Arthur Pewty's maggot sandwich

The SS Richard Montgomery.

2012-01-29T11:00:00.010Z

I sneakily published the Maggot Sandwich early this week. The original version of this posting went up at 11am this morning, rather than at the usual 6pm (ish). I know a few regular readers caught onto this and had an early look. Sure to say, I have since made some alterations and updates. As you will see from the photo above, taken at around 4.45 this afternoon, two large Dutch bulk freighters were moored up on Erith Pier. The sea anglers had to cast around the two large ships. This weeks' entry has a distinct maritime feel - I do plan these things, though sometimes happenstance does assist.

I see that the newly formed Bexley Metal Theft Task Force already have their work cut out for them. The News Shopper have reported that thieving scrotes tried to steal telephone cable from an underground pipe located under the bridle way that separates Lesnes Abbey Woods from Kingswood Avenue in Belvedere. Around two thousand residents currently have no land line telephone because of the criminal actions of a couple of individuals. What is even more annoying, in many of these cable theft cases, the cable is fibre optic, rather than copper, and thus worth nothing to the criminals. The need for new laws covering scrap dealers (banning of cash transactions / traders having to register with a specific dealer – stuff I have outlined in the recent past) is becoming more pressing than ever. Update - since I typed this piece earlier, the Government have announced that they are banning the sale of scrap metal for cash, along with a number of other stringent measures aimed at combatting scrap metal theft. You can read all of the details by clicking here. Good news for us all, with the exception of the thieving criminal scumbags.

The News Shopper is also reporting that there is a strong chance that the Larner Road Estate in Erith is in line to be used as a location for a couple of Hollywood films, before it is demolished in 2013. I think that this announcement is a bit on the optimistic side; the reporter does put an interesting spin on the story - actually the main concrete part of it is that the estate has been placed on a register of potential movie locations. It will become less red - tape bound to film there as the flats get emptied as the residents get re - housed or sent to prison. It is probably the roughest estate in the whole of Bexley Borough, but still the home to some decent people who deserve to live somewhere other than what has become a hellhole of a sink estate.

One of my local sources informs me that the RAF flew Eurofighter Typhoons over Erith a number of times last Saturday night as part of the rehearsals for security cover during the forthcoming Olympics. It is a pity that they could not have used the opportunity to drop a few bombs in the direction of Potion Bar (which their ignorant website still refers to as laughably being in South West London - what a bunch of Muppets). The place continues to be a hive of scum and villainy, and seems to only be able to keep hold of its’ licence by the skin if its’ teeth. I sincerely hope that 2012 sees the reformation, or better still, the closure of the seedy and disreputable dive of a place.

There has been a lot of hot air and bluster from the groups both for and against the construction of a new airport in the South East, on the Thames corridor. A new (and somewhat novel) argument has been put up by the anti airport camp. They say that there is a danger that nearby aircraft could detonate the WW2 freighter, the SS Richard Montgomery, which sank in the Thames Estuary in 1944. The vessel is still to this day loaded with around 1,400 tons of rather unstable high explosives. According to a BBC news report in 1970, it was determined that if the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 1,000-foot (300 m) wide column of water and debris nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in the air and generate a wave 16 feet (5 m) high. Almost every window in Sheerness would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast. Back in the days when I was working for Radio Caroline, we would often make tender runs from Strood on the River Medway, out into the Southern North Sea, and the South Falls Head, where the Radio Caroline ship, the Ross Revenge was moored, outside British territorial waters, and thus outside of the law. These trips were invariably made at the dead of night, navigating by radar and from navigational buoy to navigational buoy using good old fashioned charts and a compass. On one occasion I was at the wheel of the thirty foot fishing cruiser we were using as a covert supply vessel; we had to time our trips precisely; at that time, the Olau ferry company operated a couple of very large passenger ferries out of Sheerness. The skipper of the Olau Britannia was a great friend to Caroline, and would often go out of his way to help us. One way he gave us practical help was by allowing us to exit the Thames Estuary in the huge vessels’ radar shadow, thus hiding our activities from the authorities. I was concentrating on staying in formation with the giant car ferry, when I suddenly noticed a series of warning buoys dead ahead – I was steering the vessel straight into the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery! Needless to say, I came around hard to Starboard, to the consternation of the skipper and the rest of the crew, who were thrown around by my sudden course changes, and we narrowly avoided a collision. I reckon if we had have hit the wreck, we would probably have been the first fishing cruiser in orbit! More on Radio Caroline later, with a rare bit of vintage footage uncovered by Ian as the ending video this week.

I see that Bletchley Park, in conjunction with the post office are releasing a set of first day covers, commemorating what would have been Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. You can read more about the story here.

For years I have been wracking my brain, trying to recall the name of a children’s TV show that absolutely terrified me back in the day; it was a sci fi series set in contemporary times, rather bizarrely I found a reference to it in the current edition of Practical Classics car magazine earlier this week. The Changes posits a Britain where a sudden enveloping noise emanating from all machinery and technology causes the population to go berserk and destroy them. The resulting upheaval displaces many people and reverts society back to a pre-industrial age where there is a deep suspicion of anyone who may be harbouring machinery. Even the words for technology are taboo. The remnants of modern technology that escape destruction (such as electricity pylons) produce a physical and sometimes violent repulsion among those left in Britain. The Changes are seen through the eyes of teenage schoolgirl Nicky Gore, and the 10-part series, originally broadcast every Monday from 6 January to 10 March 1975, traces Nicky's quest to reunite with her parents and solve the mystery. The serial's theme echoes the adult drama series Survivors, in which a small group of British people attempt to survive the annihilation of the world's population by disease. Looking back on it, the show was not suitable for children under twelve or so. I recall it utterly scared the willies out of me for ages. The Changes has not been repeated on terrestrial TV, and apparently has only had one outing on UK Gold back in the mid nineties.

The excellent E-Shooters Hill blog has a bit of a scoop this week; they have discovered that the beautiful art deco Co-Op building in Woolwich (see the photo above) is being saved; it fell into dereliction some years ago, and has been threatened with demolition on several occasions. I heard an (unsubstantiated) rumour a couple of years’ ago that Bono (of popular beat combo U2)'s hotel company had made enquiries about obtaining the building, but that apparently no agreement could be reached with the owners. Now it is going to be sympathetically converted into a hotel. Just for once something good and constructive is happening in the local area. You can read all the details on E-Shooters Hill here. Thanks to Mike who kindly permitted me to use his photo of the Co-Op you can see above. You can see all of Mike's photos on his Flickr site here.

I don’t think that I am alone in being of the opinion that recorded sound quality nowadays is substantially poorer than of yore. Lossy compression formats like MP3, Ogg Vorbis and WMA don’t offer the rich audio experience of older, but superior formats. OK, the convenience and portability of digital music is a real bonus, but it is a shame that it comes at such a high cost in quality. Even lossless audio codecs like FLAC, whilst a great improvement in quality, do not approach the sound of the “real thing”. I am not going to bang on about the benefits of one of the oldest recording formats – vinyl, as there are plenty of other places where this argument has been expounded. Needless to say, I would not be without my Linn Sondek LP12 turntable.

The current Vodafone TV advert has definitely got me riled. The commercial, set in a suburban sushi bar, shows a bloke with his significant other; he’s got a new mobile telephone and is showing it to his partner. She remonstrates with him, “you’re not going to transfer all your stuff from your old phone now are you?” Before he can respond, Yoda, who is conveniently sat next to them starts using the Force to levitate the phones – he’s going to the transfer the data for the bloke. There are so many things wrong with the commercial that is quite hard to know where to begin. For a start, what the hell is a fictional, dead Star Wars character, in Lucas’s own words from “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” be doing in what was meant to be in contemporary suburban southern Britain? On top of that, one shot shows Yoda sitting in front of a plate containing a piece of Salmon sushi. Anyone who has any knowledge of the Star Wars universe will know that Yoda was vegetarian. It seems that Lucasfilm are now plundering their coffers, selling the use of their characters to all and sundry, just so long as their pockets are deep enough. This follows the woeful Curry’s / PC World commercial starring Darth Vader back in last November. George Lucas owns the rights to the franchise, and if he thinks that raking in the cash by devaluing his creation is what he wants to do, it is entirely his right. I just don’t want to have to watch it. It is not long until he re-hashes the movies into 3D. I will be voting with my feet and staying away from their theatrical release.

This weeks' video is a bit of anorak gold; it shows the preparations for the first legal restricted service licence broadcast from the Radio Caroline ship, the Ross Revenge, when she was moored at Dover Eastern dock in the spring of 1992. Only the previous year the ship had been forced to come in from the North Sea, and, whilst fundamentally still mechanically sound, it was looking rather shabby. The volunteer crew were hard at work repainting and refurbishing the vessel prior to the commencement of radio transmissions. If you look carefully at the fifteen minute uncommented film, you will see me (in a red baseball cap and green overalls at around 4 minutes 20 seconds into the clip), Colin (G3VTT) Turner (at the same time) with his trademark moustache, Bongo (in the mess room with the tabloid newspaper), Barry Lewis (next to him in the mess room, with the beard, looking as laid back as always). Little Steve (foul mouthed) Masters pops up from time to time. John the Paint is around, and his Ford Sierra XR4x4 can be seen parked on the jetty next to the ship. I have probably missed lots of people, but it does give you an idea of what was going on at the time. There was a real sense of purpose and community; something we don't see very much of nowadays. I have some very fond memories of the time.

100 yards of poo.

2012-01-22T18:44:00.001Z

The exterior of the Peacock's store in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. Peacocks is one of the largest tenants in the shopping centre, and it has been in place since the place opened. Take a good look at the photo above, as Peacocks may not be there for very much longer. The retail chain, which employs over 6,000 people in nearly 600 shops around the UK has gone into administration with debts estimated to be in excess of £240 million; the official receivers have only ten days to find a buyer for the business, else it will be wound up and closed down - another victim of the world recession. You can read the details by clicking here. What is ultimately ironic about this situation is that the Riverside Shopping Centre has just reported a record increase in visitor numbers, as covered by the News Shopper. They report that visitor numbers in the month before Christmas show a 30% increase over those in 2010, with 62,000 people visiting in the week before Christmas alone. I think that a lot of this is due to the "halo" effect of Morrison's - people park up in the Morrison's car park and think that they will take a swift look around the Riverside Centre since it is only next door. Whilst many more of the long vacant shop units are now occupied, they are not what one could describe as aspirational. Cash Generator, Pound Town, Nemesis Gym, and the Money Shop are all businesses that would only find success in areas of low net worth - basically they will only thrive where poor people live. I am glad to hear that the shopping centre is getting more visitors, I just wish that there was a better selection of quality local stores to take the visitors' money.

There was an excellent documentary on Channel 4 this week: "Richard Wilson on hold". Actor Richard Wilson, best known for playing the gloriously grumpy Victor Meldrew in "One foot in the grave" examined automated customer services. Wilson was admirably restrained, letting the lunacy of the facts do the talking as it emerged how much time, money and energy we fritter on automated services that should make our lives easier but just save big corporations wads of cash. Self-service, as one test proved, actually takes substantially longer than cashiered tills in supermarkets - something I have been banging on ad nauseum for ages. Not that there weren’t any comic moments. Wilson was driven to the edge by voice-recognition systems which he labelled, not without justification, ‘borderline racist’. Well, how would you feel if you were after tickets for The Adventures Of Tintin but the computer stuck you with Johnny English Reborn because it couldn’t grasp your Scottish accent? See the clip below for an example. ‘All these companies are making me do more and more of the work, while they’re taking more and more of my money,’ he concluded. The only reason the big companies use voice recognition systems and other dubious "press the hash button now" telephone systems is because it saves them money. A phone call to a manned call centre can cost a company between three and four pounds. On an automated system is can be a few tens of pennies. The level of stress and frustration engendered in the customer is ignored.

The one form of business that came out pretty well in Wilson's investigations were the high street banks. They answered the phone promptly, and generally offered a pretty fair level of customer service. This is interesting, as a report from credit card provider Visa this week stated that the cashless society is getting ever closer. In 2010 more money changed hands via debit card transactions than in cash for the very first time. Visa can claim a large chunk of this; apparently £1 of every £3 spent in the UK is on a Visa debit card. They are apparently keen to encourage more people to use the new contactless cards. Apparently 20 million Britons already have them. I would strongly advise against the use of contactless cards. The technology has already been hacked. The cards can be read surreptitiously from around ten feet away - easy to do in somewhere like a busy McDonald's (coincidentally one of the first companies to install contactless readers in all of its' outlets). The whole area of RFID deployment in retail has a lot of similarities with early versions of the Windows operating system. Make things easy for the user, make the experience great and add a lot of functionality - oh, and sod the security. I feel that the security and encryption levels on these no - swipe debit cards will only be taken seriously when people start seeing money being syphoned from their accounts. I guarantee it is going to happen - and sooner rather than later. *Update* - since penning this section of this weeks' entry, I have received a new bank debit card, which has a contactless payment RFID chip installed. I visited my local bank branch, and explained that I did not want a contactless card, as I was concerned that they are a security risk. The lady I spoke to was very helpful; she told me that they were issuing contactless cards to all their customers within the M25, (she said they were considered to be the most "metropolitan" and accepting of new ideas). Outside of the M25 it was going to be an option for the customer. She took my details and was going to arrange for a fresh, non - contactless card to be issued to me within a week. Result! I would recommend that you raise the matter with your own bank if you share my security concerns about this issue.

As you may have already been aware, I have been running an occasional series on the history of Erith; this would appear to have been picked up by the News Shopper, who have run a similar article here. I think that we both need to thank the work of local Erith historian John A Pritchard, who wrote a comprehensive series of historical pamphlets back in the 1980's for his work.

On Wednesday a Willow Road, Dartford woman was jailed for eighteen months after leaving her six year old daughter at home alone for five days. All the poor girl had to eat was Monster Munch crisps and yoghurt. The house was unheated, unsanitary and in a very poor state. It was only when the daughter approached a neighbour for help, that the Police were informed. You can read more about the terrible and shocking case by clicking here.

For the last couple of weeks, any shopper unfortunate to walk past the exterior of Erith Morrison's on the side of the building that has the windows into the restaurant area, and that contains the cash machines facing the car park cannot have missed one thing - the awesomely terrible pong. It was hard to describe in mere words; in the way that garlic is a highly concentrated onion, the stench was like that of an unflushed loo the morning after a night supping pints of Guinness, followed by an extra hot Brussels Sprout and Stilton Vindaloo. My nose hairs shrivelled at the overpowering smell. Anyway, the facilities team at Morrison's got a specialist drain company onto the problem. After sending remote controlled mobile "mole" cameras down the drains, they soon realised the problems were extensive. On Monday evening I saw the drainage engineers lowering a mole camera down a manhole in Wheatley Terrace Road; they spent several hours hunched over the monitors in their van, watching the small device inching its' way along, back towards the supermarket. The next day they were back, with a small fleet of vehicles parked adjacent to the cash machines in Morrison's car park. I asked one of the workers what was going on, and he said that the drainage pipe was blocked pretty much for its' entire length - which stretched from the main supermarket building all of the way to Wheatley Terrace Road - that's around a hundred yards of poo. No wonder it stank! All seems fine now, so the drainage engineers have obviously conquered the aromatic problem. Not a career I would choose, but as the old adage goes - where there's muck, there's brass.

Bexley Neighbourhood Watch Association have issued the following warning to local residents about a scam that is currently being perpetrated in the area:-

Police warn residents to be wary of card scam.

Bromley Police are reissuing their warning about a scam in which fraudsters use false pretences to try and get people's bank cards, after 25 attempts to perpetrate this scam across the borough in the last two weeks. The scam works by the victim initially receiving a phone call, or number of phone calls, from someone claiming to be from their bank or credit card supplier. The caller obtains personal details from the victim before advising them that they need a new card and telling them that a courier will visit them shortly to collect their old card. A person, dressed to look like a courier, then arrives at the door to take the card. A spokesman for Bromley Police said: it is important that residents are aware of the tactics used by con-artists. Never-ever disclose your bank details to anyone cold calling. Banks will never call you asking for personal or account information as they already have these details, and neither will the Police. If there was a problem with your card and it needed to be replaced the bank would write to you advising you to cut the card up. You should never give out bank details or other personal information over the phone, whatever the reason behind the request".

For more information on safety and security in and around Erith, visit the Erith Watch website here.

On Friday I had to visit the London Probate Registry in High Holborn with my Mother in order to get probate granted on my Dad's will. We had to wait around for a while, though, to be fair, we did arrive rather on the early side. We spent about half an hour waiting for our interview. In this time I was able to study the place and the people who worked there. The results were not good; all of the tired civil service stereotypes were there. Without exception, all of the male staff wore old and ill fitting shiny suits, accompanied by worn and dirty shoes; they all looked like they still lived with Mum and she also cut their hair. One chap shambled around the waiting area, looking for people who had missed their appointments - he was straight out of central casting when they are looking for a "drip". He probably went electricity pylon spotting in his spare time. The women appeared (with one exception) to be ancient to the point of decrepitude, and dressed courtesy of a long deceased catalogue that specialised in something akin to hessian sacking. No matter I thought, as I repaired to the gents just prior to the interview. I was shocked when I found the loos looked like they had not been cleaned for at least a week; the cubicle I used had a toilet which had more skidmarks than the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. When I washed my hands the "hot' water wasn't, and the cold did not work at all. The electric hand dryer was pathetic - it had less blow than an asthmatic budgie. The building itself was ugly on the outside (see the photo above), and neglected on the inside - it appeared not to have seen a lick of paint since around 1974. The only modern and efficient area was the private security who frisked all visitors and X-rayed their hand luggage, looking for weapons. I set the scanner off when I walked through its' arch. A lady, somewhat reminiscent of a rather less charmless Rosa Klebb then checked me with a hand held metal detector - who told me I was clear - she was puzzled as to what had set the alarm off. I did not point out that she had ignored the steel toecaps of my size 12 boots.

I have found an interesting website which has a number of archived newsreels on Erith, including a collision between two ships on the Thames at Erith in 1948, and the 1965 bye election in Erith and Northumberland Heath. You can visit the Pathe Newsreel archive on Erith here.

The video this week is a bit of an oddity; it shows an amateur theatre group putting on a musical version of Aliens on ice. Quite. Thanks to Ian for sharing this with me. I think.

Hit and Run.

2012-01-15T16:47:00.001Z

A photo above, showing the car park ar Erith Railway Station, that has been converted into a builders' yard for the work to extend the station platforms. I would like to be in a position to announce significant progress, but as previously reported, the work is proceeding more slowly than an arthritic sloth dosed up on Diazepam. I feel that it is going to be substantially more time until the relatively simple and minor piece of civil engineering is completed.

During the week I received this official notification from our MP for Erith and Thamesmead, Teresa Pearce. She's raised the matter of the lack of disabled and buggy access to Erith Station in Parliament. I quote the Hansard entry below:

Ticket Office Closures

2. Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab): Whether her Department has conducted an impact assessment of the proposal in the McNulty report on closure of ticket offices. [88222]

The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers): No impact assessment has been conducted of this proposal in the independent report undertaken by Sir Roy McNulty.

Teresa Pearce: Disabled people in my constituency already have trouble accessing work and leisure opportunities in London because Erith station’s London-bound platform has no disabled lift or step-free access. They are advised by the train operating company to travel in the opposite direction for 15 minutes and then change trains. The closure of the ticket office at Erith will further disadvantage this group of people. Will the Minister consider an equality impact assessment on the proposal and reject McNulty’s plans to close ticket offices, particularly at places such as Erith, where disabled people already face a difficult journey?

Mrs Villiers: In considering the recommendations of the independent McNulty report and before any decision was made on changes to future ticket office rules, it would of course be vital carefully to assess the needs of disabled communities and pensioners. That would be a very important part of any decisions made on future reform of ticket offices.

Good on her for standing up for local people. I am unsure what effect it will have, but at the very least it has given the whole sorry issue a high profile with the Government. It will make any squirming by Southeastern Trains all that harder.

The photo below was taken by Ian, AKA The reV. It shows Erith river front from Erith Pier just after sunset earlier this week. Please excuse the small amount of digital noise; the shot was taken from a camera phone. Nice view anyway.

I read in the press that Spanish banking giant BBVA is switching much of its' business to the cloud. They are going to be using the web based Google Apps for many processes, rather than the monopolistic Microsoft Office. Don't mistake the feature limited free version of Google Apps you may have tried for the subscription based full enterprise cloud service. If you buy the enterprise version, it looks and feels like a custom written business application suite, with branding and customisation pertinent to your specific company. High uptime and availability, and contractually binding service level agreements come as standard. The video below is a little long in the tooth now, but it does illustrate the point of cloud based computing very well indeed. One of the very first enterprises anywhere to adopt Google Apps was local building company Erith Construction, whose head office is located in the old Erith Job Centre in Queens Road. They have been using Google Apps since 2008, and their Chief Information Officer has the following to say about the service:

Before anyone thinks I am getting partisan and plugging Google in particular; I just want to illustrate the move away from traditional locally installed applications to web based ones - the Erith related link to Google Apps was too good a local geographic connection to miss. Another very good cloud based business solution that you may not have heard of is Zoho Office. A cloud based finance package from accounting software Intuit is called Mint - you can read about it by clicking here. There are lots of others if you use a search engine to have a dig around.

A bit of a result this week; following last week's rant about the crumbling state of the surface of Manor Road, and the project to lay a film to reduce the amount of industrial dust experienced by both travellers on the road and local residents; I received a couple of Emails from Bexley Council Environmental Health department. I have edited the detailed comments below:

We made more detailed enquiries from Transport for London regarding the application of Calcium Magnesium Acetate (CMA) following your concerns. The project operations manager advised that CMA is effective on both paved and unpaved surfaces. Apparently CMA has been found to be more effective on unpaved roads as it binds the surface of the road. The use of the CMA dust suppressant in Manor Road is primarily due to Transport for London needing to trial the use of the substance in the areas across London where industrial sites, such as waste transfer stations, are contributing to PM10 levels such that they exceed the limit values. The trial will be fully subsidised by TfL and independently evaluated by King’s College (Londonair) and they will hope to use the data from the station at CITB and your gravimetric in this evaluation. The CMA corridor application started last Sunday/ Monday (always in the early hours of the morning) and it will be applied in both directions three times per week (between Sunday and Thursday) until 27 February when it will be applied five times per week by TfL contractors. This initial application will continue for three months. It is thereafter anticipated that the CMA application will be repeated for another three months during the summer months. CMA’s use along Manor Road is a short term measure that will improve air quality this year, it is cost effective given that existing machinery used for the wider Clean Air Fund across London is being utilised and Bexley has not been required to modify any of our vehicles. In the longer term the Environmental Agency and London Borough of Bexley are working to ensure that business’ clean up their operations by doing more to reduce pollution directly, such as enclosing dusty operations and wheel washing etc where practicable. I have discussed the road surface with the TfL representative when he visited Manor Road and I will pass on your concerns and the details you have provided in your blog to give a comprehensive picture of the current situation.

So it looks very much like a win / win for local residents - council tax payers will not have to pay for the dust reduction measures being deployed, yet we get to benefit from the results. I call that a more than satisfactory outcome.

I got home from work on Monday evening to find that my front gate was hanging at an angle. Mystified, when I examined the gate post, I discovered that the solid wood post, only installed in August 2009 after the catastrophic lorry crash in July of that year (click here to read my blog entry on the issue, and to see my photos taken at the time) was completely shattered – there was a large gouge in the post as well. It was evident that something heavy had hit the post with considerable force. I decided to consult the Pewty Acres security system. Upon checking the CCTV video feeds (see screen captures of the video above - click for a larger view) from the two front of house cameras, I found that at lunch time that day a large red forklift truck, illegally driving on the pavement was carrying a large steel plate over the load carrying forks. The driver misjudged his steering and collided with my front gate post. The chap did not stop to leave a note, but hurried off, thinking that nobody would be any the wiser. I have reported the matter to the Police – not so much for the damage to the gate post (annoying and inconvenient though this is), but more to try and prevent an incident of a similar type happening again. From the photos, the sheet of steel was being driven along the pavement at about the same height as a small child in a baby buggy. I am concerned that an impact of the type that ruined my gatepost could prove fatal to a child. I know where the fork lift truck came from, but unfortunately I cannot be certain as to who was driving it (though I have my suspicions). The angle of the cameras deliberately does not allow filming into areas frequented by the general public. After all, they are there purely to protect my property. After consulting with the local Police, they confirmed that the act of the fork lift driver was indeed criminal. Legally, I have been advised that the incident is a Road Traffic Accident, which it is an offence to leave the scene of. The forklift driver realised that he had caused damage with his vehicle, but then immediately left the scene. This is an offence. Unfortunately the chance of securing an arrest or conviction are extremely low, as the offenders face is not visible in the footage. I may have a word or ten with their employer though - as I know where the forklift comes from. Legally speaking, I would probably not best advised in naming and shaming the company who own the vehicle, so I will keep my own counsel for now. More (perhaps?) next week.

