found things to be not congruent with this viewpoint. Although I do eat a bit of fish and chicken on a semi-regular basis, and red meat only two or three times a year, my diet is primarily vegetarian. When I was in hospital I elected to choose an exclusively vegetarian menu as I was on a bit of a health kick after my shock of being rushed into the hospital. I have also heard that the specialist menus for people who require halal or kosher, or indeed vegetarian food can be significantly better than the standard menu, although I cannot confirm or deny this. Personally, I found the food to be extremely good, and in some cases excellent, especially when one considers the number of people who had to be catered for, and the limited budget the hospital catering team had to work with. I include three photographs above - click on them to see a larger view. The menu changed each week, and there were separate selections for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and if one was still hungry in the evening one could alert a member of staff and you could get a bag with sandwiches, crisps, some biscuits and a soft drink brought to your bedside for no charge. Each day a dedicated member of the hospital catering team would come round to visit each patient at their bedside to take their orders and preferences for each meal of the day, which was then recorded on a special app on an iPad that they carried. In the month that I was in hospital, I only had one occasion where there was a mistake in the order, but as soon as I mentioned this to staff it was rectified with great apologies. Other than this, everything worked extremely smoothly, and obviously had a huge amount of organisation behind it. I certainly cannot speak for other hospitals or other NHS healthcare facilities, but in my personal experience the catering was exceptionally good. What do you think? Please let me know. Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Whilst many people think it is a relatively recent invention, 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the Blu-Ray disk and player. Since its debut at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2006, the format has journeyed from a "revolutionary high-definition future" to a niche for cinema purists in an era dominated by streaming. he history of Blu-ray is rooted in the physical limits of light. Traditional DVDs used a red laser with a wavelength of 650 nm. Because the light wave was relatively wide, the data "pits" on the disc had to be large enough for the laser to read, limiting capacity to about 4.7 GB. To break the "HD barrier," engineers needed a finer tool. Led by figures like Japanese researcher Shuji Nakamura (who invented the blue laser diode), a team led by him developed a blue-violet laser with a much shorter wavelength of 405 nm. This allowed for much smaller data pits and a tighter track pitch, effectively packing far more information into the same physical footprint. Blu-ray’s success was never a guarantee. In 2006, it entered a brutal market conflict against HD DVD, a rival format backed by Toshiba, Microsoft, and Universal Studios. The war echoed the VHS vs. Betamax battle of the 1980s, which I have written about in the past. HD DVD had the early lead; it was cheaper to manufacture and launched two months earlier. However, Blu-ray had two "ace cards": - Higher Storage: - Blu-ray's 50 GB capacity outclassed HD DVD’s 30 GB. The PlayStation 3: - In late 2006, Sony included a Blu-ray drive in every PS3. Suddenly, millions of households owned a high-definition player, even if they only bought it for gaming. By early 2008, after major retailers like Best Buy in the USA, and studios like Warner Bros. defected to the Blu-ray camp, Toshiba officially conceded, leaving Blu-ray as the undisputed king of physical HD media. As home cinema enthusiasts mark its two-decade milestone in 2026, the Blu-ray landscape has shifted. While mainstream audiences have moved to streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, the format is seeing a "second spring" among viewers. Why Blu-ray Persists in 2026: - Bit rate Superiority: - Even the best 4K streams are heavily compressed to save bandwidth. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray provides a much higher bit rate, resulting in zero "macro blocking" in dark scenes and lossless audio (Dolby Atmos / DTS:X) that streaming simply cannot match. Ownership Rights: In an era where digital titles can be "delisted" or removed from libraries due to licensing disputes, a physical disc remains the only way to truly own a movie. Boutique Labels: Companies like Criterion, Arrow Video, and Vinegar Syndrome have turned Blu-rays into luxury collectibles, offering stunning restorations and elaborate packaging. The 20th anniversary arrives at a landmark time. In 2024 and 2025, major manufacturers like LG and Sony began scaling back production of standalone players and recordable media. However, because the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X continue to use 100 GB Blu-ray discs, the manufacturing infrastructure for the physical format is expected to survive well into the late 2020s. For the home cinema enthusiast, the Blu-ray remains the "gold standard" - a 20-year-old technology that still delivers a more consistent, high-quality experience than the most advanced fibre - optic stream. The use of online streaming over the casual, non - cinephile viewer has had another, not totally unexpected outcome -  the death of 3D television. The reasons that 3D television failed to make a dent on the consumer market are multiple and complex, but they can be summarised as:- 1) To view the 3D effect on a TV you had to wear special glasses. And, get this, there were competing standards