Many column inches have been written about Sherlock – the excellent re-imagining of the famous fictional detective in a contemporary world. Much has also been written about the readily apparent problems with the most recent series of Doctor Who, which had been haemorrhaging viewers with every episode – I have heard rumours that had it been pretty much any other mainstream show, it would have already been axed by the BBC. Criticisms include that the story lines are way too convoluted, that there are too many recurring characters, there are plot holes, and more importantly, the show is becoming boring. What is supremely ironic, seeing one show on the way up, whilst the other is most definitely on the way down, is that they are both made by the same production team, and the same writers. To myself and others I have spoken to, Dr Who has become formulaic and soap opera like. The opposite can be said of Sherlock. It is brilliantly written, well acted and keeps the viewer thinking. It is a mystery that both programmes originate from show runner Stephen Moffatt, writer of some of the best episodes from the 2005 return of Dr Who. I cannot fathom what has happened to cause a man of undeniable talents to cause such an implosion on a show that has rightly been regarded as a national treasure. All I can think of is that he is stretching himself too thinly, trying to write and produce two high profile, big budget shows at the same time. I feel that someone needs to take over the producer duties on Doctor Who before the shows’ reputation becomes irretrievably tarnished. I have heard rumours (no idea how accurate) that the BBC have approached Russell T Davies to take the show back under his wing; what is known to be fact is that he left Who a couple of years ago to pursue his career aspirations to write for Hollywood. Unfortunately his partner developed brain cancer and they had to return to the UK. He’s not worked for over a year now. I would not be surprised if at the very least he pens an episode or two of the next series.

Shop lifting has been in the press to a great extent this week, due mainly to the incredibly selfish and stupid actions by celebrity ~~garden gnome~~ cook Anthony Worrall Thompson. Whilst having no sympathy for the rampant egotist, I can understand why the volume of shop lifting has increased. Some commentators opine that it is because of increased poverty due to the recession and the high cost of food in relation to average earnings. Indeed – this may be a contributing factor, but I think a much more likely factor is the now widespread use of self service tills by the supermarket chains. As I have written in the past, the wage savings the supermarkets make by employing fewer check out operators is negated by the increased cost in hiring security guards, which are usually employed on a higher hourly rate than the check out staff. Common methods of cheating the self service units include thieves getting the tills to continually generate error messages, to the point where they begin to get ignored in a “cry wolf” scenario; once this has happened, the crooks bag stuff without scanning. The self service checkouts may have CCTV, but the operators may well be tired or bored, and thus fail to take attention. On the other hand, I was made aware some time ago that large areas of Erith Morrison’s are without any security camera coverage at all. I know where, but for obvious reasons am declining to elucidate.

Mentioning Morrison’s (as I am wont to do), I noticed that in the week between Christmas and the New Year, Morrison’s had a full display of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies. They are still there now. To say that this is ridiculous is an understatement. How on Earth they can justify selling these months prior to the event, I really cannot understand.

Some time ago I featured the website of Erith based radio amateur, genealogist, gardener and meteorologist Bob Hewitt, and I have had a permanent link on the Maggot Sandwich to his excellent real time, web enabled weather station ever since. Bob has been in contact this week; the weather station is due for some major maintenance - its' main circuit board is being returned to the manufacturer under warranty. I know quite a few readers regularly visit the weather station site, so please be aware that it will be either unavailable or with a severely restricted service for a while. Bob is going to let me know when the station is fully back up and running, and I will let you know. I have removed the link on the right of this page for the time being.

Here is an absolutely outstanding piece of customer service management, which reflects very well on the Early Learning Centre. A chap by the name of Ross Mills, who half jokingly wrote a letter of complaint to the Early Learning Centre in respect of their sales of Lego Star Wars toys. Their response is considered, well written, and geek-tastic. You can read the whole exchange by clicking here.

The annual CES show in Las Vegas has just finished; CES is the largest consumer technology exhibition in the world, and it is the place where most tech companies show off their latest products prior to them being made available to the public. The 2012 show was a bit of a bumper one, with loads of shiny new gadgets being showed off for the first time. The video below shows a really stunning new bit of kit from Samsung - a transparent OLED display. In the video you will see how it is being used as an intelligent window. It really is quite remarkable; as the presenter mentions, it is bringing sci fi "Minority Report" technology to the present day. Thanks to Adam Foreman for bringing this to my notice. Watch and please feel free to leave a comment below.

Tarmac crumble.

2012-01-08T18:27:00.000Z

The photo above shows the M.V Ardent, a general bulk cargo carrier that seems to have been a resident of Erith for what is now an age. If you look into the River Thames from pretty anywhere that has a river view in Erith, you will see the ship, moored what now seems permanently to a Port of London Authority buoy. It must be costing the shipping agents, Armac Marine Management of Rochester, and thus its' owners, Riverline Trading Ltd a pretty penny in long term mooring fees. I don't know the precise reason the ship has been laid up for so long; I heard a rumour some weeks ago that it had gearbox / transmission problems, but I have had no confirmation of this at the time of writing. I have Emailed the Armac asking the situation and I am currently awaiting a response. You can read more about the Ardent by clicking here.

The whole Stephen Lawrence case has dominated the national and local news this week, and not without good reason. The unfortunate fact is that there are still several guilty individuals at large, almost certainly still living in the local area. Whether they will ever be brought to justice is uncertain. I had a very minor involvement in the case. On the night of the murder, I drove down Well Hall Road a few minutes before the stabbing took place. I recall seeing a few youths hanging around outside the chip shop, but nothing else of note. After the murder hit the news, the Police put out an appeal for anyone who had been in the area at the time to contact them to be interviewed. I ended up giving a statement that I had driven past the site of the stabbing, and had seen some youths hanging around, but was not able to identify any of them. I could not give them any other information. I doubt that the lads I saw were anything to do with what happened a few minutes later, but I will never know for sure. Darryl, of the excellent 853 Blog has written a thought provoking piece on the murder, which you can read by clicking here.

What is it with some females and the colour pink? What makes certain women so obsessed with the colour? The old cliché is “Blue for boys and pink for girls”, but you don’t get blokes obsessing about blue in the same was as some women do about pink. Is it some kind of marketing, or is it something deeper and more subtle? Answers on a postcard please, or better still, leave a comment below.

I stumbled across a very interesting piece of research that a chap is doing; it certainly makes food for thought. As you may be aware, Britain is the world leader in the proliferation of CCTV surveillance cameras - we have more cameras per head of population than anywhere else on the planet. The whys and wherefores of this, and the debate in their use will go on for years more. One thing that has recently become much more widespread is the coupling of CCTV systems to computers running sophisticated facial recognition software. Very early versions of this were developed on behalf of the Police and Security Service in the mid 1990’s, mainly as a result of the IRA bombings. Their systems used powerful and expensive computers running dedicated custom written software. Nowadays you can achieve the same kind of results with a £300 CCTV system from B and Q linked to a home laptop. This begs the question, is it possible to defeat the recognition software without making it obvious that you are trying to hide your face, or end up looking like a berk? The answer, according to Adam Harvey, author of the CV Dazzle project is yes. Adam has developed a series of relatively simple cosmetic and hairdressing countermeasures which prevent a computer realising that it is “seeing” a face. Fascinating stuff – you can read more about the CV Dazzle project, and see some of the stealth face makeup designs by clicking here.

I read in the News Shopper online that there is a project to reduce the amount of air pollution in Manor Road, Erith; coincidentally a place that I wrote about last week. The idea is to spray an adhesive layer to the road surface that would trap dust and particulates and thus prevent them from entering the atmosphere; in theory this is a fine and laudable idea. In practice it is not. Please click on the photograph below in order to see a larger and more detailed view of it:

As you can see, the surface of Manor Road is in the process of rapidly disintegrating. When the new road surface was laid, back in May 2009, it was lauded as a real step forward in new road technology. The top layer incorporated materials that were designed to reduce road noise and tyre rumble, and thus make things a bit more tolerable for local residents. The ploy worked, and when the surface was firat laid, the passing traffic was measurably quieter than before. It would appear that the Highways Department and the civil engineering company that carried out the work did not take into consideration both the volume of traffic along Manor Road, or its' weight. Heavily laden HGV lorries and double decker 99 buses are regular visitors, and as you can see from the photo above, the road is falling apart in rapid order. I took the photo below (which I have to say that I am rather proud of) from the opposite side of the road, as the precisely the section of carriageway pictured above was being laid, back late in the evening of May 31st 2009 at around 11pm.

I have complained to Bexley Council's Highways Department about the state of the road on a number of occasions; the whole of Manor Road is in a terrible state, especially in such a short period of time since it was relaid. At the time it was being done I had a chat with the Conway project manager. He told me that the revolutionary road surfacing material cost in excess of £1 million just for that road - and that did not include the labour and plant hire costs in addition. It would appear that the money was wasted. If the council had taken action when I first pointed out that the surface was failing, they would most likely have been able to claim under the warranty. As it would appear that they have been sitting on their hands in the intervening period, any such claim would probably be outside the guarantee period now.

On my way to the office where I normally work, I take a short cut from Canary Wharf DLR station that takes me through the Canary Wharf Shopping Centre. If you have not visited it before, it is well worth a look. It features a lot of designer stores and very high end jewellers, as well as the more run of the mill high street stores that one would expect. There are also a surprisingly large number of cafes, coffee shops and places to eat. As I come down the escalator in the mornings, I quite often see staff at the large and popular Wasabi Japanese takeaway preparing for the days' food service. What astonished me the first time I saw it is the way that the hot dishes such as Ramen noodles and Japanese curry are prepared. The place has a large sign with the words "All dishes freshly prepared in our kitchens daily" on prominent display. I used to think that the food was therefore cooked by staff on the premises. What actually happens is that a few minutes before 8am a series of pallets arrive on a pallet truck; the staff then unpack the contents, which consist of giant ready - meal style plastic trays. The staff then empty the pre - cooked contents into bain marie style water bath type heaters and warm everything up. I have since discovered that this approach is common practice in many places - the food gets prepared and cooked in a centralised kitchen, then sealed into containers and delivered to the outlets. It makes a lot of sense in many ways; however logic and enjoyment of food don't really live on the same street. I must admit that I mentally turned my nose up when I saw that Wasabi was serving ready meals on an industrial scale. I am sure that if I had not seen the pre - cooked food being delivered, I would have been none the wiser.

On Wednesday morning, the prototype "Boris Bus" was displayed in Bexleyheath Broadway. Local photographer Justin caught a few shots of the vehicle that you can view by clicking here.

The New Year's honours list. I heartily approve of the honours system in general. People, often working for years in voluntary, charitable or public sector roles who get recognised with an award from the Queen for their hard work and dedication has got to be a good thing. I was proud to accompany my good friend Lt. Col (then Major) Steve Fraser to Buckingham Palace when he was awarded the MBE back in October 2008. Click here to see my photos of the day. What I object to is the knighthood awarded to Apple design supremo Jonathan Ive. I have nothing at all personally against Mr. Ive. He's done as much as anyone to give Apple a cool and desirable image to their range of products. He's British, one of the best designers on the planet, and the poster boy of the "coolest" brand around - so why would I object to him being knighted? Simple. He lives in San Francisco, pays tax to the U.S Government and generates vast piles of cash for Apple - one of the largest companies in the World - based in the USA. What exactly has he done for Britain that entitles him to a KBE? Bugger all actually. He's enriched the American economy to the tune of multiple billions of dollars, but it has not had a trickle down effect in his homeland, so why exactly was he awarded what is actually a rather high level gong, with the prestige such a thing bestows? It all rather escapes me.

FORGE (Friends Of Riverside Gardens Erith) are not the first pressure group to have campaigned for the river view to be maintained. The increase in industrial and commercial properties during the last forty years of the nineteenth century saw the watersides of Erith lined with factories; the river frontage of the High Street was blocked by the huge Cannon and Gaze mill, built in 1903. The author and artist M.A Wylie noted in 1905 that "No-one in the present day could call Erith pretty or rural; it is a place of gun factories, engineering works, and coal wharfs, where cranes, derricks and other engines of every shape and kind, scoop the coal from the holds of s many steamers. Row upon row of mean little houses, all built after the same ugly pattern, and countless gin palaces and grocery stores have sprung up everywhere". Nothing new then.

Another 30th anniversary this week. The classic 80's home computer, which still holds the record as the single best selling computer model of all time. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the Commodore 64.

The C64 sold by the truckload in the early to mid 1980's, and actually only went out of production some years after its' far more powerful successor, the Amiga was on general release. The final C64's rolled off the production line in 1990. Whilst the marketing people behind the C64 said that it had 64k of RAM, the machine actually only had 38k of usable RAM. The rest was taken up with the OS and BASIC language, so it was not as memory generous as initial impressions gave. The C64 had (for the time) good graphics, with multiple colours and programmable sprites. It had an excellent, dedicated sound processor called SID, if a rather poor implementation of the BASIC programming language when compared to the likes of its' contemporaries such as the BBC model B. The one real weakness with the C64 was its' legendarily slow and rather unreliable 1541 disk drive, which was actually slower to load programs than by using cassette tapes using turbo technology. Overall though, it was a very strong machine, and deservedly a massive seller worldwide. You can read more about the Commodore 64 by clicking here.

The final video should appeal to most people; it shows a recipe to make a tasty, healthy and very cheap chickpea curry; the ingredients work out at roughly 70p per portion. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Cows in Quilts.

2012-01-01T17:28:00.000Z

Erith Pier looking uncharacteristically quiet and empty recently. The place is usually busier, with anglers and walkers out for the view and the fresh (ish) river air. The holiday season has meant that the whole area has been somewhat quieter than normal, which I suppose is actually no bad thing. As I have previously noted, as well as Christmas decorations on the exterior of local houses being a lot more discreet and subtle than in years of yore, I have also noticed the total lack of carol singers - not in the sense of proper choirs raising money for good causes in shopping centres and the like, but in the sense of the handful of local kids knocking on doors and waiting for the householder to answer before launching into a ragged couple of lines from "We wish you a merry Christmas" (which is all they know) and expecting a cash hand out. This is something I am glad to see ending; not only was it an annoyance for the householders, but potentially dangerous for the children. Not all traditions are good.

I am a great enthusiast for the recycling centre in Morrison's car park. It is so close to Pewty Acres that it is very convenient to take my glass, plastic, card and tin cans round there every couple of days - it saves having unsightly and smelly bins in the front garden, and mystifies the dustbin men, who know that somebody is living at the address, but that there is never any rubbish left out for them. The facilities at the recycling centre are regularly emptied, and the whole place seems to tick over quite nicely. The problems stem from visitors misusing the facility, and dumping stuff on the ground next to the recycling hoppers. It seems to me that some people go to some extensive effort to take their recycling materials to the facility, then just dump their bags on the ground. Bearing in mind about 90% of the exertion would have been in getting the stuff there in the first place, how much more difficult can it be to drop your bottles and cans through the correct hole? It just does not make any sense to me. The only time when I can fully understand it is when large cardboard boxes, such as those used to protect TV's and HiFi's in transit need to be responsibly disposed of. The card and paper hopper has a very narrow door, and it requires extensive box crushing and ripping up to get anything into it. A good analogy is that using the card hopper to deposit a large box is like feeding a plasma TV crate through a letter box. It can be done, but it is time consuming and difficult. A better way of recycling large objects would seem to be need to be found; post Christmas, the pile of large boxes adjacent to the recycling point was threatening to show up on Google Maps if it stayed there any length of time.

One of the favourite festive nibbles / accompaniments to a main meal that is often enjoyed during the festive season are pigs in blankets - small chipolata sausages, wrapped in bacon and roasted. unfortunately, me being pork intolerant they are a dish I am forced to steer clear of - as any consumption of pig related products results in me needing to fit a seat belt to the toilet. What this does mean is that I have to get creative with alternatives. On Christmas evening I invented "Cows in Quilts" - Kosher cooked smoked beef and turkey sausages (courtesy of Canary Wharf Waitrose), liberally smeared with Dijon mustard and then wrapped with thinly sliced peppered Pastrami - delicious; you should give them a try.

I have recently complained to the Highways Department of Bexley Council about the dreadful condition of several roads in and around Erith. One of the worst cases is in Manor Road, heading east from the town centre towards Slade Green. The road surface was only relaid at the end of May 2009 (See the photos I took of the road works by clicking here), and it began deteriorating within a year. Parts of the road, by the 99 bus stops are now little more than bituminous rubble. I think most of the problem with this specific road is that the surface laid was partially experimental - it was designed to reduce the amount of road rumble and traffic noise experienced by local residents. The road resurfacing closely coincided with the change of bus route going along Manor Road. For 21 years, the single deck 469 was run on the route along Manor Road, between Erith and Bexleyheath. In January 2009 this was changed for the double deck (and much heavier) route 99 between Woolwich and Bexleyheath via Erith. I don't think the structural engineers that designed the road took this, or the huge amount of HGV traffic on the road into account when they set up the mechanical specifications for the road surface, or its' underlying layers. We are now suffering as a result.

The film clip above is a real curiosity, and a glimpse of history as it was being made. The piece is the very first CGI 3D visual rendering ever made; it is 40 years old. It was made by an American chap called Ed Catmull, who later went on to form Pixar, and a chap called Fred Parke. They created at the University of Utah in 1972, where they were both studying computer science. During the film, which also shows how the animation was made, there is a section showing a CGI version of a human face; apparently each single black and white video frame took the $400,000 mainframe computer two and a half minutes to render to the screen. When you think a modern video game console can render 1080p HD colour content in real time at around sixty frames per second, it just goes to show how far we have already come in what is only a couple of generations. You can read more about the film, and the people behind it by clicking here.

I have had some very positive feedback in respect of the coverage of the history of Erith and the surrounding areas that I have been recounting on an irregular basis over the last few months. More will be forthcoming, beginning with the story of how electricity came to Erith. The supply of electricity began as a municipal service with the signing of the Erith Electric Lighting Order of 1899. The undertaking was run by the Erith Electric Lighting and Tramways Committee (my goodness, they liked their titles back then!) The power station for the venture was built in Walnut Tree Road (where a large substation exists to this day). The supply of electricity began on the 12th January 1903. All current for the town was generated at this station until 1922, when part of the supply was then obtained from Woolwich Power Station; by 1927 the Walnut Tree Road power station was deemed surplus to requirements, and all power was generated at Woolwich. Not long after the start of generation in 1903, a project started to convert the little street lighting that then existed in Erith from gas to electricity. The first roads in the area to get electric street lights were Erith High Street, Bexley Road, then two in Belvedere - Albert Road, adjacent to Nuxley Road (though at the time it was somewhat confusingly named Bexley Road). The only other road in the area that was fitted with electric lights was Station Road in Lower Belvedere, coincidentally still the site of a particularly large electricity substation to this day. Despite electrification, and probably due to the high levels of poverty in the area, the domestic use of electricity was extremely low for many years. When the supply began, the population of Erith was approximately 25,000 people. In 1903, the first year of supply, only 189 private electricity customers were registered. The number took until 1911 to reach one thousand, and until 1926 to reach two thousand. The number only started to dramatically increase when the relative cost of electricity began to fall, and as new housing estates were built both in Erith and Northumberland Heath. The new houses were fitted with electric lights and sockets as standard, so the new power source suddenly gained in popularity.

Now is a bad time to be an arachnophobe in the London Borough of Bexley. It was recently announced by local spider expert Lewis Curran, member of the Natural History Museum's bug forum said that changes in weather patterns have meant that the previously very rare Steatoda Nobilis spider - the False Widow, so called as it bears some resemblance to the deadly Black Widow, is now being found all over Bexley Borough. Whilst not fatal, its' bite can cause allergic reactions in the vulnerable. You can read more about the creatures and how to avoid being bitten by them on the News Shopper website here.

The festive season is one of the best times of the year to listen to pirate radio, especially on short wave. There are numerous stations of varying degrees of professionalism and transmitter power, dotted all over Europe and beyond. There are a number of excellent websites which give up to date information as to what stations are on what frequency and when. The two best, in my opinion are Free Radio Reception and the superbly up to date Shortwave DX Blog. The biggest, most professionally operated and most slick station on clandestine shortwave is undoubtedly the excellent Laser Hot Hits. They are on air 24/7 on two separate shortwave frequencies (currently 4.015 and 6.970 MHz - though in South East London, 4.015 seems to be the stronger signal). You can also listen to them streaming online via their website by clicking here. Do give them a try, they are really jolly good. I got a reception report verification (commonly called a QSL card) from them yesterday - you can click on the image below for a more detailed view.

The Bexley Times are reporting that one of the prototype new Routemaster replacement London Double Decker buses will be on public view on Wednesday morning in Bexleyheath Broadway. It will be open to public view from 9am until midday. The buses are due to go into public service beginning in February, though not initially anywhere in the local area. You can read more about the buses by clicking here.

The award winning Europa Gym will be moving from its' old HQ in Fraser Road to its' new purpose built facility in Maiden Lane, Crayford in phases, beginning on Tuesday 3rd January. You can read all about it on the News Shopper website here.

Season three of E4 sci fi thriller comedy show Misfits has just been released as a DVD boxed set. If you were not already aware, the show is filmed in and around Thamesmead, principally on the Tavy Bridge area. I understand that the programme is set in the same dystopian universe that The Clockwork Orange was made, which coincidentally was filmed in Thamesmead when it was brand new and shiny. I must admit that the plot of Misfits - a bunch of chavs on community service who mysteriously all get super powers - is a great idea for a comedy drama. The problem I have with the show is the suspension of disbelief. For me it constantly "breaks the fourth wall" as I constantly think - "I know where they filmed that bit" and so on. Nevertheless the show has been picked up in the USA for a remake. For some reason the Americans have to remake our shows with their own actors - something that has long annoyed me; we take no end of American shows and don't immediately think "this would be better with a bunch of ex - Eastenders actors in it". Recently, the utterly superb Life On Mars was remade for the US audience and it tanked - killed after one season. Top Gear has been remade with American presenters, and event the Americans think it is crap compared to the real thing The same thing happened to the Russian version of the show - viewers complained and asked for the British original to be screened instead. The list goes on, but I won't - I don't want to bore you any more than usual. Why the Americans just cannot watch the original UK version of decent shows astonishes me. The next thing we will hear is that they want to Americanise Sherlock. If you have any insight into this phenomenon, please let me know. I don't think that the old chestnut that Americans cannot understand non American accents can hold much water nowadays, thought I am open to persuasion.

Molton Brown - Solicitors?

2011-12-25T19:47:00.003Z

Bexleyheath Broadway reminds me of an urban allotment at the moment; this is mainly due to the preponderance of large garden sheds which have been erected; they are part of the “Winter Market” – a rather slipshod and haphazard collection of stalls attempting to flog festive tat and noxious smelling fast food to the passing shoppers. I also noticed an ancient and very rickety Helter Skelter slide that looked usable only by members of EXIT. When in Bexleyheath last Saturday I was struck by how “normal” a shopping day it was. There were no crowds or queues of waiting shoppers – very much a case of “business as usual”. I get the feeling that the pre Christmas sales figures are not going to make very comfortable reading for the retailers, especially considering that almost all of them have begun their sales; I found that HMV had slashed prices on their DVD’s by a huge amount – there were series boxed sets of various TV shows that had a recommended price of £60 that were being offered for £12. It looked to me like the store is sacrificing margins for volume. They appear to be one of many with this policy right now. Good for the consumer, but potentially fatal in the medium and long term for the retailers.

Reviews of “The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff” on BBC 2 have been decidedly mixed; the TV show is a direct spin off from the utterly excellent BBC Radio 4 sitcom “Bleak Expectations”. Personally I thought the TV show was amazing, but then I “get” the humour, and the style in which it is written. Both shows are parodies of the works of Charles Dickens – or rather, they present Dickensian stories and character in a surreal and very funny way. The humour is impossible to describe. You can see a ten minute spoof "making of" video below; apparently it was filmed with genuine Victorian steam powered cameras...

Maggot Sandwich reader Paul left a comment on last weeks' entry, and my thoughts on Erith station failing it its' bid to get a passenger lift installed, even though there is no wheelchair or buggy access to the London - bound platform. I get the feeling that very few people bother to read the comments occasionally left by readers; besides which, I think Paul's thoughts deserve a wider audience - he makes some very pertinent and thought provoking points:-

Interesting comments on the railway line through Erith, and I have something to add. I have been using this line for some 16 years now and have often wondered when standing at Charing Cross or Cannon Street stations when services are disrupted why the Bexley and Sidcup lines always seem to get priority over the Greenwich line for train departures. A few months ago I was chatting to an ex railwayman who had worked all 3 lines. I put the above point to him and his answer was amazing. We on the Greenwich line do not complain enough!!! The demographic makeup of the users of the Greenwich line means most users just grumble amongst themselves, users of the other two lines are more likely to contact the train operator, and these complaints are the ones recorded and the numbers published and sent to the regulator, hence Southeastern want to make sure that this number is low, especially if a franchise renewal is due, hence the bias. The same reason applies why fast trains are not stopped when slow ones are cancelled, passengers from the Medway towns are more likely to write, phone or email if their journey is delayed. Fascinating, but so very wrong.

Following on from this, a certain public figure forwarded me the following - a variation on the festive song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" themed on Southeastern Trains. Click here to play the song ( you will need your computer speakers on and volume up - it is work friendly).

I see that concrete actions are finally being taken by both the Government and the Metropolitan Police in regard to metal theft – a subject I have written at length about over the last couple of years. The Government are looking to bring in new legislation covering the scrap industry as early as this Spring. The Police are setting up a special team, called the Waste and Metal Theft Task Force, which is going to be based in the Borough of Bexley - you can read more about it here. This dedicated team will be identifying the criminals, arresting them and getting them before the beak. The theft of metal is so widespread now that many crooks are turning to it in preference to other crimes. You may have seen in the last week that a valuable sculpture was stolen overnight from Dulwich Park. The story even made it onto CNN in the States. The bronze sculpture, entitled “Two Forms (Divided Circle)” was created by artist Barbera Hepworth, and was thought to have a value of around £500,000. It was almost certainly sold for scrap, where it would be likely to fetch something in the region of £1,500 from a bent scrap dealer. Non ferrous metals like copper can be sold for around £4,500 per ton; the cause of the rocketing price is that there is currently a major demand for copper from China, with their huge drive to industrialise the vast rural areas of the country. I feel that this may not go on forever though, as there are signs the artificially created Chinese property bubble may be about to burst; a number of new towns, built to house the new Chinese middle class have become ghost towns. People bought the properties as investments, never intending to move in. Because of this, those that did intend to live in the towns were discouraged and did not buy, thus forcing the prices down to the point where the investors have ended up losing money. The financial misfortune in China may be the only way for the residents of the UK to be able to sleep safe, unworried as to if their water pipes were going to be nicked overnight – if China catches a financial cold, scrap metal prices will drop, and the scumbags who go around nicking it will find some other way of earning a dishonest bob.

Below is a trailer for the forthcoming second series of "Sherlock" - the BBC's award winning adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories, set in the present day. The title of the trailer "Rush Relents Rock" is of course an anagram of "Sherlock Returns".

When I was a kid, there was an easy solution for presents when you were not really sure what to buy for someone. The Body Shop was the universal solution – they literally had something for everyone; their products were ethically sourced and produced, and they were relatively cheap. The fact that the quality varied wildly was neither here nor there. I recall one type of bath oil that was wonderful when added to your bath water – it smelled lovely and left your skin feeling good too. The downside was that the base oil Body Shop used was ordinary vegetable cooking oil. After using it a couple of times, it soaked into your bath towel; the aromatic ingredients evaporated, leaving the towel smelling like a giant old chip paper. However many times the towel was subsequently then washed, the lingering whiff of the chippy could never fully be removed. I feel the modern equivalent (in terms of being a universal and well liked solution) is Molton Brown – the difference being that the quality of their high class toiletries is uniformly excellent – which, bearing in mind their eye wateringly high prices, so they should be. I bought some festive gifts from the Molton Brown store in Canary Wharf last week; My wallet was lightened by a three figure sum. On the upside I left the store with my purchases in a very swanky bag. I was quite conscious of it as I made my way home from Canary Wharf via the DLR to Greenwich, and the overland train from Greenwich to Erith. The further I got from London, the less I worried about being mugged by a group of well dressed women for my swish bag and its’ contents. By the time I got to Erith my concerns had completely evaporated; I am of the opinion that a significant percentage of local residents would probably think Molton Brown were a firm of criminal defence solicitors.

Whilst I awaited the arrival of the Southeastern train at Greenwich station, I witnessed a woman with two small children, both under five years old in tow. The kids were dawdling whilst walking up the ramp to the platform. The exasperated woman shouted back to them “Godfrey, Ffion, DO hurry up!” I smiled – what an accident of geography. Only a couple of railway stations further down the line and the children would be called something like Kyle and Britney – Jo.

If you are an Erith local, I wonder if you have noticed a phenomenon that seems to be occurring with an increasing frequency? Young scrotes on 50cc scooters (you know the type – the motors on them sounds like an angry wasp trapped in a biscuit tin) pulling wheelies on busy public roads. It seems to not be not just one or two of the irresponsible twats doing this, judging by their varied helmet designs and bike number plates, but quite a diverse group of potential organ donors. What annoys me is not so much that they are likely to injure or possibly kill themselves with their antics – to be honest, I am sure the NHS would welcome a fresh source of young and relatively healthy organs. What does get my goat is they are very likely to injure or kill a fellow road user or nearby pedestrian. Personally I will be taking the number plate details of any scumbags I see wheelying down the street, and I would urge you to do the same.

As I previously wrote about back at the end of November, the old Erith Pop - In - Parlour building (see the photo above - click for a larger view) which then was up for sale, was sold at auction on the 12th December to persons unknown; it went for £95,000 - just over twice the original estimate. Currently I don't know what use is to be made of it. I would hope the current building could be refurbished. It would be a pity to see it demolished to make way for flats - there are already too many high rise buildings in the town. Drop me a line if you have any insider news.

What is it with a certain type of man (and it is always men) and TCP? Three times this week I have had to suffer sitting on the train, adjacent to blokes who smelled like they had been swimming in a swamp of vile smelling TCP. Two of the guys were old codgers who probably had been using it as a mouthwash to cover for terminal halitosis - a message to them - TCP smells even worse that any kind of bad breath, trust me. The third was a younger guy, accompanied (quite surprisingly) by a woman that one could quite charitably class as a BOBFOC (Body Off Baywatch, Face Off Crimewatch). She had so much blusher on her saggy face it looked like she had been bobbing for chips in a deep fat fryer. The bloke sat next to me, reeking of the vile antiseptic, and the woman sat opposite, using a gas powered pair of curling tongs to do her hair - on the train! Fortunately I only had to suffer them for a couple of stops before I got off to take the Docklands Light Railway at Greenwich.

The final video clip this week is a real and unexpected treat. It is the first teaser trailer for the forthcoming two part movie of The Hobbit, directed by Peter Jackson (who else could do it after his multi award winning The Lord of the Rings series?) I would strongly recommend that you enlarge the video to full screen to really appreciate it. I understand that principal photography on the movie is currently under way in New Zealand. The film is not due at our cinemas until the 16th December next year; as happens on quite a few mega budget movies nowadays, the initial trailers are often filmed before the actual film is made, as a way of drumming up online interest, and creating a “buzz”. This usually helps the film when it eventually comes out. There have been a couple of occasions when the practice has gone very awry though; one of the most notorious examples was the teaser trailer for the first Spider – Man film. The trailer showed a gang of desperate villains carrying out an armed robbery on a New York bank. The crooks make their way to the roof of the building, where a helicopter is waiting to fly them away from the scene of their crime. As the helicopter makes off, Spidey spins a web between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and catches the helicopter full of crooks like a giant fly. The trailer was released a couple of weeks before 9/11. Understandably it was almost instantly withdrawn, though occasionally bootleg versions appear on YouTube and elsewhere. The studio then gets “cease and desist” orders issued by their lawyers, and the videos disappear as quickly as they appear.

Bring back the workhouse?

2011-12-18T16:37:00.001Z

A recent photo of Erith Station. The News Shopper ran a story this week that Erith Station is not going to receive any funding to install a lift for disabled travellers and parents with small children. Wheelchair and child's buggy users currently have to travel down line to Dartford, change platforms using the lifts at Dartford and then come back up on the London bound track if they require to travel to any destination closer to the capital. Despite having street level access to both platforms, Bexleyheath station is getting lifts, at a a cost of approximately £1 million. A campaign has been run by both Erith Town Forum and by Teresa Pearce MP on the Fix My Transport web campaign site for some considerable time now, and it has attracted widespread interest. You can see the site by clicking here. I think that there is a subtle bit of discrimination going on here; It will not be very long until Bexley College will be opening in Erith Town Centre, and the amount of traffic passing through Erith station can only increase. The fact that the London bound platform is only accessible by a foot bridge means the station is in a far worse state of accessibility that Bexleyheath - yet why does Bexleyheath get the money? Because the powers that be would appear have taken the default position they always do - "Don't spend anything on Erith - it is out of the way in the North of the Borough, and only benefit cheats and problem families live there - and they don't vote". A very inaccurate and condescending opinion. It is not the first time we have had this situation - the waste burner I mentioned a while back is a case in point. The authorities view seems to be that the area is already an industrial dumping ground, but since (in their view) "nice" people (as in those likely to vote in local elections) don't live in the area, it does not matter. I have to point out that our local MP, Teresa Pearce does not fall into this category. She is almost unique in my experience; party politics aside, she really puts in a huge amount of time and effort for the constituency of Erith and Thamesmead. There - I never thought I would compliment a politician; my long standing view is that in almost all cases I can think of, the desire to become a politician is a character flaw, and that wanting to become a politician should automatically disqualify you from doing so. I am glad to have found a notable exception. The only down side is that it gives me one less public figure to whinge about!

Whilst travelling in and around London, and up to Watford this week, I have noticed something relatively new. In an attempt to drum up some badly needed Christmas sales, pretty much every stand up comedian who can draw breath has a DVD out. Nothing that unusual there then; however they are almost all advertising on the tube; on my last excursion on the underground almost every video screen had a comic on it - it became quite surreal. It would indeed appear that for the time being at least, comedy is the new rock and roll. It did also highlight something I think many of us came to realise. DVD is not going away. Blu-Ray disks just have not taken off in anything like the way the manufacturers would have liked. When DVD's first came on the market in 1998, they very quickly superseded VHS video cassettes with their vastly superior picture quality. The fact that at the outset the DVD format did not allow domestic recording was not seen by many as a major set - back. People bought DVD players to rent and buy movies, and kept the VHS player for recording EastEnders. Within the space of no more than two years, the sales of DVD's skyrocketed. The death knell of VHS was the advent of DVD recorders and systems such as Sky+. I think that many in the industry were expecting the same pattern when Blu-Ray machines were launched, but it simply has not happened. Disks are up to twice the price of DVD's, often with little perceptible increase in image quality, and with few extra features. The advent of upscaling DVD players, and the general public's apparent choice that for general viewing, DVD's are "just good enough" means that I don't think Blu-Ray will ever be the dominant force that DVD was when it was released. I also think that Blu-Ray is the last physical media format. There simply is no need for high capacity data storage when content can easily be downloaded from ever faster broad band connections. Virtually every TV you can buy nowadays supports Ethernet, WiFi and even the humble USB memory stick for streaming content. Why bother traipsing down to Blockbusters in the cold and wet to pick up a movie that you can rent or purchase either via your TV directly, or via your computer. I feel that the whole physical media market will fizzle over the next few years; it is simply redundant now.

The photo above shows an article about the NHS that appeared in Tuesday's edition of the Times. If you click on it you can enlarge it enough to read. It heavily features our local hospital - the Queen Elizabeth at Woolwich, and is most definitely worth a serious peruse - click on the photo above to see a larger, readable version. It certainly makes for some food for thought. What the article does do is throw into sharp relief the outstanding work carried out my the army of volunteers at the hospital. Many years ago I used to be a volunteer at the predecessor to the Queen Elizabeth - the Brook Hospital on Shooter's Hill. I used to visit the wards every Sunday morning, talking to patients and gathering requests that I played later in the day in my programme on what was then WHBS, and is now Meridian Radio. Unfortunately I eventually had to give it up when I went to work for Radio Caroline.

I have had several Maggot Sandwich readers Email me to ask me to cover more on the history of Erith and the local area; one thing that has become apparent to me is that I have neglected any mention of the Second World War - an event that has had a massive impact on the town and the people. The first real damage caused to the London Borough of Bexley occurred on the night of the 5th of September when a string of bombs were dropped on Glenview and West Heath Road on the border of Upper Belvedere and Bostall Heath. Following this, the Luftwaffe moved their targetting away from air fields and military bases and instead concentrated on London; this resulted on 18 bombs falling on Erith on the 7th September. Later, Callender's Cables, the Borax works, Turner's Asbestos, Fraser & Chalmers, and the British Oil and Cake Mills were other local businesses that were damaged in addition to the private properties in the area. Throughout the war, Erith was a major target for the Luftwaffe, who often used the River Thames to navigate to and from Central London. Erith was hit by a total of 444 high explosive bombs during the length of the war. One of the worst bombing incidents of the entire war, as experienced in the town happened on the 21st January 1944, when the old Erith Fire Station was demolished by a direct hit. The plaque in the photo above (click on it for a larger view) is now installed in the same location as a memorial. You can still see it, mounted on the wall of a small concrete and brick out building adjacent to the car park of Erith Council offices. Not many people know that it is there - probably just as well, as the illegal scrap dealers would only steal it.

Following my recent comments regarding the actions of scrap dealers illegally stealing power and communication cables, along with anything else they can get their hands on, I read in the Times earlier this week that the Government are planning on introducing legislation by the Spring to ban cash transactions and increase the criminal penalties for receiving stolen goods, as I have previously outlined. The sooner this happens, and is actively enforced, the better. You can read more about the issue, and the objections made by the scrap metal industry by clicking here. It would appear that much of the scrap industry is closely linked to organised crime, though many are scared to say it. This must be a great concern to the legitimate parts of the essential trade. The whole industry needs a major shake up and reorganisation.

I have had an idea; it is one that on the surface would appear to be rather controversial, but when you examine it, may make social and financial sense. As you may well have seen in the week, it was widely reported that the Government are making an additional £448 million available to help the estimated 120,000 "problem families" around the UK as reported in the Guardian here. The government cash will be designed to help "chaotic families" where there are chronic and ongoing antisocial behaviour, truancy, violence, criminality and drug abuse issues. The trouble with this scheme, as with others previously introduced by the last Labour government is that they are too cautious - usually providing reactive assistance after a family crisis. This has resulted in the roughly 120,000 affected families being a drain on the public purse to the total cost of £8 Billion. This is vastly disproportionate, and tends to treat the symptoms rather than deal with the cause. My idea was to introduce a new version of the workhouse - remove the problem families from their neighbourhoods (no doubt to the sighs of relief of their neighbours) and house them in a controlled environment, away from their drug dealers and the influence of gangs. This would not be a punitive matter - more of a way of retraining them, educating them in social skills, the consideration of others and the breaking of drug addictions with proper therapy and support. The key would be in separating them from their social network. Board and lodging would be paid for, as long as the inmates complied with the rehabilitation regime. Their children would get intensive schooling and the chance to undertake after school activities such as dance, drama, art or learning a musical instrument; the kind of things that they would not normally consider being open to them. I reckon that between six months to a year or so of concentrated social therapy and education could turn around a significant proportion of any families that enlisted in a programme of this nature. Whilst I am sure it would not be cheap, I am convinced that it would be less expensive to the pockets of the tax payer than the current "sticking plaster" policy and would result in a better society. Feel free to leave your thoughts below.

I had an mildly distasteful encounter with a sales person on my way home from the station on Thursday evening. Talk Talk had a stand outside the Mambocino coffee house in the Riverside Shopping Centre, and their heavily hair gelled sales weasels. Normally I resolutely ignore them, but for some perverse reason I stopped when the perma-tanned representative called me. He launched into his patter as to how if I signed up with them, I could get my internet access for free as part of the package, and that it would significantly reduce my monthly mobile phone bill over my current supplier. I said that he would find it difficult to meet that statement. He looked a little taken aback, and then asked me who my current mobile service provider was. When I told him I did not own a mobile telephone he looked incredulous, and seemingly did not believe me. I left him there - it was getting too cold and dark to be sparring with a kid trying to earn some commission.

If I have recently given the impression that Erith Pier is now purely for leisure use, then let the photo above give lie to this; it shows a Dutch bulk freighter moored on the pier a while back. I quite regularly see all kinds of small to medium sized commercial vessels tied up whilst their crew visit Morrison's to stock up on supplies (I kid you not). The River Police have been known to do the same things, mooring their high speed launches whilst they pop into the supermarket for a bottle of milk and a scratch card.

I don't send Christmas cards, so please don't be offended if you know me and have not received one. Suffice to say that if I did send one, and you got the regular Sunday evening Blog update Email, you would have received a card if I sent them. When Christmas cards were invented by the Victorians (a gentleman called Henry Cole is credited with their creation); it was to send greetings to distant family and loved ones that they might only see once in every few years. Any other communication would have to be by letter, laboriously written and delivered by hand, often taking several days to arrive by horse or foot. Now we have the ability to communicate instantly, anywhere in the world, the whole tradition of greetings cards seems to me to be utterly redundant. The energy used to produce, then deliver the piece of compressed then coloured and processed slice of wood and fibre pulp seems utterly wasteful when an Email can do the same thing just by pushing around a few tame electrons. The whole concept of celebrating a winter festival created by an ancient belief system (the Pagans), which was then conveniently hijacked by a slightly less ancient belief system (the Christians), then given a makeover by the Victorians, and now presented as the highlight of the commercial year all gets somewhat lost on me. The idea of "It's the middle of winter, the days are short and cold, and the nights are long and colder still. Let's have a party!" makes perfect sense, but I get very confused by all the accumulated baggage that comes with it nowadays.

Talking of Christmas, I have noticed a big change in behaviour of people at office parties held in pubs and restaurants in London. This year the events are all very much smaller, and the participants are heading back to the office by about 3pm in many cases; the extended and extremely boozy events of yore most definitely seem to be a thing of the past - for a while at least. People are highly aware that their jobs may be at risk, and don't want to make an idiot of themselves in front of the boss. One still unfortunately encounters the "amateur drinkers" on public transport - something I have written about in the past.

Bill Hicks, foul mouthed renegade standup comedian, philosopher and humanist would have been fifty this week; he died aged thirty two of pancreatic cancer in 1994. If you are in the UK you can see a documentary about his life on BBC iPlayer by clicking here (one week only). In my opinion he was not the ultimate funniest comic, but by goodness he was the one that made you really think. A short clip of him closing his act, not in the way a conventional comic would. A sad loss and a hugely influential man.

Beyond the Thunderbox.

2011-12-11T17:56:00.001Z

The photo above shows the view looking Eastwards along one of the main concourses in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre; I took it early on a Sunday morning whilst standing outside the extremely popular Mambocino coffee house / cafe that I wrote about last week.

I have noticed that this year people in the local area are being a lot more restrained with their selection of house and garden Christmas ornamentation and lighting. Going back a couple of years, quite a few local houses had displays which rivalled the Blackpool illuminations. Some were quite nicely done, but many were a bit, or a lot on the tasteless side in my opinion. Things seem to have drastically changed, and very few houses have much on the exterior at all. I wonder if this is a mixture of the huge increase in fuel costs, the subconscious thought that a conspicuous display is probably a bit unwise in times of general financial hardship, and maybe a touch of boredom with the decorations "arms race" that had been running for some years previously.

Work to extend the platforms at Erith station is proceeding at a glacial pace; at the rate the work is being undertaken, I think the Olympics will have come and gone before the extensions are open. I understand that the working hours are limited to the time over night when no trains are running, but even so, digging a few footings, laying a bit of cement, and installing some pre – cast concrete units with a mild bit of block work is hardly something to test a proficient team of builders. I keep meaning to pop down to the station to photograph the (lack of) progress, but the incredibly short hours of daylight at present have proved to be a real problem. Maybe next week will prove easier.

The News Shopper website has seemingly turned into the editorial equivalent of the Wild West over the last year or so; it used to be an excellent local news and opinion resource that was promptly updated and full of interesting stories. I, along with others have noticed a change in it, especially in regard to the moderation of comments on individual stories. What used to be a well managed, relatively civilised discussion environment has, due to lack of editorial moderation, become a pretty spiteful and vicious sparring ground. One story illustrates this quite well – the story in question is relatively drama free – a newsagent who owns a shop in North End Road, Erith had a whinge about one of Bexley Council’s parking enforcement camera cars parked in the bus stop bay outside of his shop. The story is pretty much fluff, but the tirade of comments that have been made on the story almost beggar belief. You can read the story, and the subsequent comments by clicking here.

For much of this week I have been looking down from the office window into Canada Square and the traditional ice rink that covers most of the park in the middle of the square between November and February each year. On last Monday morning a fleet of lorries parked up in the road, opposite to the Waitrose / John Lewis store. A small army of technicians then spend a day or so erecting scaffolding, running out cables and setting up lights. It was all very mysterious, and nobody seemed to know exactly what was going on. By the late afternoon, as darkness descended, several large movie cameras were set up. For the next three days I have been told that filming took place between about 9pm and 6am, when Canada Square was then closed to all traffic. I managed to discover, despite the tight security, exactly what was going on, and who they were. The company carrying out the work was Eon Productions (big clue there, to anyone who knows about movies). It was the second unit, filming scenes for the next James Bond Film, Skyfall. Unfortunately I did not see any of the action – just the crew setting stuff up and breaking it down. One of my colleagues saw Bond himself, Daniel Craig on Wednesday evening, which is more than I can say I did. Canary Wharf has been used in many films; the roof restaurant over the Waitrose / John Lewis building was used in Batman Begins to stand in for a fine dining bistro in Gotham City. You can read more about movie locations by clicking here.

I don’t know about you, but I feel that there should be some protocol or convention covering the usage of mobile phones in the toilet; on Thursday I was in a loo at work, quietly riding the porcelain bus and minding my own business. The unknown gentleman in the cubicle next to me was grunting and groaning as if he was giving birth to a bowling ball – it was most disconcerting; I was at the point of banging on the wall to enquire if he required gas and air. What made it suddenly worse was that his mobile phone went off mid heave, and he proceeded to have a protracted conversation with some unknown client. I have experienced this on a number of occasions, and I don’t like it. The gentleman’s kharzi should be a place of quiet contemplation; for catching up on the fat stock prices, and bidding farewell to last night’s curry. It is definitely not a place to conduct civilised business. I feel that there should be some type of social stigma for those who mix the world of work, and the world of the thunder box.

The much troubled Cross Keys pub (see the auctioneer's details above - click for a larger view) went for sale last Wednesday. Unfortunately it did not make it as far as the auctioneer's gavel, as it was privately sold for an undisclosed sum to an anonymous buyer before the auction began. I am endeavouring to discover who bought it, and for how much, along with what their plans are for the listed building. I sincerely hope it is not going to be converted into flats, as I recently wrote. I suspect that unless a minor miracle has happened (such as it being purchased by Fullers or Shepherd Neame, refurbished and opened as a proper pub serving quality real ale and decent food) it will follow down the route of so many former pubs in the area and end up as rather indifferent housing.

It is now only a few scant months until the Olympics are upon us; as I have previously written, I am no fan of the event and feel it will end up costing the country a fortune in lost business due to the travel restrictions in and around London. Many companies will be instigating arrangements very similar to the disaster recovery plans to be deployed in the event of a natural disaster or large scale terrorist attack. In many cases, London office buildings will be shut, with staff urged to either take the time as annual leave, or work from home where possible. One thing is for certain, the games will be going ahead, for good or bad. Bearing in mind that the principal stadium for the Games is going to be at Stratford in the East End of London, one would have thought that the catering and hospitality would have reflected this to some extent, but no, once again huge conglomerates will be hogging the scene. Instead of jellied eels, pie and mash and large mugs of strong tea, the exclusive food franchises for the event will be held by MacDonald’s, Coca Cola and Cadburys. There is going to be a blanket ban on independent food outlets opening in any of the venues, and any pre existing cafes or food stalls will be compelled to remove any signs or advertising, effectively removing their identities for the duration of the event. Details of this can be verified by clicking here to download the sponsor's details in PDF format. Bearing in mind that one of the claims of the Stratford Olympic bid was that it would bring jobs and money into deprived areas of the East End, this virtual catering monopoly would seem to give lie to that. I hardly think I would be able to go into a McDonald's on site and ask for pie and mash with liquor, washed down with a cup of builder's tea. It is not right, and it is unrepresentative of the traditions of the East End.

The code competition launched recently by a specialist employment agency on behalf of GCHQ has now had several legitimate winners, despite the solution being searchable online, as I described last week. It would appear that GCHQ’s code breakers are more concerned with how individuals reached the correct answer, than the answer itself. One such successful code cracker is John Graham – Cumming. He postulates that there may actually be a second coded message within the broken code, due to the number of spare characters in the original cracked message. Personally I think he’s getting into conspiracy theory territory – inside sources within GCHQ have publicly said that they deliberately left in surplus message bytes in order to “make it look interesting” to code cracking competitors. You can see John’s award – winning blog and make your own conclusions by clicking here.

I see that Bexleyheath has been the scene of yet another murder. A 36 year old man, Frederick Moore was stabbed to death in Bynon Avenue on Thursday evening. A total of eleven people have been arrested, which makes it sound like some kind of gang related activity – but that is pure conjecture on my part in the absence of any further information. This is only two months almost to the day since Bexleyheath resident Sally Hodkin was murdered by the war memorial near the junction of Oaklands and Methuen Road, less than five minutes’ walk from Bynon Avenue. You would think it was a rough, deprived area from the level of homicide it has recently experienced, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is a very quiet, middle class residential area. Quite what has caused this terrible spate of murders is beyond me – maybe it is something in the water?

One advantage of working right next door to a large Waitrose / John Lewis store is that it becomes very convenient to go shopping on the way home from work. As many of you already know, I am pork intolerant, and have to steer clear of any foods containing dead pig products. This makes sausages a bit of a minefield. Even ones purporting to be pure beef, lamb or venison often contain around 15% of pork fat to act as a binder and to keep the meat moist. Pork fat is the material my body cannot handle the most, so I end up not eating sausage very often, as the varieties of completely non pork sausages are very thin on the ground in most supermarkets and independent butchers shops. The one exception is Waitrose; they have a wide variety of Kosher sausages, which are uniformly excellent. I have cooked with their smoked beef and turkey variety on a couple of occasions now. They are not cheap, at around £4 a packet, but of excellent quality.

The latest edition of The Chap magazine has just arrived on my doorstep. You can read all about it by clicking here. As always, it is a fascinating and uplifting read that I would recommend to one and all.

The photo below is a chance for you to grab a free slice of Erith; it shows the River Thames a few weeks ago, and gives you a chance to download a photo of Erith and the "big sky" for use as your computer wallpaper or such like. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, then right click, you can save it to use on your own computer, should you so decide. I have saved it in a large format in order to make for a high quality image. The dramatic sky is pretty typical of what you can see on a good day from Erith Pier - an under used tourist destination, in my opinion.