that determined which glasses you had to use. Some TV makers (led by Panasonic and Samsung) adopted a system referred to as "active shutter". In this system, viewers had to wear glasses that used shutters that alternately opened and closed, synchronized with alternately displayed left and right eye images on the TV to create the 3D effect. However, other manufacturers (led by LG) adopted a system referred to as "passive polarised", in which the TV displayed both the left and right images at the same time, and the required glasses used polarisation to provide the 3D effect. A major problem was that the glasses used with each system were not interchangeable. If you owned a 3D TV that required active glasses, you could not use passive glasses or vice versa. To make matters worse, even though you could use the same passive glasses with any 3D TV that used that system, with TVs that used the active shutter system, you couldn't necessarily use the same glasses with different brands. This meant that glasses for Panasonic 3D TVs might not work with a Samsung 3D TV as the synchronisation requirements were different. 2) Another problem with 3D TV is that 3D images are much dimmer than 2D images, and at a lower resolution - the TV has to split the display into two separate and subtly different images, effectively halving the resolution and brightness of each image in the process. As a result, TV makers made the big mistake of not incorporating increased light output technologies into 3D TVs to compensate. However, what is ironic, is that with the introduction of HDR technology in 2015, TVs began to be made with increased light output capability. This would have benefited the 3D viewing experience, but in a counter-intuitive move, TV makers decided to dump the 3D viewing option, focusing their efforts on implementing HDR and improving 4K resolution performance, without keeping 3D in the mix. 3) Another setback was the decision not to include 3D into 4K broadcasting standards, so, by the time the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc format was introduced in late 2015, there was no provision for implementing 3D on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs, and no indication from movie studios to support such a feature. 4) Streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video can support up to 8K video streaming - if you have a very fast fibre connection, but they do not support 3D at any video resolution. Bearing in mind the dominance of streaming over Blu Ray nowadays, this effectively confirms the end of 3D. I predicted this outcome back in 2013, when I wrote:- "It would appear that consumers are buying the TV’s despite the 3D features, not because of them. My suspicions regarding this were confirmed recently when I had a detailed conversation with the senior A/V installation engineer from local electronics retailer Wellington’s in Nothumberland Heath. and he confirmed my suspicions. He said that people buy smart TV’s mainly for applications such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix, and other streaming “catch up” services – the other smart functions are generally regarded as a novelty – as is 3D".

Did you know that popular beef based drink concentrate / food ingredient Bovril actually takes part of its name from a pioneering Victorian science fiction novel, which was incredibly well known and successful when it was published - leading to what is considered the world’s first science fiction convention - but nowadays it is almost completely forgotten. The writer of this pioneering novel was Edward Bulwer-Lytton; the book called The Coming Race was later published with the full title, "Vril: The Power of The Coming Race". While Bulwer-Lytton set out to write about the occult, his story displayed the kind of sci-fi fantasy elements that would eventually shape and establish the genre. It deals with a fascinating subterranean Egyptian-like world occupied by winged beings who call themselves Vril-ya. The Vril-ya enjoy equal rights, speak their own language, have telepathic powers, and can take away pain. These ancient underground beings sustain their powers through an elixir-like spiritual energy called "Vril" that can both heal and destroy. Bulwer-Lytton's book would become the precedent for modern stories about strange worlds and their workings. When H.G. Wells' The Time Machine was published in 1895, The Guardian's review started off with: "The influence of the author of The Coming Race is still powerful, and no year passes without the appearance of stories which describe the manners and customs of peoples in imaginary worlds, sometimes in the stars above, sometimes in the heart of unknown continents in Australia or at the Pole, and sometimes below the waters under the earth. The latest effort in this class of fiction is The Time Machine, by HG Wells." The Coming Race with its Vril-ya garnered such a niche following that in 1891, The Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fête fundraiser festival was held at the famous Royal Albert Hall in London. It is this five-day event that is considered by many to be the world's very first sci-fi convention, complete with merchandise booths and people dressing up like the winged Vril-ya. It was at this event that the famous savoury spread named Bovril was invented. To create something that resembled the Vril elixir, festival-goers got to sip on small bottles of salty beef extract that got its name from mixing "Bovine" with "Vril." Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s better known contribution to culture was that he coined the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword”. 

The end video features Erith station. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.