Apologies for those amongst you who have been enthusiastic about my recent forays into local history; I have had some very positive feedback when I have covered the subject. The sheer number of issues I have had to cover this week has meant that Erith's history has taken a bit of a back seat; suffice to say that in next weeks' edition of the Maggot Sandwich there will be plenty more on the history of the local area.

The video this week is something that you may have already seen; it show the crew of HMS Ocean singing along to the Mariah Carey track "All I want for Christmas is you". It is a cracking bit of film making and must have been a hoot to be a part of. It has now gone viral, which when you watch it s not surprising. I laughed out loud during the bit where the tough as nails Royal Marine gets offered champagne by the Matelot whilst in his bubble bath! Not a lot more needs to be said, other than all of the best to our service personnel at home or abroad at this time of year.

60,000 and counting.

2011-12-04T16:35:00.000Z

The view looking East from Erith Riverside Shopping Centre towards Morrison's. On the right you have Erith Health Centre, in the middle foreground is the "Robo Turdis" automatic public toilet, which gets hardly any use (many people avail themselves of the bushes out of the photo to the extreme right). Behind the auto loo is a block of apartments that opened around three years ago. Underneath them are four retail units, none of which have ever been occupied. Planning permission for one business was submitted a while back, but nothing seemed to come of it. The current chilly economic climate means that it is very difficult for a small business to raise finance. I think the only way the shop units will get occupied is if large chain stores take them - as has ended up being almost exclusively the case in the shopping centre itself. High rents and punitive taxes have caused the couple of independent shops that did give it a go to fail. Erith is still almost bereft of restaurants, rather than fast food outlets - the honourable exception being the Mambocino coffee shop, which is more of a sit down cafe than just a Starbuck's clone. They seem to serve a fairly wide variety of "knife and fork" meals, and always seem to be pretty busy - I keep meaning to give it a try. I would still like to see a Nandos or Pizza Express in the area, or better still, an Indian restaurant rather than just a takeaway (more of this later); I suppose I can keep hoping.

About an hour after I posted last weeks' Maggot Sandwich update, I checked Blogger's statistical reports to see if anyone had read the most recent entry. It was then I discovered that I had just exceeded 60,000 unique page views. Don't for a minute think this means that the blog has that number of regular readers - far from it. What it means is that 60,000 unique people have hit the blog - Blogger does not measure revisits from the same I.P address - the first time you visit my site, it is recorded, but from then on any additional views are left unrecorded. At a guess I reckon I have a few hundred regular readers, but I really cannot be that certain. I do know I get about 150 hits a day on average, from all over the world. Thank you one and all for continuing to read my ramblings!

I have come to the conclusion that the Post Office are no longer in the primary business of delivering letters and parcels to the inhabitants of this sceptered isle; nowadays their fundamental role seems to be that of advertising agency / marketing bureau. I receive more spam advertising flyers, pizza menus and other junk mail from the postal service than I do from anywhere else. Yesterday alone I had three fast food takeaway leaflets, an advertising flyer from Farm Foods (a place to visit you are too chavvy for Iceland) and a dodgy looking leaflet offering to buy my house, all delivered by the Post Office. All such advertising junk goes into a bag and gets taken around to the recycling facility in Morrison's car park for pulping. What a waste of time and effort. I still have not had anything to rival the take away leaflet posted through my door at 1.30 am last Christmas morning, fortunately.

A local curry house has been awarded a major prize at the British Curry Awards last Monday night; the event was hosted by celebrity chef James Martin and had guests including London Mayor Boris Johnson and Baroness Warsi, as well as a congratulatory video message from Prime Minister David Cameron. The lucky winner of best suburban Indian Restaurant in the UK went to the Shampan 3 in Falconwood Parade, Welling. You can download a PDF of their very interesting looking menu by clicking here. Back in the 1990's I used to work in the East End of London and would eat curry house made curry two or three times a week. I was a member of the Curry Club, run by chef and author Pat Chapman. I used to write reviews for the Good Curry Guide, and articles for the now defunct Curry Club magazine. I only eat a "proper" Indian restaurant curry a couple of times a year now, though I do cook a fairly mean one from fresh herbs and spices - no sign of a cooking sauce or other shortcut when I make a dish. All this writing about curry is making me hungry - incidentally the Shampan 3 has a special Christmas menu for the month of December - take a look below; it certainly looks very different from most conventional curry house menus.

I have been reading more about the history of Erith; I have always wondered why there is a large chalk outcrop that stands between the Europa Industrial Estate and Erith station; it is a sheer, almost vertical hill surrounded by built up areas. It turns out that the site of the Europa Industrial Estate was the location of Erith loam quarry; The quarry was originally opened by the Wheatley Estate in 1805 to provide stone ballast for sailing ships. Shortly thereafter a man called John Parish was employed as the quarry general manager. Later, the Wheatley family sold the business to Parish, and for many years the quarry was referred to locally as "Parish's Pit". Once the stone ballast was completely mined out, it was discovered that beneath was a rich seam of loam, a material used extensively in the production of moulds in the metal casting industry. The loam was shipped from Erith as far away as South Shields and elsewhere, and the trade grew steadily. Erith Deep Water Wharf was built in 1842 to service the trade, and at the time of the Crimean War the demand for Erith loam was so great that ships were queuing in the Thames to use the wharf, and the quarry was working 24 hours a day, lit in the dark by giant flares. Once the quarry was finally worked out, it was used for other purposes. The section adjacent to Erith station, that is now the goods marshalling yard for the NiceDay warehouse in the Europa Estate was the site of Erith Cricket Club; a photograph taken in 1870 still exists of the club, with a match in full progress.

Before the First World War Erith possessed extensive brick fields in Manor Road, to the East of the town centre. The deposit of the iron rich brick earth stretched all the way into Slade Green, where a company called Rutter's Brick Works was in operation for many years. The finished bricks were exported by ship from Anchor Bay Wharf, which was connected to the pits and brickworks by a tramway. The semi liquid brick clay was transferred from the more distant pits to the main brickworks in Manor Road by a network of iron pipes; apparently the ovens which fired the bricks were kept working around the clock, and in cold weather it was not uncommon to find tramps and vagrants using the buildings as somewhere warm and dry to spend the night.

One can always tell when Christmas is on the way - the background music on the Sky Television menu system changes to a really sickening medley of cheesy Christmas tunes. I am switching off the background music in the options list as with immediate effect.

As I have previously written about local metal thefts, I discovered this week that the situation has got so bad that in some parts of the country, the rail companies are having to run overnight, empty save for the driver "ghost" trains in order to patrol their networks to deter cable thieves. A private members' bill is to be put before Parliament to introduce a law banning the purchase of scrap for cash, as has recently been introduced in France. The French have enabled a law which could potentially see a scrap dealer jailed if they were to be found to have bought scrap "under the counter" for cash. All recycling and scrap dealing is heavily policed by the French authorities - whom I feel we could learn a lot from.

The now infamous Cross Keys Pub in Erith is back up for auction on the 7th December by the same company that tried to auction it earlier in the year, when the pub was withdrawn from the sale on the very morning of the auction. The company handling the sale is Network Auctions - have a look at their website, but don't try and download their sales PDF brochure, because the link currently does not work. I will be fascinated to see what happens on the day; I sincerely hope that it finds a new owner who does not want to turn it into river front flats.

I am feeling old; many outlets in the popular press are reporting that the 1st of December was the 30th anniversary of the launch of the BBC Microcomputer. I used them extensively at school, though at the time I was faintly dismissive of them, as they did not have as much memory, or the impressive (for the time) graphics of the Atari 800 I shared with my sister. I was blissfully unaware of the incredibly well designed implementation of the BASIC programming language that was years ahead of any other home / school computer; I did not know that it had a built in firmware assembler / compiler for 6502 machine code - all other contemporary microcomputers had to run a software assembler that ate into the computers' already meagre memory, meaning that any assembly routines were very limited in size; it had the ability to directly interface with floppy drives and (heaven forbid) even hard disk drives - which I had heard about, but never seen - I was still using a cassette drive on my Atari 800 to load and save files - an experience kids today should be glad that they will never have to undergo. The "Beeb" also had a simple form of networking - at the time I could not conceive of a time when computers would talk to each other - that seemed to be in the realms of science fiction to my fourteen year old mind. Still, the BBC Micro has had a massive influence on a whole generation of people who went on into careers in the IT industry - myself included. On top of this, it is one of the first primitive progenitors of the company which went on to become ARM. The biggest corporation you have probably never heard of. Put it this way, if you have a tablet device running Android or iOS, or pretty much any kind of mobile telephone, you own a device that uses a processor chip designed by Cambridge based British company ARM Holdings.

Something that I had been aware of for a while, that has finally made it into the mainstream press is the story that GCHQ have launched a campaign to recruit Britain's amateur code breakers. A bit like the competition run by Bletchley Park at the outbreak of WWII to interview candidates who could successfully complete the Telegraph crossword in under twelve minutes. You can see the special competition website here, though only for a week, until the competition ends. No, I am not interested in trying; the careers offered in GCHQ don't pay nearly enough for the work and dedication involved, and my maths skills are execrable - though my sincere best wishes and good luck for those who give the puzzle a crack. Hint - look for repetition. *Update*. The cipher has been cracked, but not by breaking it - the numb skulled people at the employment agency who created the site on behalf of GCHQ did not bother to hide the "Congratulations - you broke the code!" page from search engines, and a simple Google search can find the answer. You can read all about the stupid mistake by clicking here.

The final video this week is a real treat; there are fan films all over the internet, of variable, and usually pretty poor quality. Then there are the notable exceptions. Star Trek - Phase II - The New Voyages is as close as it could be to being an official continuation of the original three series of Star Trek that originally ran from 1966 - 1969. The concept is that Star Trek continued on to a fourth and fifth series, and it covered the events prior to the movie Star Trek - The Motion Picture. The cast and crew are mostly amateur, but the CGI effects are done by artists who used to be part of of the "real" Voyager and Enterprise graphics teams. The executive producer is Eugene Roddenberry junior - the son of the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry. The scripts are also written by "real" Star Trek writers. The series of web based movies also have featured the actual actors from the series - George Takei (Sulu) appears in one story, Walter Koenig (Chekov) appears in another, and Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar from The Next Generation) guest stars in a two part TV movie, playing her original characters' Grandmother. Paramount, owners of the Star Trek franchise, allow the movies to be made just as long as nobody profits from them. Indeed, there are fans all over the world that donate funds for the productions to continue. The clip below shows an episode, written and directed by the original series writer David Gerrold (the author of "The Trouble with Tribbles). It is a story he wrote and submitted back in the late 1980's for Star Trek - The Next Generation, but which was rejected on the grounds of its' (then) controversial story line. Things have thankfully moved on, and below you can see the first act of "Blood and Fire". Brilliant stuff. For the full episode, more details of the show, and links to freely download the whole series, you can click here. Do leave a comment and let me know what you think.

The Pop - In Parlour.

2011-11-27T17:41:00.002Z

The photograph above was taken by me a while ago; it shows the pub sign outside of the Royal Alfred in Manor Road, opposite the excellent Londis mini supermarket and corner shop. I have been getting my daily copy of The Times in the shop for many years now. The Royal Alfred is boarded up and unused as a public house, though the two floors of accommodation above the bar area are currently being rented out for housing. I published the photo because I want to highlight a country - wide problem that seems to have hit the whole of South East London harder than most. The closure of local pubs, and the impact this has on their communities. I can think of pubs just in central Erith that have gone in the last ten years or so. The Trafalgar in West Street was one of the first in the area to close and be converted into flats. I visited the place on a couple of occasions before its' demise, and it was a depressing and scruffy hole of a pub, and to be honest probably serves the residents better as apartments than it ever did as a run down and threadbare boozer. Both the Stile and Winch, and the Harrow on North End Road closed within a year of each other, one to be converted into a Tesco Metro (the Stile and Winch) and the Harrow demolished to make way for flats. The much featured Cross Keys pub, the centre of much controversy over the last couple of years is still closed and boarded up. No details of its' current ownership status are known to me. I get the strong feeling that over the next few years, pubs are going to be either part of a huge chain, selling discount beer and cheap microwaved food, as per the the business model used by Wetherspoons and their kin, or they are going to be high class, quality establishments selling superb real ales and home cooked food, like the Robin Hood and Little John. Unfortunately I don't see a future for the local back street "boozer". They are being priced out of the market by cheap supermarket beer deals, and the punitive level of excise duty and general taxation.

The (still copyright infringing) Bexley Times are reporting that the former Age UK single-storey building "Pop - in Parlour" (click on the photo above for a larger version) opposite the Baptist Church in Queen Street, Erith, owned by Bexley Council, is due to go for auction on the 12th December. You can read the original story by clicking here. The auctioneers are estimating the guide price for the building to be in the range of £35,000 to £45,000. Not a lot of cash for the size of plot. The current building is in a poor state of repair, as you can see from my photo above. The building conceivably could be refurbished and re-opened for the areas pensioners to use as before, but somehow I don't see an appetite for this. I just hope that the plot does not get demolished for yet another block of flats - like the area needs more of them. Without a detailed structural survey and search into what the building could legally be used for, the whole thing is a bit of an enigma. It would make an interesting bungalow for a private dwelling, though in such close proximity to Queen's Road, with its' 24 hour traffic, it would need some substantial sound proofing to make living in it a viable concept; still, it is surrounded by private houses and their owners don't seem to mind. I wonder who will put in a bid for it, and what it will become? Answers on a postcard after the 12th December. A Google Street View scene, showing the pop in parlour shortly before it had to close is embedded below:

View Larger Map

I walked out of the main entrance to Chatham Railway Station on Wednesday; it was approaching 9.30 in the morning. The sun was shining, and it was chilly but clear. I stopped momentarily to get my bearings, when I heard a gruff voice behind me; as I turned, a voice said "Do you know where Chatham Magistrates' Court is?" It came from a tattooed and skin headed individual of indeterminate origin - possibly half chav / half gorilla. He rather reminded me of a somewhat less cultured version of the hit man Donald "Red" Grant played by Robert Shaw in "From Russia with Love". I replied that I was not that familiar with the town, and that he would probably be better off taking a cab from the rank we were standing next to. He shrugged and replied "It's just I thought you might have been going there too"(!) Quite what brought him to come up with the notion that I would be attending court utterly escapes me. All I can think of is that he thought I was either a Police officer or a Magistrate. My attire and bearing would not have given rise to any thoughts that I might be of the criminal fraternity. Bemusing. Anyway, he loped off - he was polite enough in his own way, and he gave me the impression that he would quite happily stop passing juggernauts with his head if you asked him nicely.

One of my local informants has told me that Erith Morrison's will be opening between 7am and 11pm six days per week from the 1st December until the 23rd December inclusive. He tells me that the staff were not consulted, and many are unhappy - quite a proportion of staff are not local and are concerned about late night travel on public transport. I have spoken to the local Police and they were also not aware - apparently they opposed the original licence application that Morrison's made to permanently increase their opening hours a few months ago. I am concerned that this temporary increase in opening hours may be a nefarious "back door" way to getting the change of hours made permanent. More as I find out.

I detest 3D movies and 3D televisions. I just don't see the point in giving yourself a headache and eye strain just to satisfy the self seeking folly of some Hollywood director. You can read more about the 3D process and the effects it can have on the human body by clicking here. I think it is a fad that will die out in the next couple of years, and a good thing too.

Personally I utterly despise reality television and shows such as "Celebrity dancing on ice up the jungle factor" and such - it is lazy and cheap television designed to attract the lowest common denominator and the stupid. I know that I am probably in the minority, and anyway, as I have stated before - "if it works for you". I digress. Len Goodman, the head judge on Strictly Come Dancing is a apparently a big star nowadays. The promotional shtick about him rhapsodises about his "World Famous" dance school and his history of dancing excellence. All of this may well be true, but it does make me smile, when after all the hype, once finds out that the centre of his dancing empire is a studio over a Londis convenience store and a kebab shop in Dartford. It rather deflates the allegedly glamorous image the show cultivates about him in my mind - see the photo below:

I am absolutely fuming. I am more than a little accustomed to the actions of spammers and malicious coders taking a pop at the Maggot Sandwich, especially as the Blog edges ever closer to my 60,000th unique page view; to be honest it has become par for the course. This is the primary reason that I had to enable comment moderation a while back - to stop spam advertising. I have noticed that in the last few weeks the spammers have become more devious, cunning and scurrilous in their actions. I have had a large number of prospective posts that on the face of it offer condolences after the death of my Dad back in September - as you may be aware, I uploaded a very personal obituary to him, and since then I have been inundated with specifically targetted, and very clever marketing messages - generally created to look like genuine messages of condolence, but when examined in detail, they contained poisonous HTML code designed to pollute the Blog with unwanted spam advertising. If I could catch the offenders, I would have them slowly gassed until they stopped twitching. Scum of the utterly worst kind.

It is not long now to the start of Erith Christmas Tree Festival; I am not the kind of person to get involved with such things, but I am sure that many will be interested - you can see their website here.

It is now pretty much widely held knowledge that the Oyster travel card system is corrupt and broken. Darryl, writer of the excellent 853 Blog has covered the topic in the recent past; The news that Oyster users are being overcharged at stations across the underground network won’t come as a surprise to many readers. It was revealed recently that in 2010, Transport for London pocketed a huge £61.8 million from passengers due to broken or open barriers and cards not read or swiped properly. The lack of barriers at some stations meant passengers were being overcharged, but there’s another issue: when stations become overcrowded (as they frequently do, for instance during rush hour), staff open the barriers and use the autocomplete system which touches travellers out of the system automatically. Sensors pick up cards going through the barriers but to avoid a maximum fare the user must touch in again at the same station within three days. This is fine if it’s a station you use frequently, but not quite so convenient if it isn’t. The Docklands Light Railway recently made the news for the same reason and features heavily in the complete list of overcharging stations with a contribution of £3.2m to that £61m total. Transport for London say that maximum fares are not overcharges, which is somewhat surprising, since they appear to be occurring at least partly as a result of a design failure of the Oyster system. This information is courtesy of both the 853 Blog and the Londonist website.

Here is a list of the top 10 stations overcharging Oyster users, and the approximate amount overcharged:

Waterloo National Rail – £2,452,000
London Bridge National Rail – £2,300,000
Liverpool Street National Rail – £1,615,000
Bank London Underground – £1,339,000
King’s Cross London Underground – £1,073,000
Victoria London Underground – £982,000
Stratford – £877,000
Wimbledon – £825,000
Oxford Circus London Underground – £862,000
Liverpool Street London Underground – £670,000

On a similar note, I have become increasingly aware that the editorial power on the News Shopper website has become increasingly eroded over the last year or so; the website uses a news engine similar to many other local newspapers, but the level of control and comment moderation has become minimal at best; some of the malicious and downright horrible comments made about the recent disappearance of a local 13 year old girl were shocking - I am all too aware that people use their online anonymity to a sometimes vicious end, but the treatment handed out in the News Shopper recently has been unforgivable. I am concerned that the editorial staff may leave themselves open to legal action if they don't keep tighter control over the postings left on their website.

The video clip this week is a bit of a curiosity. It is a "behind the scenes" look a the making of the classic Bond movie "Goldfinger", and not only shows the excellent mock up of the Fort Knox gold repository, not as the original is, in Kentucky, but in a backlot at the Pinewood film studio. You do get a rare insight into the selection and use of Bonds' firearms. Years ago, when I was a licenced pistol shooter, I had the opportunity to try Bond's weapon of choice - the Walther PPK. I thought then as I do now - it was under powered and little better than a spud gun. Unless you got a head or heart hit, its' relatively puny 7.65mm / .32ACP bullet was not going to stop a charging bad guy, who might well be stoked up on drugs. A modern Bond would be far better served with a compact, polymer framed pistol such as a Glock 29 10mm semi auto. Personally, before the 1997 had gun ban, I used to have a Glock 17. A very reliable, accurate, beautifully made weapon. Anyway, watch the clip below, and feel free to post a comment - which will be moderated and published within 24 hours.

Eel fishing.

2011-11-20T14:36:00.071Z

Erith Railway Station is subject to yet more controversy. Erith and Thamesmead MP Teresa Pearce is running a campaign to prevent the closure of the ticket office at Erith Station, and to stop opening hours at Thamesmead station from being reduced. Southeast trains are trying to do away with the staffed ticket offices at Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green stations, and to reduce opening hours at Albany Park, Bexley, Abbey Wood, Crayford and Falconwood. I utterly fail to understand the reasoning behind the threatened closures – the ticket machines are very limited on what they offer – you cannot buy extension tickets or monthly (or longer) season tickets, and the Southeast trains website is little help. If a passenger needs to ask for information or advice they will in future be scuppered. To top this all off, Darryl of the excellent Charlton based 853 blog has discovered that during the period leading up to, during and after the Olympic Games next year, that local train services are going to be severely disrupted – some rail stations such as Woolwich Dockyard are going to be completely closed for the duration of the event, and travellers will not be issued with any form of compensation. You can read about the potential breakdown in public transport provision by clicking here.

We are still suffering from short trains; the promise of eight carriage trains are still not being undertaken By Southeastern Trains, and the drastically reduced timetable for the Olympics can be seen by clicking here.

After the mention last week, I have been in contact with Bexleyheath based Talking Elephant Records, and following recent discussions, I hope to be in a position to publish an interview / article on the local company within the next couple of weeks. I will keep you posted.

I spend much of my working time based in a rather swish office building in Canary Wharf. Most people working in the wharf will visit the underground shopping centre, and maybe sit in one of the parks in the area if the weather is clement, but they don’t venture anywhere else. Now that my dodgy right foot is well on the way to healing, I am starting a walking exploration of East London. So far I have discovered the Poplar Dock Marina (see the photo above), which although it occupies one of the outer shipping docks in the Canary Wharf complex, feels like it is miles away. The marina is home to many house boats, and has a very relaxed “out of town” feel to it. On Thursday I ventured across the A13 and the tracks via the footbridge to Poplar DLR station. I then strolled into Poplar High Street. This is only about ten minutes walk from Canary Wharf, but a whole different world. A mix of quite deprived council accommodation and some lovely Georgian houses that are now becoming gentrified, by the look of the cars parked outside. I visited Chrisp Street Market, and the Lansbury Estate shopping centre – the oldest pedestrianised shopping centre in the UK, dating back to the Festival of Britain in 1951. There are a couple of traditional pie and mash shops in the centre, including a very nice looking place called Maureens, that specialises in both traditional pie and mash, along with hand made hot salt beef sandwiches. There are also quite a few Halal food places too. I was quite surprised at how nice the area is – I was expecting something like Plumstead High Street (a 7.5 out of 10 on my personal roughness scale) and instead got something rating about a 5 out of 10. Quite a lot of the buildings have been restored, and I noticed a remarkable lack of graffiti for what is still all said and done a rather deprived area. It is certainly somewhere I shall be exploring in greater detail in the near future.

I was standing on the concourse at Euston Station early on Wednesday morning. Looking up at the departures display board, I did not see a slightly dishevelled figure approaching me at speed. He bumped into me and then grunted – I then realised it was writer and comedian Rory McGrath. He was spectacularly grumpy, and close up his face resembled a dropped pie; nowadays he’s got more chins that the Hong Kong telephone directory. Suffice to say I did not get an apology.

Erith is the only place on the entire River Thames that has a licenced, professional Eel fisherman. News reaches me that recent surveys of the health of the river indicate that the native eel population is shrinking rapidly - which is extremely worrying, considering the minimal level of eel fishing nowadays carried out on the river. Water and air pollution levels are down markedly when compared to the 1930's and earlier; I really have no idea why the number of eels found in the Thames should be so much reduced. Any information would be gratefully received.

News reaches me that the redevelopment of the Tesco supermarket in Dartford is pretty much a foregone conclusion; you can read all about it here.

As previously mentioned, there are rather a lot of technology anniversaries cropping up at the moment; this week it is a biggie - the 40th birthday of the Intel 4004 microprocessor - the first widely available mass produced "computer on a chip". Nit pickers may say that there were earlier microprocessors - and indeed there were, but they were not widely available, and the 4004 was the chip that laid the path towards the later Z80, 6502 and 68000 processors - all of which fuelled and ran the home computer revolution in the 1980's. Click here for more details.

We need to fear for the future of the Indian restaurant; Conservative MP Eric Pickles (a man who looks like he is somewhat familiar with the inside of a curry house or three) has suggested that there should be a "Curry College" to teach unemployed British youths how to cook, serve customers and manage Indian restaurants. All this is intended to replace staff who in the past have been brought in from the Indian sub continent (usually Bangladesh / Pakistan). I am somewhat sceptical of this approach; whilst in principle I agree that anyone should be able to work in the hospitality business, and with the right support and training anybody should be able to cook and serve a decent quality curry, I just don't see the desire to do this amongst most young people. The reason staff for curry houses come from Asia is because they need to earn money to send home to their families - most get paid way under the national minimum wage, don't pay tax or national insurance, and to all intents and purposes don't feature on the radar of the welfare state. As soon as you start employing staff who fulfill all of the legal criteria, the overhead costs are going to go through the roof - all of which will of course be passed on to the customer.

Over the last few months, I have picked up a great many new readers - I am now only a few hits short of 60,000 unique page views; I think it is probably a good time to explain a bit about the Maggot Sandwich to those recent participants. If this is the first time you have read my Blog, then I should explain; I chronicle events in and around Erith and the local area, and cast my wry opinion on issues such as petty crime and social injustice; my views and comments are often made in a slightly tongue in cheek manner, and whilst everything I report on the trusty Maggot Sandwich has occurred exactly as I write, any opinions expressed are to be taken lightly. When in petty local crime fighting mode, I have an alter ego - the suitably monickered Captain Tweed. You can read about one case I cracked by clicking here to go to the story. I have been posting weekly articles here for over six years now - there are now in excess of 357 posts; updates are published regularly on Sunday afternoons / early evenings, and an Email is sent out to inform veteran readers. The five most recent postings are on the front page, older postings are automatically archived, and can be read by clicking on the "Blog Archive" drop down menu button to the right of the editorial. Also on the right are a series of links to other websites you may find of interest. The list updates whenever one of the linked sites posts any new content, so the links at the top of the list are those with the most recent updates - the lower on the list, the older the content - all clever stuff.

Here is an Easter Egg.

Scientists and engineers have come up with the world's first proper holographic 3D display - without using "cheating" techniques, such as using high speed spinning glass screen to reflect the projected image. This is the first real step towards the kind of holographic projection system seen in the Star Wars movies. You can see a video demonstration of the system below; it is obviously in an early stage of development, but the potential is clearly obvious. Watch the compelling video below and do leave a comment with your thoughts.

After perusing the local history books further more over the last week, I discovered that Erith features rather heavily in the early history of the steam railway. The North Kent Railway, including Erith Station, was opened on the 30th July 1849. The architect for the buildings on the line, including the extended terminus at London Bridge was Samuel Beazley. Erith Station is a prime example of his work. Abbey Wood station also opened in 1849, whilst the stations at Plumstead and Belvedere followed in 1859. The arrival of the railway helped the raid increase in Erith's population, which rose from 2,082 to 8,289 in 1871, and greatly facilitated local industrial development. Despite the growth, Erith remained beyond the limits of the London suburban build up area; for many years, Plumstead was the outer limit for most continuous building. In the 1860's, out of 34 daily weekly down trains on the North Kent line, only 15 went beyond Plumstead; this proportion only increased gradually during the remainder of the century. When the Bexleyheath railway opened, some trains ran by this route via Slade Green.

The Army has a really interesting and informal website called the ARRSE resource - it is a bit like the MumsNet site - completely unofficial, yet authoritative and up to date. I have been reading articles on the website, and it is definitely an eye opener. You can see the site by clicking here.

A sporting activity made popular with the association with Erith was the sailing barge races; they were started in 1871 by Henry Dodd, a Londoner who moved into Erith in 1871; he made a fortune from refuse, and was known locally as the "Golden Dustman". Barge races became an annual event, though weather conditions sometimes prevented completion of the full course. The 1893 race was the last one completed from Erith - later races were run from Gravesend.

Someone has started a website that parodies the current trend for celebrity chef run sites that promote expensive, high end cuisine - the Shite Food website reviews low priced, low quality convenience food to expose really how shockingly bad much of the stuff available to the lowly paid is actually like - and the results are not good. You can see the end results by clicking here.

The closing video is a bit of a minor classic. It is the "I like trucking" song from "Not the Nine O Clock News". I recall this was extremely controversial at the time - many people complained about the hedgehog which gets run over at the start of the video. I think people were a lot more naive then; nowadays the general public are far more knowledgeable about television and film production and know "it's not all real" - whereas then, in the early 1980's most people took what they saw on the screen as verbatim.

The lumpy Thames.

2011-11-13T17:15:00.002Z

I took the photo above a couple of weeks ago, on the day of the Alexander Selkirk festival. It shows Erith Pier, the longest river mounted structure anywhere on the Thames, and a really nice place to be on a warm and sunny day. Do give the pier a visit if the weather is clement and you are in the area. Incidentally, I have decided to drop my copyright challenge against the Bexley Times; it turns out that the individual responsible for the infringement is seriously ill, and I feel that pursuing the case further would be inappropriate under the present circumstances.

I have been doing more reading and research on the history of Erith; this week I am mainly covering the impact of the Crossness Sewage Works. In the 1860's day trippers started coming to Erith on the then newly invented paddle steamers from London. The area in what is now the Riverside Gardens was a popular destination, and for a while the town had a good reputation as a "watering place" - though in reality I think a lot more beer and tea got consumed. Many local people were concerned that the opening of the Crossness Sewage Works would be deleterious to Erith's tourist image, as raw, untreated sewage would be forcibly pumped downstream past Erith on the falling tide. Crossness was the brain child of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, as part of a £5 million sewerage scheme to bring sanitation to 69 square miles of London, from Putney to Crossness. The works were officially opened on the 4th April 1875 by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. The buildings, in the then fashionable Italian style were built on what was then a ground breaking cast concrete platform, at a cost in excess of £750,000. The site covered an area of 37 acres, which included housing for fifty workers and their families on site. A thousand foot deep artesian well was dug to supply them with fresh water, whilst they processed 70 million gallons of London's sewage each day - that's a hell of a lot of poo. The fears of Erith residents about the increase in bad smells and consequent lumpy Thames water were fully justified; there was considerable local agitation for several years following the opening of the works, and it was only after a popular local campaign run by a Mr. Charles Beadle and a small group of activists, that improvements were made to the filtering system, and a deodorising unit was established, which ended up life somewhat more pleasant for those living down wind. Having said that, there are plenty of times, usually when it is hot and windy, where the turdy whiff of Crossness can be smelled in the local area to this day.

It is not very often that I give any kind of consumer advice, but this is going to be one of those occasions. As you may be aware, I was recently housebound for a couple of weeks, following a nasty bout of Plantar Fasciitis in my right foot. Fortunately I am now well on the mend, and back working in the office, rather than from home, as had been the case. Whilst I was working from home, I stocked up on a few snack like comestibles to make my lunch a bit nicer. One thing that stood out from the shelves in Erith Morrison's was some soup in a cup. I absolutely love mushrooms in all of their forms - they are one of my absolute favourite things to eat. Naturally I thought I would buy some mushroom soup - and I saw a range promoted by TV chef and celebrity buffoon Ainsley Harriott. It claimed to be made from a hand picked selection of wild mushrooms, and with his celebrity endorsement, I thought that I was on to a winner. How wrong can one be? The soup turned out to be salty, sugary, lacking almost totally in any mushroom flavour whatsoever, and also lumpy - what ever one did to stir it, the mug still ended up with a powdery and lumpy sludge at the bottom. Utterly disgusting. I checked the ingredients list, to find out that the so called "wild mushroom" soup was packed to the gills with additives - and the largest single ingredient was glucose syrup powder. I am a person who is loathe to throw out food, but I have to admit the rest of the sachets in the packet had their contents emptied down the sink - the paper and card packaging then went straight round to the recycling centre at the back of Morrison's car park. Avoid. On a more positive note, here is a much nicer recipe for proper mushroom soup from YouTube cult chef and nutter - Titli Nihaan:

Cash Generator has now opened in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. From the look of the place, they have had to import much of their second hand stock from other stores round the region. There are a suspiciously large number of very recent second hand LED and Plasma televisions offered for sale in the place. I just wonder how many of these possibly came onto the market courtesy of the late summer riots? Just a thought. Any business that can (somehow) legally get away with charging an exploitative 1733.5% interest on a loan has got to be suspect - check their terms and conditions of you don't believe me. Personally I would ban them from trading in any shape or form. In my opinion, they only exist to increase suffering to the already vulnerable.

For the first in a very long time, I am writing this sitting in my favourite corner of the Robin Hood and Little John pub, accompanied by my Acer Aspire One netbook, running Mint Linux, and fuelled by a cool pint of Late Red – the excellent autumn seasonal ale made by Kent brewery Shepherd Neame. It is one of my favourite real ales – truly nectar of the Gods - see the image below this paragraph. The pub has an excellent menu of home cooked food - no microwaved rubbish. You can download a PDF of their excellent menu by clicking here. I am glad to be in such a pleasant and calming environment after a somewhat trying bus ride to get here. I was under the erroneous impression that now I am no longer having to make a daily nursing home visit, and am thus using the bus system less, that my semi regular encounters with the undesirable elements of South East London would be reduced. I was wrong. I got on the 99 towards Bexleyheath, and only three stops later a middle aged woman with six children aged from (at a guess) about thirteen to about four years of age got on.. I used to see the same family group on the 99 bus from Plumstead to Erith when returning from Dad visiting in the past. Most of the kids appear to have OCD / ADD / Hyperactivity – either that, or they are all irredeemably and continuously naughty. I actually felt sorry for her – her brood were swinging around the poles on the lower deck – screaming and shouting, jumping around and generally making the lives of the other passengers hell. I was grinding my teeth in frustration – the woman has absolutely no control over the kids. She tells them off, but they ignore her, and carry on with their passenger annoying behaviour – none of the brood seemingly aware of how to behave in the presence of strangers – it is as if other people are simply not there.

The emergency backup generator at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup was sabotaged in the early hours of the morning on November the 11th. Scumbags dug up and ripped out the emergency power cables from the generator room to the main building in order to steal their copper. This potentially put the lives of hundreds of vulnerable people at risk. Metal thefts are on the rise, as I have written many times before, and seem to be even more of an issue in and around Bexley Borough. The laws over recycling and sale of metals really need to be toughened up. The Government has been making some encouraging noises about the currently intolerable situation, and the Local Government Association (who actually see that these statutes get enforced) are calling for compulsory annual registration for all scrap dealers, a ban on all cash transactions, number plate recognition CCTV cameras at all scrap yards by law, and legally enforceable recording of all transactions, ensuring a complete audit trail. The Government estimate that £770 million worth of metal was stolen and illegally resold last year; personally I think this figure is somewhat on the low side. They also say that there have been approximately 700 incidents of power cable theft alone in the last month! I have previously written about the utter filth who steal the bronze and brass plaques from war memorials - my contempt for such individuals will no doubt be of no surprise. The only fact in this sorry situation is the fact that six of the metal thieves have died in the last year whilst cutting into power cables - a pity more of them did not get fried - it is what the scum deserve.

I have been asked to give an additional plug to the campaign to recruit new Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinators - details below - please click on the image to enlarge for reading. You can see the Erith Watch website by clicking here.

I was doing some research into the famous Red House at Bexleyheath, the former home of writer, designer and artist William Morris, when I came across something completely different - Bexleyheath's own independent record label - Talking Elephant Records. They specialise in folk and progressive rock - especially the pastoral sub genre of the Canterbury Scene. They represent a wide variety of artists, both current and historical. You can check out their website and online shop by clicking here.

I am extremely glad to see that the EDSAC rebuild project at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park has got the green light, and that £250,000 has been raised to rebuild this ground breaking early computer - work is now under way on the project, that I initially reported back in January. Much of the credit has to go to computer scientist Herman Hauser, one of the fathers of the BBC Micro in the 1980's. EDSAC was a very early computer, using valves and mercury delay lines to store data. It led to the very first commercial computer, LEO - which was an acronym for Lyons Electronic Office, which ran stock control, payroll and many other "modern" functions, way back in the mid 1950's. If it had not been for some poor management and business decisions, Silicon Valley might well have been in the UK rather than California. There was an extensive and fascinating article about LEO in the Daily Telegraph this week, as it is the 60th anniversary of the first LEO computer going live. Unfortunately I missed the story, but one of my invaluable (and anonymous) sources brought it to my attention - along with the photo of the story you can read below - do click on the scan to enlarge it for easier reading. You can also visit the Leo Computer Society website by clicking here.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Freddie Mercury. BBC Radio 4 transmitted a half hour documentary about his life on Saturday morning. If you are in the UK you should be able to click here to listen to it online. It will only be available for a week.

Free radio station Laser Hot Hits are now streaming on the Internet, as well as broadcasting on shortwave. You can read all about this excellent station by clicking here for more.

As predicted, the ill planned Caribbean Kitchen restaurant / bar in Bexleyheath Broadway has gone bankrupt. I originally wrote about it back in April - which you can re-read by clicking here. I was walking past the place on Saturday morning, and saw a bailiff's official letter posted in the doorway - it informed the owners that the locks had been changed, and that it was an offence for them to now try and gain entry to the place. The building and all its' contents were repossessed only the day previously, on Friday morning, due to failure to pay bills. I am not in any way surprised. The place took over a year to open from the originally announced date, in which time a Nando's restaurant opened directly opposite, on the other side of the road. When the Caribbean Kitchen finally did open its' doors, it looked like an amateurish and half hearted effort, offering a very similar menu to Nando's, but at greater cost, and not so well cooked, in a venue full of second hand, worn old furniture. It was doomed to failure from the outset, as I have written in the past.

Following my feature of the "guilty pleasure" TV show "Man Vs Food" that I discussed last week, I have had several Emails from anonymous Maggot Sandwich readers who all agree that the programme is "must see" television. To this end, I have embedded another part episode as the end video for this week - it would appear that many people love the show - however off putting the initial premise might have initially appeared to have been. Adam Richman seems to be onto a winner with this one.

BATT Woman.

2011-11-06T18:43:00.001Z

The Cross Keys pub, which still remains boarded up and abandoned, months after it was withdrawn from sale on the day of its' auction. Mystery still surrounds exactly what happened to the sale of the place. If it does not get sold to a new owner and refurbished soon, I have real fears for the future of the historic building.

Funding has now been secured, so that the dreadful hellhole that is the Larner Road Estate can be demolished and rebuilt into something rather more civilised. A total of £128 million has been allocated for the demolition of the notorious tower blocks, and the creation of a new, low rise and more resident friendly housing estate. The project will take a total of five years to complete, and will kick off in 2013. You can read more about it by clicking here. The place was built in 1964, and in my opinion should have been demolished in 1965 - a view no doubt shared by many in the area.

As we are coming up to Remembrance Day 2011, one thing that has been darkening the commemorations is the recent spate of thefts of bronze and brass panels from war memorials. We have had a number of local incidents, including the theft from the memorial in Bexleyheath Broadway a while ago. In my opinion, the law in respect of scrap dealers needs to be changed; there should be no cash transactions, account only business, and credits to named bank accounts only - the scrap dealers are currently as guilty as the scumbags that steal the metal in the first place. Make them traceable and accountable - this will go a long way to preventing the crimes.

I don't know if you have seen the current PC World TV commercial where Darth Vader visits a store to encourage the staff (a somewhat morally dubious concept from the outset). It was filmed at the Lakeside shop. Vader is making personal appearances at PC World shops around the country over the next few weeks. I get the feeling that the marketing company behind the campaign don't really understand the Star Wars universe. Would you really want your company to be closely associated with the Galactic Empire, a thinly disguised bunch of space Nazis? I thought not.

The Wonder Woman inspired cardboard cut - out that had been displayed on the outside of one of the BATT warehouses in Fraser Road has finally succumbed to the elements; it was in place for many years, and had become a bit of a local land mark. Local resident Steve Thoroughgood photographed it a while back, and you can see his work by clicking here. I hope that BATT replace it with something equally quirky and humorous in the near future.

Following my whinge last week, concerning the Bexley Chronicle stealing my photographs, I wrote the following complaint to the editor of the paper - the text is below:

Dear Sir / Madam,

On page five of the November 2011 issue of the Erith and Thamesmead edition of the Bexley Chronicle, there is an article about the recent Alexander Selkirk commemoration day at Erith. The article contains seven photographs where the copyright is owned by myself, and have been used without compliance with their licence. The photographs were published on the Flickr website under a legally enforceable Creative Commons licence. The terms and conditions of this licence have not been met. This is an offence under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A capture of the page in question is attached for your information. Your prompt response is requested to ensure that this matter does not require escalation to my legal counsel.

At the time of writing this, I have yet to receive a response. I will not drop the matter - more as it happens...

Even though were are in straightened financial times right now, there seems to be a new fad for baby vegetables in the supermarkets. I can just about see the point in baby sweetcorn (great in stir fries and curries), but draw the line at something I saw in Morrison's last week. Baby cabbage anyone? It looked like a Brussels Sprout on steroids. What would make someone want a cabbage the size of a tennis ball totally escapes me. Why not just leave it in the ground for a few weeks longer, get a full sized one with more taste? It is not like you could eat a baby cabbage like an apple - it would still need to be boiled or steamed - and it would need to be shredded too - you would lose the "specialness" of the small size anyway. Madness.

Do give the video below a watch - apologies for the somewhat dubious quality. It is taken from a Bollywood thriller, and will make you laugh for all of the wrong reasons. The action involved the hero chasing the bad guy, in a sequence where literally everything blows up, at least once. It would seem that even the explosions have explosions - the kind of thing I would have expected Jeremy Clarkson to have directed. I see that the law of conservation of momentum has been repealed for the duration of the clip - have a watch and let me know what you think.

On the complete opposite end of the quality spectrum, do check out this full HD short film by independent director and cinematographer Vincent Laforet. The cinematography and production values are amazing - and the story is pretty clever too. "Mobius" is eleven and a half minutes of pure movie magic. I would recommend enlarging the embedded clip to full screen to appreciate the visual quality - and to give your internet connection a bit of a work - out.

You can read a fascinating article about a journalist who had her GMail account hacked, and what happened afterwards by clicking here. It makes sobering and informative reading.

Have you seen the current TV advert for Panasonic televisions, featuring a gymnast going through a routine on top of a giant TV set? The gymnast in question is a young lady called Sophie Brundish - one of Britain's top hopes in the forthcoming Olympic Games. She trains and is based at the Europa Gym Centre in Fraser Road, Erith. You can see the advert on YouTube by clicking here.

The photo below shows Pewty Acres, and my home office where every week I nail together the Maggot Sandwich; unfortunately you cannot see all of the room in the shot; the lens I was using just was not wide angle enough. Further to the right of the photo is my Amateur Radio gear, my home CCTV surveillance system, and my Mastermind style chair. I spend a great deal of time in this room. Incidentally, the two yellow and grey boxes in the foreground of the picture are a brace of Watson 30 Amp regulated DC power supplies. The room as a whole has 24 surge protected power sockets that feed from the underside of the 3 metre long custom made workbench. The red unit on top of the Edirol MA15-D monitor speaker to the left of the iMac is a Uni-T UT70D professional digital multimeter - a lovely bit of kit that has proved very useful.

I notice that the News Shopper are running a story that the region may be getting a new airport in a few years' time. You can read all about the story here. This coincidentally dovetails in quite nicely with the research into local history that I have recently been doing. Did you know that way back in 1910, there were firm plans to construct an airport on the land between Joyce Green and the Dartford Salt Marshes? The land was purchased by Vickers Son and Maxim (which later became Vickers Ltd). The primary purpose of the airport was to be a place where Vickers could test their prototype aeroplane designs. they had recently created the (then) revolutionary Vickers R.E.P monoplane which was designed and constructed at their large engineering works in Fraser Road, Erith. The planes' designer was French aviation pioneer, Robert Esnault - Pelterie. For various planning and economic reasons the airport project became delayed, and by 1914, World War 1 had started, and the whole thing was abandoned. If it had not been for this, Dartford could have been what is now Heathrow. Personally I think we got away lightly, but it would have brought a hell of a lot of business to the local area.

The River Thames features heavily in the history of Erith. During the 19th Century, the Thames between Erith and Woolwich was the scene of two particularly notable disasters. The first was the gunpowder explosion, which happened on the 1st August 1864. At about seven o'clock in the morning, two barges were being loaded with black powder from one of the magazines on Erith Marshes, when one barge exploded, causing the second to detonate a moment later, which caused the entire magazine to blow up. The explosion was heard all around London, with reports from as far as fifty miles away. A tall column of black smoke rose above the marshes and hung in the air for several minutes according to eye witnesses. No trace of the barges was ever found, but bricks and timber from the magazine building. and nearby housing were scattered over a wide area. Considerable blast damage was caused all around Erith and Belvedere, with windows broken up to six miles away. Ten people were killed (their bodies were stored in the Belvedere Hotel, which was used as a temporary morgue) and hundreds injured. The cause of the explosion was never discovered.

The second disaster was also unexplained. On September 3rd, 1878 the pleasure steamer "Princess Alice" was returning from Gravesend to its' home port of Woolwich, when it collided with the iron cargo steamer "Bywell Castle". Out of 800 passengers on the "Princess Alice", nearly 700 were drowned, and for several days bodies were being washed up along the banks of the Thames. Some of the dead who were "hurried into eternity" (the rather flowery words of a local journalist) were buried in the cemetery of St. John the Baptist in West Street. The "Bywell Castle" survived the collision, but was lost in mysterious circumstances. In 1883 she disappeared on a journey between Gibraltar and England, and was presumed lost with all hands.

The Bexley Neighbourhood Watch scheme are looking for new members. Click here for the Erith based network. Otherwise, if you would like to become involved, see the graphic below.

A real guilty pleasure of mine (and I know of others too) is the TV show "Man Versus Food". In the programme, TV presenter Adam Richman travels around America, eating meals in independent cafes, restaurants and fast food joints. He shows how various meals are prepared and talks to the staff. The climax of each episode is the "Food Challenge" - Richman attempts the restaurants challenge - to eat an unusually huge portion of a dish, or to eat something extraordinarily spicy. These challenges often have a time limit. It sounds gross, but Adam Richman is such a likeable host, you can forgive him a lot. This clip shows Adam in an Indian Restaurant in New York (that models itself closely on a typical British curry house). He's eating a tandoori chicken Phall. Most Americans are a lot less familiar with Indian food that the typical Brit, so he goes to some lengths to explain what a Phall is. Incidentally, I have eaten a Phall on a couple of occasions. To be honest the challenge is more about the next morning, and having to explain to any onlookers why you are taking a kilo of ice cubes and a fire extinguisher into the loo...

You are no doubt viewing the Maggot Sandwich using a web browser such as Firefox, Opera or Chrome (goodness forbid that you should even consider using the abomination that is Internet Exploder). Going back a few years now, the browser of choice tended to be Netscape Navigator. Whilst that suite of programs is now long dead and gone, the people behind Firefox have rewritten Netscape into a totally new package of Web browser, Email client, Newsgroup reader and Web page designer, now renamed SeaMonkey - the package is now free and open source; available for Windows, OS X, Linux and the Solaris operating systems. You can download the SeaMonkey suite free by clicking here.

You may or may not be aware that the hugely successful BBC TV show "Top Gear" is licenced for production in a lot of different countries. The format stays pretty much the same, but the presenters, language and cars featured differ depending on the part of the world. Below you can see the pilot episode of the American version - which, it has to be said is not a patch on the British original. The presenters don't have the personal chemistry - and the humour is almost totally lacking. Nevertheless it is a worthwhile watch.

The Limp.

2011-10-29T20:51:00.002+01:00

Tramway House, a residential block on the corner of Stonewood Road and West Street, opposite the Erith Riverside Gardens and overlooking the River Thames. The block was built seven years ago to offer subsidised housing to essential workers such as nurses and fire fighters. When it was being constructed it was rather ugly, and for a while looked like a bunch of Portacabins all piled on top of one another. Once it was glazed and externally clad, the view changed, and I think it now looks rather nice. It is certainly convenient for pretty much everything in Erith - although being in close proximity to the chav infested hell hole that is West Street must be a bit of a burden. I took the photo above during last weeks' bout of excellent weather - click on the photo for a larger version.

Erith received a group of foreign tourists on Wednesday afternoon; I was queuing to pay for some purchases in Morrison's when I noticed that a very well dressed family in front of me were having some communication difficulties with the checkout lady. They were, I think from Denmark, and their daughter of about twelve years old was consulting with a phrase book. This somewhat surprised me; people from the Scandinavian countries normally speak better English that most UK residents - and when it comes to the average resident of Erith, well, you can work it out for yourselves. Anyway, their issue was soon resolved and they went happily on their way. The thought occurred to me. What were an evidently affluent and cultured Danish family doing in Erith? Were they anthropologists or something? Answers on a post card please.

One of the most widely known companies to have a historic association with Erith was Callender's Cables, formerly known as The Callender Bitumen, Telegraph and Waterproof co. Originally the company was primarily concerned with the production of bitumen and waterproof damp course material for the building trade, with cable making little more than a side line. The rapid growth in telecommunications in the late Victorian era led to cables becoming the company's main product, and in 1896 the firm was reorganised as the Callender Cable and Construction co, which was later changed to British Insulated Callenders Cables, or BICC. By 1965 the Erith based factory was the principal manufacturing facility for the world's largest cable group - the production area covered some 65 acres and provided employment for 1,300 local workers. Callenders were one of the main manufacturers of PLUTO (Pipeline Under The Ocean). Callenders also contributed much to the area of culture and the arts; Callenders Band, which was started in 1890 as a Salvation Army band. Some members wanted to play a wider variety of music, so the band was relaunched as a temperance promoting popular music band. They became popular around the country and gave many public performances, and had a regular feature on pioneering radio station 2LO during 1922. They continued with much popular support until the outbreak of World War 2, when the group was disbanded. It did reform briefly at the end of the war, but it did not achieve its' earlier success, and was disbanded for good in 1948.

I am currently reading "The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised Biography of MI5" a scholarly 1,044 page, densely written history of Britain's internal security service from its' inception to today. The book is academic and a touch dry, but it is supremely interesting. During the late 1930's Callenders Cables was strongly suspected of being a hot bed of communist activity, much of which later was discovered to have been fermented and controlled for Moscow by Melita Norwood (see the photo above); a well known communist who was at the time Britain's longest publicly undiscovered traitor - though MI5 knew about her for years, and chose to do nothing. I recall back in 1999, when she was first uncovered in the press, I was bemused to discover she lived only a few doors away from a very close friends' parents in Bexleyheath. What a small world we inhabit. The Communist Party of Great Britain is still around today, although it now seems a rather pathetic and internally divided handful of isolated social inadequates. They seem to spend their time worrying as to how they will pay their bills, and arguing extensively amongst their own tiny and deluded remaining membership. You can see their website here and judge for yourself. I somehow doubt MI5 have many concerns about them nowadays.

By the time you read this entry, I anticipate that the Maggot Sandwich will have reached its' 55,000th unique individual page view. Thanks to one and all - wherever on this strange old planet you are on. It is most flattering.

Fans of the long running BBC radio series "Test Match Special" and members of Middle England are very soon going to be saying "It is the end of the world as we know it!". BBC Radio 4 may shortly cease transmissions on 198kHz Long Wave. The reason cited is that their stock of bespoke high power transmitter valves (tubes to our cousins in the colonies) is running out. The gigantic transmitter will fall silent when the last of these highly specialised components fails. I think this reason is utter tosh. The Beeb want to close down the Long Wave channel and force listeners onto the DAB feed instead. Whilst no British company is currently capable of remanufacturing these highly specialised, metre high electronic components, the Russians retain excellent high power thermionic valve production facilities. It is something of a techie legend that one of the criteria that the Royal Navy SSBN fleet have to check to see if Britain has been hit by a thermonuclear attack is to check if the BBC Radio 4 service is still operating on Long Wave. I get the feeling that this may have to change. You can read a detailed report on the situation by clicking here.

The much vaunted iPad 2 has had its' security broken in around five seconds. With no need for any technical knowledge, it is possible to crack a locked iPad 2 running iOS 5 - watch the video below to see just how ridiculously easy this is.

There was a recent article in the Guardian Online called "Leftover Crossover" which described the way one could cross cultures and cuisines by mixing leftover food to make interesting, tasty and original dishes - one prime example was serving curry with pasta or noodles (something I do regularly - after all the Malaysians serve their curries with egg noodles all of the time). There have been the odd weekend occasion when I have made things like a chilli con carne toastie sandwich for breakfast, or baked beans with a dash of chilli sauce and turmeric, served on toasted wholemeal bread, spread with a little unsalted butter, with a poached egg and fried mushrooms on the side is my idea of an occasional weekend breakfast treat heaven. I have to say that in the normal scheme of things I don't eat breakfast, as I rarely feel hungry before lunch time, but there are the odd exceptions.

The remaining members of Pink Floyd are releasing a new "best of" compilation in time for Christmas. A Foot In The Door - The Best Of Pink Floyd, with a track listing chosen by David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason.
The track listing is:

1) Hey You

2) See Emily Play

3) The Happiest Days Of Our Lives

4) Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2

5) Have A Cigar

6) Wish You Were Here

7) Time

8) The Great Gig In The Sky

9) Money

10) Comfortably Numb

11) High Hopes

12) Learning To Fly

13) The Fletcher Memorial Home

14) Shine On You Crazy Diamond

15) Brain Damage

16) Eclipse

Personally I think they are an excellent selection of tracks - with the glaring omission of "Echoes" - one of their finest works. But I fail to see the point. Pink Floyd were an albums band; their albums are designed to be listened to from start to finish, preferably when laying in a darkened room lit only by a single candle, whilst your brain slowly leaked out of your ears. To give you an idea the amount of regard my family has for Pink Floyd, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond parts I - V" was the final piece of music played at my Dad's funeral a few weeks ago.

On a rather more sober note, I hear that a an attempted abduction of a small child happened in Riverdale Road, Erith on the 18th of October. You can read more about the disturbing story by clicking here.

If you are wondering where the title for this weeks' blog entry derives from, it is actually quite simple. I have been practically housebound since last Saturday; I have been suffering from a particularly painful and unpleasant condition called Plantar Fasciitis - an inflammation of the connective tissue on the underside of my right foot. I had it once before, about six years ago, and I developed another case of it whilst working in London last Saturday. The condition can be brought on by standing around for long periods, which, due to the nature of the work I was undertaking (the physical upgrade of some electronic equipment in my company's head office building, which could only be undertaken outside of normal business hours). Anyway, my right heel started to get very sore and painful, and by the time I had finished and was heading home, meant that I was unable to put any pressure on the heel at all - I was walking in a very strange "tip toe" gait on my right foot. It progressively got worse on Sunday. Knowing the only treatment was rest and an anti inflammatory pain killer such as low dose Ibuprofen, I arranged to work from home all of this week; It is fortunate that much of my job does not require me to be present in person - most tasks can be carried out remotely using my excellent, work supplied Lenovo X201 mini laptop and my secure VPN connection over my fibre optic Internet line. I am hobbling still, though now some of this is probably due to a secondary inflammation of the tendons on the upper side of my right foot - no doubt brought on by the strange gait I had to employ, in order to keep my super sensitive heel from touching the ground. I'm using my Dad's old telescopic aluminium walking stick, which is quite a help right now. With effort, I can hobble as far as Morrison's and back, but at present that is about the limit.

In the realms of "You could not make this up" comes the news that Hollywood are planning to make a biopic of mathematician, codebreaker, pioneering computer scientist and Olympic standard athlete Alan Turing - the man who contributed greatly to the work Bletchley Park did to shorten World War II by an estimated two years. You can read about the plan to make the movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio here. I get the feeling the resultant film will have the historical accuracy of U-571. That is, none at all. If you want to see a gripping, historically accurate movie about submarine warfare, you have to see the Director's cut of Das Boot - one of the greatest movies about war ever made. If there is a movie to be made about Turing, it should star someone like Benedict Cumberbatch.

Local rag The Bexley Chronicle is very much in my bad books this week. Just after the Alexander Selkirk Day event, I was contacted by our local MP Teresa Pearce. We are in semi regular contact on a number of matters, so the Email did not surprise me. She asked if it would be OK if she used one of the photos I took of her on the day as an illustration on her website. She was aware of the Creative Commons Licence under which all my photos on Flickr are published, and promised to give me full credit for them. In fact, she went above and beyond this, and put a direct link to my Flickr photos, and a link to the Maggot Sandwich as well. A couple of days after this, Teresa's researcher Emailed me to ask if it would be OK if the photos of the Alexander Selkirk day could be forwarded for publication in several local papers. I said yes, as long as I got proper written credit for anything that was used. My photos are licenced so that anyone can reproduce, modify and republish my photos, so long as 1) It is not for profit, and 2) That I as the content creator get full credit for the work. If you click on the captured image above, you will see that all but one photo (the one taken of shoppers in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre) were actually taken by me - you can see the originals by clicking here. And what is missing? No credit to me, or mention of me as content owner in any form. I am going to be having some very strong words with the editor of The Bexley Chronicle. More next week.

As I have been fond of recounting over the last few months, there are a lot of 30th anniversaries coming up around now; this coming Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of legal CB Radio in the UK. Many of the original CB users - "Breakers" went on to become licenced radio amateurs. I never had a CB radio as a kid, though I sorely wanted one, and I did manage to borrow a couple of rigs on occasion. I recall setting up a mobile CB car antenna on top of an aluminium foil wrapped metal "Quality Street" tin in my bedroom, and wondering why my signal was not getting far past Abbey Wood. Oh the ignorance of youth! Some years later, still absolutely fascinated by radio, and inspired by hours of illicit listening to pirate broadcast stations Alice's Restaurant, and later Rock FM, I joined the team behind Radio Lumberjack - a station that broadcast a surreal mix of left field music, comedy and local community news to large parts of Bexley Borough from a house on the Upper Belvedere / Bexleyheath borders. From thence I joined WHBS radio, got a Saturday job at what was then BBC Radio London (I would race home from the Beeb in order to then present my show on Radio Lumberjack - those were the days). This led on to Radio Caroline, and the rest, as they say is history. Nowadays I hold an advanced class Amateur Radio licence, and have the radio callsign of M1CXN.

The end video is something that I stumbled upon by pure chance. It features an formally untrained and rather geeky keyboard playing musical genius by the name of Ronald Jenkees. He reminds me a little bit of Herbie Hancock, and quite a lot of Rick Wakeman. Here he's playing a improvised composition - amazing stuff. See what you think and feel free to leave a comment below.

Tweed hibernation.

2011-10-23T18:26:00.002+01:00

I took the photos above on Friday afternoon. I was working from home, and took a late lunch break in order to take a few shots of the oft described ongoing work at Erith Station. The top photo shows the station building itself; the main structure was officially opened on the 30th July 1849. It has been clumsily restored at least a couple of times in the recent past. The lower photo shows the builders' yard that has been set up in the long closed station car park. The builders are extending both the London and Kent bound platforms, presumably to cope with longer trains to be laid on for next years' Olympic Games. Unfortunately the more pressing issue of installing a lift for wheelchairs and baby buggies has somehow been thrown out of the window. To get this legal requirement under the Disability Rights Act reinstated, please add your name to the online campaign being run here.

For me, the start of winter is marked by one event, no festival or cultural event though; it is when I have to put my tweed jackets into hibernation for the winter, and don a more substantial coat in order to combat the wintery inclement weather. This occurred during the middle of this week. So for me, we are now officially into the winter season. I am not a person for extremes of temperature; I don't like snow (the attractions of winter sports like skiing and snow boarding leave me cold, if you will pardon the pun). I also dislike the heat, as I have recounted in the past. Spring is my favourite time of the year; warm weather, things growing and the days getting progressively longer is what I most enjoy. I don't think many people are that keen on the short, cold and dark days of this time of year - probably why so many festivals occur in winter - something to keep up the spirits whilst we wait for spring to come around again.

The Metropolitan Police have launched a London - wide crackdown on illegal drivers. In Erith they targetted Manor Road, mainly as the large amount of industrial traffic that uses the road means that there is a fair chance that a few bad eggs will be encountered. On Wednesday this did indeed turn out to be the case. The officer I spoke to told me that they were looking for uninsured drivers, MOT failures, those driving without a licence, and specifically they were looking for scrap vans without scrap licences - something very common all over the place, and especially so in and around Erith. Apparently seven illegal vehicles were impounded for crushing, five notices of prosecution were served on unlicenced scrap dealers, and a total of four people were arrested for various offences. You can see more on the Erith Watch website here.

I have been doing a spot of research into the history of Victorian Erith, and I have come across some interesting facts, some of which I will recount over the course of the next few weeks. An article on Erith was featured in the magazine "Household Words" on the 12th June 1852. The magazine was created and edited by Charles Dickens, and several of his classic stories started out by being serialised in it. The Erith article was written by respected journalist George Augustus Sala (1828-1895). In it, he gave Erith the pseudonym of "Dumbledowndeary". He said that the then newly built riverside pleasure gardens and original wooden pier (which still exists - you can see it in last weeks' photos of the Alexander Selkirk festival) and the then recently planted pleasure gardens (now long gone) had not proved the success that had been hoped. The principal trade of Erith was then the huge brick works, whose appearance he described. The old part of Erith town was sleepy and shabby, with no gas lights, no pavements, no window sashes or door knockers. New development was beginning however, with new villas, with their conservatories rising, as he put it "like a little Babylon of bricks". Sala was also somewhat unimpressed by the energy of Erith's inhabitants, who included "three Policemen who appear to pass their time in the consumption of tea under the shadow of their sergeant". Of the remainder "Three fourths of the male population, and the whole of the female and infant ditto are always loitering in the doorways, or sprawling amicably in that part of the road where there should be a gutter".

I took the photo above during the same session that brought you the Erith Station shots. I have to say that I am extremely happy with the photograph you see - it shows that Erith can be beautiful, and in the right conditions can show what a real "big sky" can really look like; in fact I have it as the wallpaper on my own computer at present. I have uploaded it full size, so if you wish to have a similar wallpaper on your own computing device, you can click on the image below in order to enlarge the picture in order to save it for your own use. All of my photos are uploaded to Flickr, and are published under the Creative Commons licence. Basically this means that anyone can copy my work, change and re - use it in any way that they see fit, just so long as they make no money out of it, and I get a full credit as the creator of the work.

It is somewhat incongruous to learnt that Erith was one of the founding places of the worldwide motor industry; A chap called Edward Butler took out a patent in 1884 for a "petroleum powered motor tricycle". Butler was testing his invention in Manor Road in February 1889, after having redesigned the engine from two stroke to four stroke; he managed to overturn his vehicle in what was then Beadle's coal yard. This was almost certainly Britain's first recorded motor accident, though the press at at the time made little of the incident. Butler's company was wound up in 1896, with no production vehicles ever being produced.

The News Shopper are featuring a story about a proposed new rubbish gasification plant to be constructed for Cyclamax Ltd at a site off Crabtree Manorway North in Lower Belvedere. Bearing in mind we already have a largely unwanted and polluting waste incinerator almost next door to the proposed new plant, it does seem very much that once again the Abbey Wood / Lower Belvedere / Erith area is being used as a dumping ground for things that richer and better connected areas have refused We also have the repulsively smelly Crossness sewerage works to contend with too. I get the feeling that those in power who plan such things think along the lines of "well, it's a shithole already, nobody with any power or influence lives in the area, lets' dump it there". Belvedere ward Councillor Sean Newman told the News Shopper in a recent interview that "The residents of Belvedere have had a history of bad smells and emissions, and we don't want to add to that". Tim Waits of Bexley Friends of the Earth also commented that "The area is already a dumping ground". He then added "This part of London and its' wildlife are being saddled with a controversial, industrial sized development that a more affluent and influential residential area would not tolerate". Well said those men. I get the feeling that national government will steam roller permission for the gasification plant through, whatever local opposition is in place - after all, that is what happened with the waste incinerator, even though a ten year local campaign was run to prevent its' construction.

There is another technology birthday this week; Apple's now ubiquitous iPod is ten years old. It was launched with a bit of a whimper, and only really started to gain market traction once a Windows version of iTunes was launched - when it first came out, it was Mac only, in a period when Apple Mac sales were very much in the doldrums. Eighteen months later it was the dominant portable digital music player. To be honest, the iPod has not really ever broken any technological grounds - but the design, build quality and intuitive user interface are what have endeared it to so many people around the world. At one point, Microsoft's Zune media player offered a better technical specification for a similar price, but as you may already know, the Zune has experienced pitiful sales figures and it is now being withdrawn. Mobile phones are now acting as portable media centres, and I somewhat doubt that there will be another media player phenomenon like the iPod.

A new extremely high tech variant of the Stuxnet computer worm is apparently in the wild; it is known as Duqu. unlike Stuxnet, which was an exceedingly subtle and complex digital weapon, specifically designed to destroy Iran's uranium refining systems for their nuclear weapons programme, Duqu is designed to carry out industrial espionage. You can read an absolutely amazing article about how Stuxnet was detected, and what it was created to do by clicking here. The story is absolutely true, but reads like a Tom Clancy novel. In a similar vein, it is rumoured that the recent RIM Blackberry service outage was not the result of hardware failure, as RIM announced, but that it was actually a cyber war "dry run" by the Chinese. I doubt we will know the truth for some time to come.

Nowadays I spend much of my working week in Canary Wharf; it is a strange place - more like a mini totalitarian state than anywhere else I can think of. The entire area is privately owned, and patrolled by an army of security guards, who to all intents and purposes not only look like Police, but act like Police too. The end result is a business area with astonishingly low levels of street crime. I am not going to debate the morals of such an arrangement here and now - it could merit an entire entry to itself. On a side note, I took a stroll out to New Providence Wharf one lunchtime. This is a part of the development that is bounded by the River Thames, and directly faces the O2 Arena on the south side of the river. The area hosts some spectacular apartment blocks - single flats can sell for £1.5 million or more - due to the close proximity to Canary Wharf, and the spectacular river front views. What the developers and estate agents don't tell you is that the place is located right next to the Canary Wharf waste transfer station, where the rubbish from around the Wharf is brought by dustcart to be sorted and then loaded onto barges so that tugs can sail it down river to be disposed of at the giant rubbish tip at Rainham in Essex. The noise and smell must be horrible, especially in summer. Not something I think you would see mentioned in the promotional brochure for the development.

A bit of a guilty pleasure - on occasions I do listen to Radio 700. As mentioned once in the past, this is a small commercial radio station in Germany that has the only private licence to broadcast on shortwave into Europe. They are basically a radio station with the aim of providing a service to a very small area, but somehow they have managed to convince the authorities to allow them to broadcast their programmes over their 1 kilowatt Rhode and Schwartz shortwave transmitter to most of Europe. Most of their shows do sound like a Teutonic version of BBC Radio 2 circa 1972, but the fact they can do so on shortwave is a bit of an anachronistic bonus. If you have a radio that can receive shortwave broadcasts, do give them a try on 6.005 MHz.

Slade Green is getting a large shot in the arm in the form of a grant to regenerate the area around the Howbury site, in Slade Green road. Approximately £8 million has been allocated to rejuvenate the area, which has been sold to Redrow Homes Ltd. You can read all about it on the News Shopper website here.

The video below is a trailer for the forthcoming series by restauranteur and larger than life TV presenter Reza Mahammad. He has a new series starting soon that is going to feature the cuisine of Rajasthan. The show is a mix of travelogue and cookery programme. Reza is actually the friend of a friend - and he's camper than a field full of pink and sparkly tents, and always entertaining. Check out the trailer below, and feel free to leave a comment, as always.

Are you Arthur Pewty?

2011-10-16T18:26:00.001+01:00

Yesterday afternoon Erith was the centre of celebration for Alexander Selkirk Day. It was the 300th anniversary of Alexander Selkirk landing back in the UK at Erith, after his historic stranding on a desert island. His real life story was the inspiration for the fictional character of Robinson Crusoe. The photo above shows the re - enactment of Alexander Selkirk landing on the old wooden Erith Pier, adjacent to the former Erith Police Station; he was accompanied by a small crew of sailors, who rowed him ashore. This was witnessed by a crowd of several hundred local people, taking advantage of the unseasonally excellent weather. Whilst taking photos I bumped into a number of people, including our local MP, Teresa Pearce (see the photo below). She's very much behind the FORGE campaign to save and preserve Erith Riverside Gardens, which is a very good thing indeed. You can also see Teresa's campaign to get a lift installed at Erith Station by clicking here.

The turn out for the one - off special event was good, helped no doubt by the aforementioned excellent weather. I was stopped several times by local people, who then asked me "Are you that Arthur Pewty"? I was quite taken aback as to the very positive reception the Maggot Sandwich Blog seems to get; it would appear that it is even more widely read than I was given to understand. Thanks to all of you who approached me to say hello and pass on your good wishes - it was unexpected and greatly appreciated. You can see my photos of the event on my Flickr site - click here to see them.

Pawnbrokers, gold traders, high interest money lenders and high street ~~fence~~ retailer of ~~stolen~~ second hand electronic goods Cash Generator are shortly to open a shop in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. The store is opening next door to the Barnardo's charity shop in the main covered strip. They already have a page on their company website dedicated to the Erith store - even though it is currently little more than a shell at present. You can click to see the page here. No doubt the local drug dealers are rubbing their hands in glee, as they scent another cash stream as their smack head chav customers have an additional way to launder stolen goods and turn them into cash for drugs. I will be having words with the local constabulary about the place - to ensure that Cash Generator are kept under very tight supervision. Talking of which (and who says that I don't plan each weeks' entry...)

Bexley Neighbourhood Watch Association are keen to recruit new people to set up and manage local Neighbourhood Watch groups throughout the borough. Details of the recruitment drive are in the document below - please click on the image for a larger view. You can also visit the Erith Watch Neighbourhood Watch website by clicking here.

As previously mentioned, I have a guest blogger making an appearance - this was due to happen last week, but due to a number of factors, including the fact that Blogger had some major database and usability issues, it did not happen. Mister B was born in Erith, raised in Upper Belvedere, and has reported on international conflicts around the world. He's worked for Sky News, ABC News and the BBC, as well as being a freelance news gatherer in his time. Nowadays he's living in Glasgow, and here is his first in a series of occasional Blog submissions. Read on, and please let me know what you think.

Nearly Twice Around The Sun

Where was the only place on the British Isles Elvis ever set foot on?

Granted, I doubt it was by choice, but the fact remains that Glasgow Prestwick airport received the King on his only royal visit. That was 1960, fast forward to the summer of 2011 and a more current icon of popular culture and Hollywood royalty, Brad Pitt, arrives in Scotland's most populace, and the UK's third biggest city.

It’s a city built on a grid system, something more attributable to the cities of our US cousins. Indeed US city planners used Glasgow as a template, in architecture and planning, so much so that Mr Pitts latest movie was part shot here.

A few minor tweaks to St Georges Square, street signage, a few American cars and swapping fire engines for fire trucks and the streets around were transformed into downtown Philly. Knowing the industry, the only driving force behind a Hollywood Producer deciding to shoot here as Philly, rather than Philly itself would have been budget. World War Z is a zombie apocalypse movie after all so not much to spend on making up the local extras to look the part of the shambling and incomprehensible undead. Local catering would have raised eyebrows amongst the American crew. It is not an urban myth about the deep frying of any and all available foodstuffs. I wonder if the Californian crew were offered deep fried muesli and melon for petit dejeuner?

Having been part of the undead myself on occasion around the bars and clubs of St Georges Square, there has been on a number of occasions when the local haute cuisine of deep fried pizza seems more Blumenthal than indigestion followed by coronary, until you sober up of course. Which is difficult to do here as pubs and bars are generally open for longer than our English ones, one up too Glasgow, I can drink legally for 24 hours if I want, but this does bring into question the legality of doing anything else after 24 hours of drinking.

This includes the purchase of Off-sales, which is illegal prior to 10am and after 10pm. All the booze in supermarkets is covered-up the rest off the time, literally, a small curtain comes down on all the booze shelves and a barrier is put up around the booze section. Believe it or not this is one of the Scottish Governments attempts to tackle the country’s drink problem, well, that’s clearly working out well isn’t it?

It has been nearly two years since I moved here, nearly twice around the sun; shame I have hardly seen it since I’ve been here but lets leave the Scottish weather for another time.

The untimely death of Apple supremo Steve Jobs has had extensive and deep coverage over the last week or so; he was certainly a maverick and innovative businessman, and definitely saw where technology was going before almost anyone else. However, in my opinion, his passing was equalled if not surpassed in significance by the death of a chap called Dennis Ritchie. I am pretty certain many of you would not be familiar with the name (and no, he was not the brother of film director Guy Ritchie). Dennis Ritchie was the man who more than anyone else could be said to be the father of the internet age; before Tim Berners - Lee could have got his concept of the World Wide Web off the ground, it needed an infrastructure. Dennis Ritchie provided this by creating the infrastructure that would support all this networking; he co wrote the Unix operating system with Ken Thompson, and was the creator of the C Programming language, which in one or more of its' forms, runs the online world. Unix and its' open source stepchild Linux, run 498 out of 500 of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. Unix is the underlying technology behind Apple's OS X and iOS operating systems, and Linux powers Google, Amazon, the New York and London Stock exchanges, not to mention set top boxes, cash machines, pretty much every embedded system you can name, and of course it is the basis for the Android OS running on a huge number of mobile phones and digital tablets too. Dennis Ritchie did not have the high publicity that Steve Jobs did, but he was fundamental to the computer age - his contribution was not nearly so engaging to the general public, but he created the infrastructure and development tools that enabled almost all of the online world we see today. You can read an exceptionally well written article on the importance of what Ritchie gave to the world by clicking here.

The latest edition of The Chap Magazine has just been published. You can read a summary of the contents by clicking here. Someone mentioned to me in the week that they thought I was a person born out of time, and that I would have been in my element working in Bletchley Park in the mid 1940's. I am not so sure - OK, my liking for tweed and leather, bespoke cars from Bristol Motors and my dislike of the lack of civility in modern times are all well known. I don't know what I would do without Internet access - probably concentrate more on Amateur Radio - which in essence was the closest thing to the World Wide Web, before its' invention. The only thing I really would not be able to endure in the 1940's would have been the dreadful, bland food. I know that rationing actually made the UK population healthier than it had been either before or since, but a diet lacking in olive oil, lemongrass, chilli or spices of almost any type would be unendurable for me. Life without curry is a mere pitiful existence.

I found it hard to keep a straight face whilst on the bus to Belvedere yesterday evening. I was sat behind two middle aged, slightly raddled chavs who, for some unearthly reason were discussing reading. One asked the other "so, have you read a book in the last couple of years?" The second chav nodded sagely and replied in the affirmative. "Yeah, I read a book." "What was it called, then?" "Er.. it was called Where's Wally?" I had to bite my tongue.

I see that it is proposed to install weapons scanning arches in Bexleyheath Broadway, in order to check whether school kids are carrying knives. I don't know if this would have had any effect on the horrendous knife murder of Sally Hodkin, which appears to have been the result of a mentally ill woman going berserk in Bexleyheath Broadway, and by the war memorial gardens. The story made national headlines - you can read about it here.

Talking of mobile phones and Apple (another formatting coincidence? I don't think so.) I was in Canary Wharf on Friday; I decided to take my daily constitutional with a walk through the underground shopping centre that attracts so many shoppers during their lunch break. I noticed that every single mobile telephone shop had a queue out of the door; I recalled that Apple were launching their rather controversial iPhone 4S that day, but it was only when I emerged into the daylight at Cabot Place West, and saw a yuppie rather theatrically stamp and crush his old Blackberry on the ground in front of a couple of his mates, now that he had defected to Apple, that it really sank in - the recent troubles that RIM have had in delivering connectivity and service have played directly into the hands of Apple, and to some extent to the makers of smart phones running Android, which in some cases offer a better all round package than the 4S. Before you wonder why I suddenly appear to be rhapsodising over a mobile phone launch, please understand I was observing this hysteria from a jaded and somewhat world weary viewpoint. I note in passing that a recent study proves that one in six mobile phones has traces of poo on it. You can view my succinct and somewhat cynical opinion on the whole mobile phenomenon by clicking here. Before you point out that I wrote the article back in 2006, my views have not changed one iota, and I still do not own a mobile telephone, and never intend that I will.

This weeks' end video shows the edited highlights of one of the most impressive and accomplished ever amateur rocket launches to date. The unmanned vehicle, called the Qu8k (pronounced "Quake") reached an altitude of 121,000 feet. You can read more about the launch, and the team of volunteers behind it by clicking here. Please feel free to leave a comment below. It will be moderated and published within 24 hours of submission.

Adopt a pickled onion.

2011-10-09T18:42:00.010+01:00

A view up the River Thames towards London that I took on Erith pier a little while back. The pier really is a lovely place to be on a bright and sunny day. The River Thames has certainly got one hell of a lot cleaner over the last few years - only a couple of days ago, signs of a breeding colony of Sea Horses was discovered in the river at Greenwich. The BBC News Website featured the story here. It could do with a toilet, and running fresh water for washing and making tea, for the anglers who often stay all day, or more commonly, fish all night. I reckon it would add to the whole pier experience. Saying that, Bexley Council would never do it - as they would be contradicting their policy of closing and selling off all public conveniences, as has now already happened. There is not one single council owned public toilet in the whole of the London Borough of Bexley. It is both tragic and intensely annoying. The last public khazi to be sold off, which is located next to Bexleyheath library, is about to be converted into an undertakers office. Where are the public meant to go when they need to relieve themselves? The toilets in pubs and restaurants are generally reserved for paying customers, which is understandable but a bit rough for the others.

A small group of local people, mainly from the Dartford area have set up a new online business called Adopt a Pickled Onion. Basically they have set up an unusually themed online greeting card and novelty store. The down side has been some of their rather questionable marketing methods. They have been putting self adhesive promotional stickers in all sorts of public places, including on the windows and doors of local buses and trains. This is regarded by the authorities as no different to scrawling graffiti, and the perpetrators can be subjected to a fine if caught. I wish the company well; I am always keen to support independent local businesses - they just need to ensure that their promotional and marketing strategy stays on the right side of the law. You can read more about the story here.

The work on Erith Station continues - very slowly. This week the builders have laid out some formwork to indicate the length and depth of the platform extension on both the London and Kent bound sides, and they have dug a shallow trench not more than six inches deep along the Kent bound extension - and that has been about that for a weeks' work. Bearing in mind there is a small village of converted shipping containers and Portacabins in the station car park, it would seem to infer that major resources are being deployed on the improvement works. Or apparently now; in typical Southeastern Trains fashion, the level of hot air has been high, but actual work has been minimal, at best. The online campaign to get a lift installed at the station can be viewed by clicking here.

Fullers have just introduced an ultra low alcohol real ale, called Mighty Atom. It is described as a full flavoured ale with an ABV of 2.8%. I normally find lower alcohol beers to be gutless, watery and a waste of time - with the notable exception of Brakspears bitter, which is a lovely pint at a low 3.4% alcohol. I hope that the Mighty Atom lives up to the admirable reputation of the rest of the excellent Fuller's range. I am keen to give the brew a try.

In a similar fashion several of the long time vacant units in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre have been fitted out, but still now stand empty; I reckon the owners of the centre (Frogmore Real Estate) were hoping to attract new tenants by speculatively fitting windows and doors to the shop fronts. I think most pedestrians and shoppers had long ago been bored by the brightly painted hoardings covering the bare concrete shop structure behind. The trouble would seem to be that the rents on the units are so high that smaller, independent traders cannot afford to occupy them - as recently happened to the small toy shop opposite Argos, which went bust a few weeks ago. I think a combination of high rent, business rates, and low income from the cash strapped local population make a very dissuasive argument for starting a small retail business in Erith at the present depressed time. The only independent, non chain business that would appear to be doing profitable business right now seems to be the Mambocino coffee shop and cafe. The larger stores also seem to be cutting their expansion plans back, probably as they fear the recession will hit footfall and customer spending.

Dutch radio station Radio Seagull are broadcasting on 1395 and 1602 KHz medium wave, and their signal can be heard over much of South Eastern England. The station is broadcasting from a converted light ship, the M.V Jenni Baynton, which is moored in Harlingen Harbour. As you can probably appreciate, a lot of familiar faces from Radio Caroline are involved. You can see the Radio Seagull website here.

The traveller pony that has been corralled for the last few months on the small piece of land that is between the recycling centre in the car park of Morrison's and the riverfront walk has now disappeared. I can only presume that it has either been sold by its' owner, or that he has found another place to house it for free. It seemed to enjoy the attention that it got from people - and actually ended up as rather a portly creature, due to the amount of fruit and vegetables given to it as treats by local people. I only got a few photographs of it, even though it was around for a fair old length of time. Here is a black and white photo, taken when it first turned up on the small patch of waste land next to the Thames.

One thing that I find teeth grindingly frustratingly awful is when I hear men (and it is always men) who loudly bray "I'lll ping you an Email!"This roundly shows they know absolutely sod all about computers, and immediately highlights them as utter dickheads. Ping is a computer network administration utility, created back in 1983 by a programmer called Mike Muuss (strange name, but there you go). The Ping utility sends ICMP echo request packets to the target host computer, then waits for a response. It has bugger all to do with Email - and especially in regard of some chinless banker who thinks he is being "technical" by using the term. One sends an Email - ping is absolutely bugger all to to do with the procedure.

I came across the video below quite by chance; it shows the Ross Revenge at sea in August 1990, when I was on board. I think it was taken by one of the crew of a French fishing trawler, which often came quite close, and would on occasion drop a few fish off for us. The short lived rainbow stripes and white dove of peace painted on the funnel by myself and Nick Jackson's girlfriend caused a bit of a rumpus amongst the anoraks at the time - they thought it signalled a change in station image and direction, when in fact the actual reason was that we only had a tiny amount of paint left, which meant some nifty multi coloured stripes instead of the traditional red flash. If you look carefully, at 0.54 secs into the video, you can see a figure in a white T - shirt waving from the stern of the ship. That's me!

50,000

2011-10-02T18:10:00.001+01:00

The photo above shows some tugs moored on Erith Pier recently. It does rather remind me of Mum, Dad and Baby tug on a day out. The Pier gets extensive use, both by commercial river traffic and people taking their leisure. It is a popular destination for local anglers keen to catch sea fish, who venture up river to spawn. Dabs, Lemon Sole and Eels are all found in the water.

This weeks' blog title is pretty self explanatory. At some time yesterday afternoon, the Maggot Sandwich received its' 50,000th unique individual page view. My blog gets hits from all over the world; in the last week it has had visitors from The USA, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Germany, Canada and Italy. Thanks to one and all for continuing to read my rants and musings. I just hope that I can continue to keep all of you informed and amused.

There is something rather strange going on at Erith Railway Station. A group of site buildings have been set up in the car park (half a dozen sea shipping containers converted into offices and workshops), and areas have been marked out at the extreme ends of the platforms. After making some enquiries, I have discovered that Southeastern Trains plan on extending the platforms to allow longer trains to use the station. What baffles me is that they are spending thousands of pounds to extend the station platforms, yet have completely refused to install a passenger lift when they are legally obliged to do so under the terms of the Disability Rights Act, saying that they don't have any money. On top of that, they are planning on closing the ticket office, yet a whole raft of tickets and services are completely unavailable from the ticket machines - and unstaffed stations have a much higher level of crime of all types. Southeastern Trains are a complete bunch of money grabbing, irresponsible scumbags. The collectively deserve to have their heads flushed down the loo.

Metal theft - an issue that is high on the local agenda has been featured on the BBC News website this week. I think the crux of the issue is that all scrap dealers should be properly licenced and controlled, and that no cash transactions with suppliers should be permitted. If someone comes in with a pile of scrap, they should be registered with the dealer, the scrap (and the person bringing it in) should be photographed, and the money then credited to their business bank account. This would also stop the "under the counter" transactions that notoriously go on in the scrap business - most dealers pay little if any tax or VAT because of it. Illegal scrap dealing should be made a criminal, rather than a civil offence as it now is. It is a pity that such changes to the law are required - we need scrap reprocessing and management more than ever. It makes economic and environmental sense to do so. It is just that the scrap business in its' current form attracts criminals and scum like a steaming turd attracts flies. There are honest and ethical scrap dealers, but unfortunately they seem very much to be in the minority.

Erith based marine engineering company Kort Propulsion have recently relocated from their old office in Pier Road opposite Morrison's, to their new home in the Boathouse Building overlooking the river front. You can see their website here. They are a very prestigious and world renowned company, and it is good to see them staying in the local area.

Coincidentally (and who says I don't plan these things?) Erith Pier will be featured heavily in the forthcoming Alexander Selkirk Day, where the return to Britain after a historic shipwreck and of the man who inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe will be commemorated from 12 noon on Saturday the 15th of October, in Erith Riverside Gardens, and on the Pier. You can read more about what is going to be happening on the day by clicking here to read all about it. Thanks to local resident Robyn Drummond for bringing this to my attention.

A friend with strong connections to the BBC tells me that the current season of Doctor Who is absolutely tanking in the ratings – it is a lot worse than has been publicly admitted. The viewing figures the BBC are releasing for this season are the amalgamated live viewing numbers with those who record it to watch later, and those who watch it on iPlayer combined. Previous seasons viewing statistics have been solely of the live viewing figures. In reality the show has lost over half its’ audience. My contact has spoken to people working on the show, and apparently talks are under way to get Russell T Davies back to write / direct at least a couple of future episodes. Apparently the producers are acutely aware of the negative feedback, and are prepared to be quite ruthless to get the show back on track. The BBC would have pulled the plug already, had it been almost any other show, but they cannot afford to lose the revenue stream generated my the toys and memorabilia. BBC Worldwide, who control the international Doctor Who franchise, use the money to supplement the BBC licence fee in order to finance the UK operation. I have stopped watching both Doctor Who and Torchwood - not an action that I have taken lightly, but for me, both programmes have become unwatchable soap operas, and an embarrassing parody of their former selves. Fortunately the BBC seem to have realised this, and are prepared to take drastic action to get both shows back on track.

Thanks to the kind people at Laser Hot Hits for their recent kind comments about my Dad. You can listen to them by tuning your shortwave radio to 4.015 or 6.970 Mhz, or by listening online by clicking here.

Now that I am back working a “normal” day, after spending six years working in the morning, usually in a London office, then visiting my Dad in the early to middle afternoon, then on to work remotely from home until the evening. I have got back a lunch break. I am so used to not eating at lunch time now that I just am just not hungry - my body has got into bad habits. I am working to try and get back into normal behaviour, but it is not easy. I have been going for walks around Canary Wharf, and the large underground shopping centre. It is more upmarket than Bluewater – most of the shops are brands like Gucci, Tiffany, Aquascutum etc. There are lots of jewellers with watches with eye watering prices – I walked past a shop with a Tag Heuer watch on display – price tag £71,500. That is not a mis – print. Most of the watches in the various shops start at about £1750 and I suppose an “average” price is around £23,000. Again – not a mis print. When you consider that many of the people living only a stone’s throw away may only be earning the minimum wage, if working at all, it does strike me as rather tasteless and vulgar to have such conspicuous displays of wealth. The disparity of earnings between the richest and poorest is a worry.

The popular news media have been making inaccurate and poorly researched comments as to how the soon to be released Amazon Kindle Fire will be "an iPad killer". Some of the media are making this out to be a battle between Apple and Amazon, when in reality it is nothing of the sort. They are using diametrically opposed business models and releasing tablets that could hardly be more different. Apple sell iPad hardware at a healthy profit and sell content to support the hardware sales, but Apple don't make much profit from the content. Amazon is selling the Fire at either a very low margin, or possibly at a small loss (rumours say that they will lose $50 US per tablet sold), but will rely on selling content to make the profits. In effect, they're giving away the razor in order to sell the blades, or a more recent example would be giving away the printer in order to sell ink cartridges. The products themselves are totally different. The Fire has half the screen area of an iPad and is stripped down to just the absolute essentials. But the big attraction is that it is half the price of an iPad. iPads represent the quality end of the tablet spectrum, while Fires look like they could dominate the low end of the tablet spectrum. I don't think that Apple will be concerned about the Fire as those who will only spend £200 on a tablet were never going to buy iPads. The people who must be losing sleep tonight are those manufacturers who are hoping to sell other tablets. There are now just two price points for tablets , less than £200 - cheap and cheerful, or more than £500 for a quality one. Google might not be that happy either as the Android operating system is being used in a way that greatly diminishes Google's opportunities to extract money from it. Rivals will now have to make tablets cheaper than £200 and still make a profit, or else match the sophistication of the iPad together with a comprehensive ecosystem and still match the £500 price tag. Either task is quite a formidable challenge. Can the Fire match the iPad? Of course not, but then it was never intended to. It is a different concept aimed at a different type of customer. A pity the popular press could not have made this distinction.

Talking of Google, this week marked their 13th birthday. The screenshot above shows what their home page looked like when it very first went live. When Google started, I was one of their very early users. Their now legendary search capabilities were in those days actually no great shakes - the reason I, and later millions of other people used them as their search engine of choice was that their home page was white, plain and simple - and loaded quickly on a typical 56 KB/Sec dial up modem such as the classic and never bettered model by U.S Robotics. Yahoo, Dogpile and Alltheweb (contemporary search engines to Google) were filled with flash animations and commercials - making them irritatingly slow to load on the then customarily tortoise - like dial up web connections. The die had already been cast for Google - simple and quick was the key to success.

Swiss food company Maggi have recently been promoting their "So Juicy" range of bake in the bag seasonings for meat. The TV commercials look good, and I was intrigued by the concept. It looked like a good way to keep chicken and meat moist, whilst adding a tasty seasoning at the same time. When I investigated, I discovered that the seasoning mix used in all of the "So Juicy" range contains huge amounts of salt - it is actually by far the largest ingredient in the seasoning mix. I would recommend buying some over proof bags, and then mixing your own herb and spice mix from the contents of your store cupboard - healthier and far cheaper too.

I am hoping to shortly be able to feature the first entry in an occasional series - a sort of sub blog, which is going to be submitted by a diarist with a somewhat unusual background. He originates from Upper Belvedere, has lived in many places around the world, has had a varied, award winning and eventful career in broadcast TV, including time covering the Kosovo, Iraq (see the photo above of him in Baghdad - click for a larger view), and Israel / Lebanon wars, and he now lives and works on the mean streets of Glasgow. A man of many aliases, but the one identity. He's going to be writing a few articles on what it is like for someone from South East London to have defected to the Scots, and all the trials and tribulations living in that barren, cold and foreign land entails. Keep an eye out in the weeks that come for the first in a series of articles.

Superlative, multiple award winning Bexleyheath pub The Robin Hood & Little John now has its' own website, which you can visit by clicking here. It is simple but effective. Do have a look.

Last week I featured the excellent, fan made documentary "Building Empire". This week the follow up movie "Returning to Jedi" is featured. I strongly suggest that you put aside a couple of hours, maximise the YouTube window to make it full screen, and watch the excellent film, which scene by scene shows how Return of the Jedi was made, along with cut scenes, bloopers and commentaries from the cast and crew. I regard this as essential watching. Please feel free to leave a comment below, as always.

Life goes on.

2011-09-25T18:48:00.000+01:00

One of the apartment blocks that overlook the River Thames, and the Riverside Gardens. The blocks are well looked after and quite a desirable address in the area. Click for a larger view.

I must say a heartfelt thank you to all the people who have contacted me to offer their condolences over the last week; it has been comforting to know how many people cared for my Dad and knew about his illness. I think it fair to say that he had finally had enough. The blog is a bit on the shorter side this week, as I am joining my family in a visit back to Gallion's View nursing home this afternoon to make a final thank you to the staff for all their superb work in caring for Dad for the last six years of his horrible illness.

I get the feeling that some people think I make up, or at least exaggerate for effect when I encounter low - lives on public transport Nothing could actually be further from the case. On Saturday morning Uncle Bob (who is over from the USA for my Dad's funeral) and I were travelling up to London for a visit to the Museum of Docklands. Sitting in the block of seats behind us were four geriatric chavs, who spent the entire London bound journey discussing the best way to A) avoid buying a train ticket for any journey whatsoever, B) to circumvent the ticket barriers at football matches to avoid buying a ticket, C) how to return clothes for a cash refund after having shop lifted them in the first place, and finally, D) what skin cream to use when the court imposed electronic tag causes skin irritation to a recently inked tattoo. The scumbags seemed to spend more time and effort evading paying for things than seemed to make any logical sense - it seemed to me that it would have been simpler and more straightforward to have legally paid for stuff than have gone to the extra time, effort and risk of taking things the illegitimate way. The scrotes also mentioned their involvement in the recent rioting, and how they were worried that the noose was closing in on them - I for one am glad they were worried, as it would seem that the Police are still working through hundreds of hours of CCTV footage looking for evidence of wrong doing. You can read more about their efforts here. One has to factor in the woeful lack of intelligence in the individuals involved, none of whom could have chewed gum and walked at the same time.

Darryl of the excellent Woolwich and Charlton based 853 blog reports some very good news. The old cinema / seedy nightclub building in Wellington Street, Woolwich has got permission for its' refurbishment and relaunch as Woolwich Grand Theatre. It will be an independent theatre and cinema, with a weekly market and daily open cafeteria. I sincerely wish it well. You can read more about it on the 853 blog here.

I have been banging on about scrap metal thieves and the illicit money to be made from stealing copper cabling for as long as I can remember. The Register website recently wrote the following thought provoking piece on the issue - an excerpt is featured below:-

British Telecom is, as a telecoms company, worth minus £30bn. Yes, that's a negative number there. And yet it is literally sitting on top of billions in assets. The BT network relies on more than 75 million miles of copper cable - 132kg per mile. Which by the miracle of multiplication can be seen to be about 10 million tonnes of copper. Which, at current LME prices of just over £5,000 a tonne, is £50bn. People are stealing the cable, as we all know, because the metal is incredibly valuable. Strip the sleeve off the cable, drop it off at an accommodating scrap yard and get paid in cash. And as BT themselves say, (and yes, I've checked that they really do mean this) they've 75 million miles of this stuff festooning the countryside. BT's current market capitalisation is just north of £20bn. So, as an operating telecoms company they're worth £30bn less than the mountain of copper they're sitting upon: that is, they're worth less than the physical assets or they have, as a telecoms company not a mountain of scrap copper, a negative value. OK, OK, yes, this isn't quite right. There's labour involved in digging up all that copper, not all of it will be 10 pair (some of it will be heavier, 25 pairs or 50 pairs), not all of a cable is copper and copper wire scrap doesn't get the LME price; However, we are still in the right ballpark here: the value of the copper in the wires is of the same sort of order of magnitude as the value of the company as a whole. Which leads us to two useful conclusions; Firstly, there is a good reason why no one is ever again going to wire an entire country with copper. Fibre makes more sense now, as does going entirely mobile and ditching a landline network. Developing countries certainly aren't going to want to buy that much copper; Secondly, it's a shocking indictment of Britain's criminal classes. Really, why is anyone bothering to go and nick a few miles of the stuff when you could buy the company and take it all? Asset-strip BT and come out with more money after selling the copper than the company cost you in the first place.

The Dial Arch pub in the Woolwich Arsenal housing development is celebrating Young's Brewery's 180th birthday - a fact that is both sad and ironic, as I recently reported, Young's are giving up brewing in order to become a purely pub management company, thus leaving Fuller's as London's only local brewer. Young's merged with Charles Wells, and moved their brewing facility to Bedford back in 2006, and the rot really set in. Things have been going downhill as far as the brewing of quality real ales is concerned, and one can only worry as to what is to happen to their business from now on. Bob and I went for lunch yesterday in the Cat and Canary pub in Canary Wharf, and it really highlighted where Fullers are beating Young's. The beer (Fullers' ESB) was excellent, and the food service was swift and well executed. I had a steak sandwich (thinly sliced medium rare rump steak served in a freshly baked baguette, with a tomato and roasted red pepper sauce, along with a large dob of hot English mustard, served with sautéed new potatoes and salad). Bob had a retro, but very tasty grilled fish finger sandwich on malted brown bread with tartare sauce and a side salad. It was well made, reasonably priced (considering this was Docklands) and served within 15 minutes of the order being placed. Not quite Robin Hood & Little John standard, of course, but very good indeed.

The troubled area around the Thamesmead retail park has had yet more issues this week; a lad was stabbed there, after an altercation with a large number of youths; details are still sketchy, but it would appear to be a gang related attempted murder. Hopefully the Police will arrest those responsible in short order.

Last week I featured the excellent, fan made documentary "Star Wars Begins". This week the follow up movie "Building Empire" is featured. I strongly suggest that you put aside a couple of hours, maximise the YouTube window to make it full screen, and watch the excellent film, which scene by scene shows how The Empire Strikes Back was made, along with cut scenes, bloopers and commentaries from the cast and crew. I regard this as essential watching. Please feel free to leave a comment below, as always.

Brian Neal 1939 - 2011.

2011-09-21T21:42:00.001+01:00

I have often mentioned my Dad, and visiting him in his nursing home as part of my weekly Maggot Sandwich update. The commute from my office to visit him has on many occasion provided a rich source of interest as I have battled low lives, fare cheats, and those who misuse the public transport system. You may have noticed that whilst the visits got mentioned in passing, I have never detailed exactly why he was being cared for in a local nursing home (the utterly magnificent Gallions View home in Thamesmead, located behind the Woolwich Royal Arsenal housing development, and almost directly opposite the London City Airport, on the other side of the River Thames). To be honest, I thought that it would have been an intrusion on his privacy, and unfortunately he was for much of the time unable to express an opinion on the matter, due to his his advancing dementia - he suffered with Multi System Atrophy / Lewy Body Syndrome.

My Dad, Brian Neal, died yesterday evening at 6.20pm, after an illness that had lasted nearly ten years. I, and his other close family were with him, and his end was peaceful. He always said "I can't complain, there are always others worse off than myself", and throughout many long years of suffering, he never did once complain; even towards the end of his cruel illness, when he had been robbed of speech and almost all movement, he would still entertain the nursing staff by making silly faces and with his brilliant smile, which would light up the room. His funeral will be a private affair - dress will be colourful - no black is permitted. His coffin is going to be made of eco friendly, quick growing woven wicker, with a cotton lining. Donations, rather than flowers would be preferred - the charities supported are Demelza House, The Kent Air Ambulance and Alzheimers UK. I have now removed the privacy controls on the photos of him in Gallions View nursing home, and you can see some photos of him from a couple of years ago, during his 70th birthday celebrations here.

Normal Maggot Sandwich service will be resumed on Sunday, though the Blog posting may be a little shorter than normal. Thanks to everyone who has emailed me with condolences and sent me cards - they are all greatly appreciated, and I will be in individual contact as soon as I can.

The Riverside regenerated?

2011-09-18T18:32:00.001+01:00

I took the photo above, early one Sunday morning a little while back from Erith Riverside Gardens. It shows the view looking west towards the industrial area in Lower Belvedere. The tide is out and many seabirds can be seen hunting for molluscs and worms in the mud. I am firmly behind the campaign to save and preserve the Riverside Gardens - the only place in the whole of the London Borough of Bexley, where the public have direct access to the River Thames. Money grabbing developers must not be allowed to build yet more unwanted flats on the gardens - it will destroy what little quality of life Erith has, and eliminate a very key element of the towns' identity. Having said that, there is a glimmer of light on the horizon; FORGE (Friends Of Riverside Gardens Erith) have petitioned the Government to intervene in the matter. It was discussed in Parliament last week, and in response, Eric Pickles (the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) wrote that "local communities should be able to protect green spaces that are important to them". I just hope the half crazed Visigoths that seem to staff Bexley Council planning department take heed. I think it is high time that more residents realised that local government do not "rule" us - they are here to do our bidding - we pay their wages in the form of Council Tax.

On a positive note, I understand that the current hideous Larner Road estate is to undergo a major facelift and refurbishment, including the demolition of the squalid and crime ridden high rise tower blocks. This will be a good thing for the many honest residents, and may work some way to eliminating the drug dealers and criminals that use the high rise blocks as home for their nefarious activities. I am just concerned that in the current economic climate, the money for the project will not be forthcoming. The need for regeneration of the Larner Road tower blocks has been thrown into the spotlight after the fire this morning that occurred in the Cambria House block in Larner Road that started at around 8am, and rapidly spread to engulf around half of the 14th floor of the tower block; Erith Fire Brigade were rapidly on the scene and evacuated all of the residents. Three children and five adults had to be taken to hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation and associated injuries. The fire was successfully extinguished by around 10am, and temporary accommodation is being arranged for those whose homes have been damaged. It might be a good point for the developers to immediately demolish the block as a start to the redevelopment, rather than to repair the fire damage - it would signal a strong commitment to the refurbishment and improvement to the entire estate. The tower blocks have been a crime riddled eyesore for years, and a line needs to be drawn under them sooner rather than later.

It would appear that the fight to get a lift installed at Erith Station has been lost. Southeastern trains have apparently outright refused to spend the money to get a lift fitted. Erith & Thamesmead MP Teresa Pearce wrote the following entry on her Fix My Transport website:

Southeastern have responded and have no plans to a lift at Erith. I know that ! That's why we are campaigning for one. Why does Bexleyheath merit a lift? Its because more people use it. Why do more people use it? Because its accessible. I also know that if a disabled person needs to go to London from Erith, Southeastern will offer a free taxi to an accessible station. BUT you have to give 24 hours notice so you can't just decide on the day to go to London. Also will they offer a daily taxi for someone who commutes to work every day?

A good point; Southeastern are contravening the Disability Rights Act too. Perhaps if we could get the Daily Mirror or the Sun involved, it might embarrass the company to the point that they might change their minds? Just a thought. You can read a lot more about the situation, and the possible actions that could be taken to get Southeastern Trains to review their decision by reading the discussion thread on the FixMyTransport website here.

It is a pity that both our local MP's may be in danger of losing their seats if the proposed electoral boundary changes come into force. The people we elected to represent us will be out on their ear in short notice, and the boundaries of the constituencies will be mangled in the process. You can read about the changes which are likely to affect both David Evennett (Conservative) and Teresa Pearce (Labour) by clicking on this link for the details.

Personally I am not that keen on most summer blockbuster movies. I note that Captain America - The First Avenger has recently been doing some good business in the UK box offices. I will wait until it comes out on iTunes before seeing it. The CGI heavy and rather intense story make the whole thing look a bit serious. On the other hand you can watch the trailer below from an earlier take on the story. The clip below shows Captain America in a made for TV movie from 1979. Even allowing for the age of the piece, it is buttock clenchingly, knuckle gnawingly awful. So bad in fact, that it would be compulsive viewing. The staging, acting, script and execution are so dire it defies logic and explanation - do take a look, and wonder at the sheer awfulness of the work.

I see that the recent finale of Torchwood got appalling viewing figures; it was haemorrhaging viewers throughout the entire duration of the series, and ended up losing something like a million viewers over the series run. It does seem that the show, along with its' progenitor, Doctor Who have both gone off the boil. I have stopped watching both of them, as they now seem like fantasy based soap operas rather than well written science fiction. I hope that I will be able to report an improvement before too much longer.

On a lighter note, this weeks' "Who Do You Think You Are?" on BBC1 featured comedian and TV presenter Alan Carr. His family roots were traced back to Crayford. This interesting and well made series is a must see for me, and the local content of this weeks' edition made it doubly so. You can see it for the next week or so on BBC iPlayer by clicking here (UK residents only, I am afraid).

Not exactly a scoop as such - but new to pretty much all of you, I would hazard a guess. The photo above shows the new and funked up Blue Screen of Death notice, that will be appearing in the forthcoming Windows 8. It is a touch on the disingenuous - most times it is not actually the computer that has encountered the problem, it is usually the operating system itself - a dodgy device driver, misbehaving application or corrupt file are often the fault. Coincidentally, this week marks the 55th anniversary of the launch of the very first hard disk drive by IBM. The details of the pretty hefty IBM 305 RAMAC hard disk drive can be read here.

I was sitting on the 99 bus to Plumstead during the week; directly behind me were a couple of young women who were discussing their various tattoos and body piercings. They did not appear to be conscious of the fact their very intimate conversation could be easily heard by all and sundry. They were talking about some pretty personal ironwork that both had recently had installed in their nether regions; I must admit that I found it impossible to "tune out" from their conversation, and was squirming in my seat in discomfort - I dislike all such bodily mutilations in any form, though I concede that it is all down to personal preference. It is similar to those who have private conversations on their mobile telephones whilst in public - do they really want to wash their dirty linen in public, or do they just not give a stuff? It was not that long ago that I was witness to a woman who sat on the back seat of the bus, who then started a conversation with a then unknown person on her mobile phone. I was sat pretty much as far away from the woman as it was possible to be whilst still on the bus, but I could still hear every word of her dialogue - she was telling what turned out to be her mother about her terrible case of piles. The entire lower deck was the unwitting recipient of the woman's ten minute dialogue concerning the minutiae of her attack of throbbing bum grapes, and the efforts she had to rid herself of them. I think she was oblivious to the fact her conversation was audible to all and sundry. The conversation may have been one sided, but it was graphic in the extreme, and I am just glad that I was not contemplating eating anything at the time. It does seem to me that many people seem to assume that conversations undertaken on mobile phones are private, when they are anything but that.

A band I have been listening to in the last week are the Bath based psychedelic progressive rockers Cranium Pie - who sound like a mash up of early Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and Frank Zappa. Definitely recommended; you can hear some of their music by clicking here.

On a similarly slightly off beat approach; one of my anonymous sources sent me this - it is a short video featuring Air Swimmers - remote controlled robot flying fish. Cool or what?

As you may be aware, I run an irregular feature on the Maggot Sandwich where I highlight local businesses. This week I am featuring a new enterprise, a company producing and marketing a very high quality dog food, superior in ingredients and nutrition to any other brand currently on the mainstream market. Bob and Lush are principally based online, with a free, next day delivery service, though they do currently have one shop, and appear at dog shows and associated events (they had a stand at the Kent County Show this weekend), and also market via quality dog breeders. They have a Facebook site here. The photo below shows the home page from their website. You can visit their online store to request a free sample of their high quality produce by clicking here.

The final video this week is a bit of a departure from the usual clip lasting a few minutes. It is a documentary entitled "Star Wars Begins" and is nearly 2 hours and 20 minutes in duration. It is the first of a trilogy of documentaries analysing the original three Star Wars movies scene by scene, with out takes, behind the scenes footage, bloopers and alternative versions of scenes, along with voice over interviews with all of those involved. It is a fan produced venture, but it is WAY better than any other documentary I have ever seen on the iconic film series. Lucasfilm have made nothing official to come even close to the utterly outstanding work seen here. To my mind these three long documentaries are the definitive work on the original movie series. This week it is Star Wars (no "A New Hope" here - this was the very early days). Next week I will feature the documentary on The Empire Strikes Back, and the week after the documentary on Return of the Jedi. Click on the clip to enlarge to full screen and sit back end enjoy - even if you are a hardcore Star Wars nut, I absolutely guarantee you will learn things you never knew before. Don't take my word for it - read the review of the documentary series here. Do drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Road and Rail.

2011-09-11T18:24:00.000+01:00

Contractors submitted a planning application to Bexley Council back at the beginning of May for a new road bridge across the railway at the junction of Bexley Road, and Queen's Road, Erith, adjacent to Erith Railway Station. This will fundamentally impact the way travellers enter Erith from London from both the A2 (via Gravel Hill, Bexleyheath and Northumberland Heath) and the South Circular (via Bronze Age Way from Woolwich and Abbey Wood). You can see the location in the photo above - click for a larger version. The Council planning committee have this week given the green light to the proposed second railway crossing. At this point no funding (between £6 and £8 million will be needed) is yet in place, but I am led to understand this is the normal way of organising things - you get the planning permission, and the money normally follows. Whether this holds true in the current dire financial situation, I do not know. I originally wrote about the application back at the beginning of May. You can read my original posting, and see my photo of the written planning application by clicking here. I would like to see this civic improvement take place, as it has the potential to remove what is currently a road traffic bottleneck into and (more importantly) out of the town.

On a (vaguely) further transport related matter, has anyone noticed the large proportion of new cars that are appearing in Titanium White? I cannot see why anyone would wish to make their car resemble a domestic appliance, and also seriously impact the future resale value - white cars are notoriously hard to sell on. I would never wish to be seen in a vehicle resembling a mobile refrigerator. More on new cars a bit further down this weeks' entry...

The Bexley Times is currently getting very hot under the collar, vehemently opposing the proposed construction of an Asda supermarket by part conversion of the massive B&Q store in Lower Belvedere. The paper makes the classic editorial error of presenting their opinion as fact. You can see what I mean by clicking here. Some of the arguments against the supermarket are utter fantasy - one comment states that Belvedere already has enough supermarkets. Upper Belvedere certainly does, with a Budgen and a Co-Op, but Lower Belvedere has a grotty, under stocked and over priced Tesco Express, and nothing else. It is around 2/3 of a mile from Lower to Upper Belvedere, up a winding one in ten hill. Not exactly local if you are elderly, infirm and without a car, and the 401 bus only runs one every quarter of an hour. There is another argument that it would adversely affect local small businesses. I can point to one nearby example of a corner shop that has positively benefited from its' close proximity to a major supermarket. The excellent and well run Londis store on the corner of Manor Road and Appold Street in Erith, which is literally just around the corner from the giant Morrison's store. If you have a properly run business, retain flexibility and listen to your customers, there is no reason to be threatened. On top of this, I reckon that many of the protestors don't actually use the local shops for much anyway, from the number of Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda online delivery vans that frequent the area on a daily basis. I think it is somewhat hypocritical and a story which currently suits the Bexley Times to hype up. Until the next story the local rag decides to make into an issue. For reasons unknown it is getting itself a reputation for not letting the facts get in the way of a story. Every Lower Belvedere resident I have spoken to has been unanimous in praise for the part conversion of B&Q in to an Asda, as there is currently no decent place for food shopping in a reasonable proximity.

You may recall I have a fairly frequent moan about the fake charity leaflets that we all seem to get regularly posted through our doors. You can read my last whinge by clicking here. Well, the very company I blogged about back in May has been busted by the Police. There was a half page report in Friday's Times stating that undercover Police had been watching a gang of Lithuanian and Romanian organised crooks, based at a warehouse and goods yard, just off the A13 at Rainham in Essex. When raided, thousands of pounds in cash was found in large bundles of £50 notes, along with hundreds of thousands of pre – packed plastic bags with fake charity leaflets, some for a bogus children’s charity and some for a non – existent animal welfare charity - similar to the leaflet above. The clothing collection vans in the yard had swappable magnetic signs on the sides, so that they could appear to represent different charity organisations. Several shipping containers were filled with sorted clothes, ready for export to Latvia, where they were to be sold in a chain of second hand clothing stores. The sorted contents of each container was worth around £50,000. Apparently the brands Next and M&S are highly regarded second hand buys in much of Eastern Europe. It is estimated by Revenue and Customs that the gang had made £12 million profit a year, for several years before the Police raid put an end to their criminal exploits. How much damage this will do to the genuine charities I do not know, though their own methods of clothing collection have also recently come to light, and also make for distasteful reading. Most (but not all, I hasten to add) outsource the clothing collections to third party organisations who collect, sort and commercially resell the clothes, just giving a relatively small percentage of the proceeds back to the original charity. Understandably this gives a very bad impression to many of the people who donate the stuff to begin with. Personally if I have things I think worth donating, I take them to the Ellenor Lions shops in Bexleyheath or Crayford. That way I know the goods are definitely going to benefit a genuinely worthy cause.

Further to my recent public support to local MP Teresa Pearce's campaign to get a lift installed in Erith station, it would appear that things station - wise are in grave danger of getting one whole lot worse, not better. Word reaches me that South East Trains are planning on removing staffing for both Erith and Slade Green stations - users will have to buy tickets from vending machines only. It is an established fact that unstaffed stations suffer far higher levels of crime and anti social behaviour than those that retain a human presence (see the graph above - click for a larger view). I can illustrate how completely insane this penny pinching and poorly thought out scheme is. On Wednesday I journeyed down to Chatham, for a day out with Shirley. I arrived at Erith Station with plenty of time to purchase an extension to my all zones rail travel card, but when I got to the ticket office, I found that it was closed. I walked back outside to consult the ticket vending machine, only to find the station master and an engineer trying to repair the faulty ticket machine. I asked the station master what I should do - he told me to get on the train and buy my extension ticket at Dartford, where I would need to change trains anyway. I responded that my current ticket only permitted me to go as far as Slade Green, and if I did continue to Dartford, I would technically be over - riding my ticket, and potentially liable to a penalty fare. He told me to do it anyway - so I made a mental note of his name (fortunately he was wearing his name badge) should I get stopped by a revenue protection officer. I duly travelled to Dartford, and exited the platform to visit the ticket office, where I did purchase a return extension ticket to sunny Chatham. The staff were helpful and friendly, but what would have happened had a human not been involved in the process? On top of this, I understand that if Erith station ticket office was to close, it would mean the end of the coffee shop / newsagent which shares the building. I am keen to support local independent businesses, and this would be a retrograde step in the extreme. I understand that MP David Evennett is concerned that the removal of staff from Slade Green Station will also affect the centre for people with learning disabilities that is just along the road from the station. Apparently staff from the centre take residents to Slade Green Station in order to help them learn now to use public transport, and the station staff are particularly helpful and understanding in their assistance for their customers with special needs. All this is in danger of ending. I have been in Email contact on several occasions in the recent past with Teresa Pearce, and I am going to suggest that she co-operates with David Evennett in a cross party alliance to combat this divisive and perfidious issue. You can read more about the whole issue of removing staff from railway stations by reading this News Shopper article.

Erith has a new and very interesting blogger in the person of Fiona - a lady who has just set up the blog "Tales of a thrifty supermum" Do give it a visit and see what you think. I have already joined as a follower.

I am beginning to wonder if drivers of electric wheelchairs and other mobility buggies ought to be made to sit some kind of competency test. Twice in the last week I have had unfavourable encounters with such machines - once in Morrison's, where a woman managed to run her motorised wheelchair over my foot (thankfully I was wearing my trademark steel toecapped boots and thus suffered no damage). Secondly I was standing at a bus stop, when a passing and rather erratic gentleman on a mobility scooter clipped my arm as he passed rather too close for comfort. The machines seem to be capable of travelling at quite a rate, and the drivers have such a variable degree of driving skill, or lack thereof.

At work, we have a flexible employee benefits scheme which has recently added the option to have a car as one of the perks of the job; it is not a company car as such, as it does not need to be used as part of the day job - it is purely for personal use and benefit. The only down side seems to be that the available options are almost universally woefully dull and boring, being eco friendly, low CO2 emission tinny euro boxes. Try as I might on the ordering website, I cannot for the life of me convince the system to permit me to order a Bristol 411 Series 6 (see the photo below, taken at the recent Bristol owners club concours at Greenwich Royal Naval College), a Bentley Turbo R, or a Jensen Interceptor. All the options I am currently presented with are woeful clattery four cylinder diesel rot boxes, or gutless petrol powered vehicles with engines the size and power output of an asthmatic hair dryer. Bristol, Bentley and Jensen have the sense to fit huge V8 engines in their classy, discreet and powerful gentleman's conveyances. I just need to convince my employer to go for quality rather than miles per gallon.

In my quest for quality tailoring, I have been somewhat remiss; the local area is home to Mold & Russell - a long established firm of bespoke tailors, who have been producing quality garments with classic English cloth in Hatherley Road, Sidcup for many years.

You may be aware that had he not died from complications brought on by HIV/AIDS in 1991, Freddie Mercury would have had his 65th birthday earlier this week. The world's greatest band front man would have been able to draw his bus pass and enter retirement. Not something I think he would have embraced with any good grace. The final video this week is a bit of a treat; someone has taken the original 4:3 aspect ratio, low definition recording of Queen's outstanding Live Aid performance - where they stole the show, and has been repeatedly voted as the greatest rock performance of all time, and upscaled it to 720p 16:9 wide screen High Definition. The conversion and digital clean up of the original master material is a revelation - make sure that you click on the button on the bottom right of the window to make the video full screen to really appreciate both the quality of the restoration, and more importantly the outstanding performance of Queen - a band at that point at the top of their game, playing the show that would define them. To anyone wanting to sing in a band, watch and learn - the master is at work.

Brace for impact.

2011-09-04T18:09:00.001+01:00

The photo above was taken by me on Erith Pier last week; many people enjoy using the structure, whether it be for a quiet walk, or for a whole night of fishing. The pier attracts a lot of salt water anglers, some of whom come from some distance in order to fish on the pier. I often see battery powered lights and tents lit with a warm glow of a camping gas cooker when I pass the pier at night. What it could do with is a unisex loo, and a tap with fresh water for drink making; it would certainly be worth a small out lay to improve conditions for the regular visitors and nocturnal campers. It is good to see a former industrial location in fresh use - the pier was originally used to unload industrial newsprint from the Scandinavian paper mills - the giant paper rolls were shipped over and unloaded at Erith, then stored in the Europa Industrial Estate, before being transported up to what was then Fleet Street.

The only florist in Erith is now no more; the Floral Design Centre which used to be located in Erith High Street has now closed, and the building has already been taken over by the Aglory African cash & carry, which already operated in the shop next door. I don't think that the location was conducive to running a florists, the row of shops is somewhat out of the way. I hope that Aglory make a better go of it.

I was in a bus crash on Friday afternoon. I was on the 380 – a single deck “hopper” type bus (see the photo above of a slightly older model), going the three stops from Gallions View back to Plumstead station to get the train home after my daily Dad visit. I was standing next to the driver – the bus was packed. He got to the junction of Tom Cribb Road, where it meets Pettman Crescent (right opposite Plumstead bus garage). At the junction there was a silver BMW 318i waiting for the traffic flow to stop. The bus driver slowed, then suddenly accelerated into the back of the BMW. I saw what was about to happen, and “braced for impact”, but lots of people were thrown over – I almost ended up going out through the windscreen as it was. The back of the BMW was trashed, and the front of the bus had partially disintegrated too. I yelled at the driver, asked if anyone was hurt, when there was no obvious serious injuries, I got off the bus and ran round the corner to the bus halt in the main road and grabbed the duty inspector – he came round and I then gave a statement, saying I had been a witness as well as a victim and it was completely the drivers fault – I suggested that the Police check him for both drink and drugs as soon as possible. The Police came, took my details and then let me go on my way. I have a strained shoulder and a banged knee, but am otherwise OK – there were a couple of elderly ladies on the bus who were knocked right over, but I don’t think anybody was seriously hurt. The driver and passenger in the BMW were unhurt too. I have heard rumours of drink and drug misuse involving bus drivers based at the Plumstead garage on at least two occasions. I am now beginning to wonder if there is some substance to the allegations. Hopefully this incident will lead to a formal investigation and action where appropriate.

This time last year I wrote a piece about Stanley Green - the "Less Protein" man, who used to carry a billboard around the West End of London, and sell pamphlets expounding his views on how too much protein heightened levels of passion in people. You can read my original posting here. Stanley died back in 1993, ironically from malnutrition brought on by his eccentric and unhealthy diet. His billboard has now been preserved in the Museum of London, as you can now see below, courtesy of the photo taken recently by Ian.

On two separate occasions in the last week, I have been the unwitting witness to two conversations between chavs who had been involved in the Woolwich riots. I was on both occasions sitting on the train, heading back from London on my way to my daily Dad visit. The scrotes were sitting (unpaid for, naturally) opposite me, and discussing the aftermath of the rioting, and which of their mates had been prosecuted for various wrong doings. One mentioned to the other that he was having to do 200 hours of community service, mainly doing gardening, which he hated. He said that he would have preferred being "put back on the tag" (which inferred that he had already been tagged in the past, which pretty much marked him as a career criminal). The other group said pretty much the same thing; does this mean that tagging is regarded as a soft option by the scumderclass? From my small and admittedly unscientific research, it would appear so.

If you are a long - time reader of the Maggot Sandwich, you may recognise the photo above; it shows the reconstructed Colossus II computer, housed at The National Museum Of Computing at Bletchley Park. I was fortunate enough to visit a couple of years ago, and briefly met the remarkable engineer and inventor behind the historic recreation - Tony Sale. In person he was modest and diffident about his achievements, but would soon become animated when describing what Colossus did and how it worked. He was also quick to correct visitors who wrongly assumed that Colossus was used to break the Enigma code. In fact Colossus was used to break the even more fiendishly complex Lorenz Cipher - which was used by Nazi high command to communicate by radio with the Fuhrer. Quite simply, in 1944, now 67 years ago, Bletchley Park were using a farm of ten Collossi to read Hitler's Email. Historians agree that this shortened the war by something like two years. The code breaking performed at Bletchley Park had a higher security classification at the time than the Manhattan Project in the USA. Unfortunately Tony Sale died this week aged 80, after a short illness; his contribution to the preservation and restoration of Britain's computing history is second to none. You can read his obituary on the BBC News website here.

I was staggered to read earlier this week that Young's are giving up brewing their excellent real ale after 180 years of quenching the thirst of Londoners. The company is going to concentrate on their chain of pubs and restaurants instead. I feel that the writing has been on the wall for them since they moved out of London to merge with Charles Wells to form Wells & Youngs, located in Bedford in 2006. You can read the official announcement by clicking here. This leaves Fuller, Smith & Turner as the only major regional London based brewer. Fortunately the rapid rise of real ale micro breweries in the UK means that the popularity of proper beer is on the rise, and the sale of chemical laden, gassy and flavourless lagers is on the thankful decrease. I am convinced that lager drinking leads to increased aggression and violence, whereas the consumption of real ale leads to relaxation and bonhomie - it is a well known scientific fact that the hops in real ale act as a gentle tranquiliser and also have mild antibiotic properties. I think that if we could convince the Government to subsidise the production of ale, the country would be a better place. Picture this - a way to reduce unemployment, keep the streets safer, reduce urban violence and enhance the health of the public. Now that nearly everybody buys their milk and dairy products from supermarkets, this has meant that the traditional door to door milkmen have lost their jobs. All the currently unemployed milkmen could be re - hired to daily deliver bottles of real ale to every household in the UK. This would calm the lager fuelled aggressive tendencies of the criminal underclass, encourage the farming community to grow more barley and hops, enhancing the agricultural economy, and since the milk / beermen would be traversing the streets on a daily basis, they could also help with policing, acting as additional PCSO's during their early morning beer delivery patrols. What is not to like? I think this single endeavour could end the recession and reduce crime in a few short weeks.

MP for Erith and Thamesmead, Teresa Pearce dropped me a line earlier in the week; she's a regular Maggot Sandwich reader, and picked up on my recent coverage of her efforts to get Southeastern Trains to install a lift at Erith Station, as they are already legally obliged to do under the terms of the Disability Rights Act (DRA). She has set up a Fix My Transport site in order to lobby the rail company into getting a suitable lift installed. You can see her campaigning website by clicking here. The site can be seen in the picture below. If you live in the area and want to see public transport improved, or you just want to stick it to the penny pinching scumbags that run South East Trains, do sign up to Teresa's campaign website - it is not party political, it just wants to get things improved for local people, and that can only be a good thing.

Erith Morrison's continues on its' downward spiral into managerial madness. Following the recent replacement of the "hand baskets only" aisles with automated "self service" tills that spend most of their time flashing their little red lights, indicating that they are malfunctioning, leaving the two harassed and over worked assistants to apologise to the ever lengthening impatient and angry queue of waiting customers. As previously mentioned, I utterly refuse to use these exploitative tills, and I know that I am far from being alone in this opinion (I don't have a dog and bark myself - as I wrote last week). This week they have introduced a new feature in the middle of the delicatessen area. An olive bar - a circular island type feature offering around a dozen varieties of olive from around the world. One can select a microscopic pot to take away for £2.79 or a merely tiny pot for £3.49. Bearing in mind we are talking about Erith - a town where a significant percentage of the locals open a McDonald's burger to remove the slices of dill pickle and flick them on the floor, I do question the whole business effectiveness of an olive bar - many chavs will just wonder why there is a selection of big peas with a hole through the middle, where the microwave meals used to be. I give the enterprise three months at most before it is scrapped - there is just not the demand for "posh" food in the area, where many of the hoodied generation think that haute cuisine is a portion of fried chicken. I get the impression that Morrison's head office are handing down diktats from on high, without considering what will appeal to a particular target market. It is ironic that I am partial to the odd olive or two, but I am not exactly Morrison's rank and file customer.

If you have not already done so, I encourage you to check out the excellent Erith based local weather station that has its' own website. It is run by fellow Radio Amateur Bob G4MHJ. You can see his weather station online here.

The number of counterfeit £1 coins currently in circulation is extremely worrying; I have had check out staff give me fake coins in change on numerous occasions in the recent past. When I have rejected the fakes, the till operator invariably returned them to the till. This is illegal - to knowingly return counterfeit currency into circulation is a criminal offence. See the video clip below on how to successfully identify a fake £1 coin - it is fascinating stuff.

As the summer splutters to a grey and uncertain end, I notice that the local ice cream vans are touting for their final trade of the season. They all seem to be decorated with a variety of Disney and other cartoon characters as well as designs most likely to attract young children. I do wonder how many of them have engaged in intellectual property licencing deals with the copyright owners? Somehow I think none. If I was legal counsel for one of the big cartoon studios, I would be pressing for the van owners to cease and desist. You may think I am being a killjoy, but the depictions of the various cartoon characters is often so poorly drawn and shabbily depicted that it can only harm the image and reputation of the original. Crap cartoon depiction on ice cream vans has been going on for so long that it almost by default seems to be accepted - why?

Much has been written about the health and wellbeing of Apple supremo Steve Jobs in the last few weeks. When he stepped down as CEO of the organisation, many pundits seemed to think it would be the end for the seminal IT company. This has already proved to not be the case. I am not going to wade into this discussion - it has enough opinions already. Instead, I would point you at a blog posting written by someone who is one of Steve Jobs neighbours. Her posting is humane and insightful, and certainly makes for interesting reading. Take a look at "My Neighbour - Steve Jobs" and form your own opinion.

The final video clip is the full episode of TV series Room 101 featuring the late Linda Smith, who was born and raised in Erith. She famously once said that "Erith isn't twinned with anywhere, but it does have a mutual suicide pact with Dagenham".