An undeserved reward.

Since my article last week outlining the planning application that has been submitted to Bexley Council to redevelop the former White Hart / Potion building, I have received a number of reactions from readers. Overall the reception has been broadly positive.  Most people accept that the exterior of the White Hart needs to be restored to how it looked prior to the owners of Potion illegally ripping out the Victorian frontage and replacing it with anachronistic plate glass, despite the building having both listed status, and being located in a conservation zone. Such as restoration will come at a heavy price, and the profits made from converting the upper floors of the building into apartments would not be sufficient to make the project financially viable. The creation of some low rise apartments in the large pub garden, overlooking the river would make the whole thing much more attractive to a developer. The fact that at present no planning application has been submitted by the owners, The Wellington Pub Company, for the ground floor public area of the building, one may suspect that a further application is yet to be submitted. What form this will take is anyone's guess. I did have one response from a regular reader who was less than impressed with the current development proposals (edited for content):- "It would be lovely if it would be turned into a sit down Indian restaurant or some other kind, Erith sadly lacks somewhere to eat of an evening, I'm sure you agree. With lack of interest from such business' its fate is certain to be converted into even more crappy flats like so many other closed boozers. Is there no stopping the relentless charge to fill every spare bit of grass in Erith with wretched flats?" The fact is, Erith is a prime dormitory town for London, and at present it has the second lowest property prices in the South East (marginally beaten into the number two position by Barking and Dagenham). It is inevitable that developers will see the area as one very attractive for people to move into. Personally I am not averse to such development, providing it is done properly, and not just a "sling it up and trouser the cash" approach. I feel more on this subject in the coming weeks. 

Further to my recent investigations into, and blog articles about both Betamax video recorders and Capacitance Electronic Disk players, I have discovered something even more astonishing. The earliest surviving recording of John Logie Baird’s pioneering TV transmissions will be staying in Scotland, after an anonymous donor stepped last month to purchase the historic record. It was made on the 20th September 1927 on a 78rpm PhonoVision shellac disc, recorded and played on what is essentially a television gramophone. A temporary ban on exporting a collection of early television memorabilia, including the recording, had been due to expire just before the benefactor stepped in. The collection was given an asking price of £78,750 earlier this year, and there were fears the historic material would pass into private hands. However, an anonymous businessman has now stepped in to purchase the historical collection, to be stored at the University of Glasgow. The donor reportedly lived in John Logie Baird’s hometown of Helensburgh for 20 years. PhonoVision was the very first method of video recording ever invented. John Logie Baird was very familiar with sound recording onto analogue disks; naturally, this well-known technique was tried for video, and in fact the first video format of all was the Baird Television Record - also known as PhonoVision - which was first demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1927. This was a standard 78-RPM record, intended to be played on a modified gramophone, which would be hooked up to a Baird television. This was only possible because of the extremely low bandwidth of Baird's mechanical TV system, which ran at 12.5 frames per second, and used a mere 30 lines in each frame. TV records were sold in the 1930's by Selfridges in London, for seven shillings each -- the equivalent of about £10 today. Since Baird never seems to have produced a working player, and certainly never had one on sale, this was rather an odd idea; people would simply listen to the chirrup of the TV signal, and imagine the wondrous future it suggested. By the late 1930s, Baird's mechanical television system had been improved to 240 lines, but other pioneers had developed an alternative system -- the electronic scanning system we use today. As soon as the public could see both side-by-side, the superiority of the 405-line electronic TV was apparent, and Baird's mechanical "televisor" was obsolete.The TV record disappeared with it, though apparently a few TV records did survive - eleven examples are still known to exist.

London's Big Issue sellers have diversified into selling coffee from last Monday. The company is going to sell coffee to Londoners under the name Change Please, a new brand backed by the Big Issue magazine. They have eight coffee carts spread across central London with sites in Covent Garden, Waterloo and Paddington. The not-for-profit company will pay baristas the London living wage of £9.15 an hour and train them for jobs with firms from the food and beverage, legal and banking sectors while also providing temporary accommodation. In the past I would have been pleased to hear such news, but some in depth investigation by fellow local bloggers has made me think again. They have uncovered an eye - opening story that Romanian organised criminals have been infiltrating the Big Issue for several years, forcing genuinely homeless people out of the organisation in order to get their own people illegally into the sales pitches. A number of individuals have investigated the case of one Robert Dumitru who was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, suspended for 2 years after being convicted of conning Greenwich Council tax payers out of over £60,000 worth of housing and council tax benefit, even though he was later found to have over £105,000 in the bank; this didn't include the £67,000 he had already sent back to Romania. It would seem that the organised criminal gang are using a little known (until now) loophole which classes The Big Issue sellers as being self employed, and thus eligible for housing benefit. The irony is, that if they are receiving housing benefit, they are not homeless, and therefore should not be selling The Big Issue. I think it is only a matter of time before this scandal gets mainstream press coverage, as it really needs to be exposed. I have visions of the Big Issue Foundation going the same way as the Kid's Company once the story breaks. Apologies for my vagueness as to those who have investigated this story, but there are currently ongoing investigations that I am unable to identify in any detail at present. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The News Shopper has been carrying a story about the supposed “Black Friday” terrorist attack planned to hit shoppers at Bluewater. Apparently a person had posted a hoax story on FaceBook saying that Police and other emergency services were expecting a terrorist attack at the shopping centre, and that this has been confirmed by “a friend of a friend” who worked in Bluewater’s’ Security team. The claim then went on to say that 750 body bags had already been delivered to the shopping centre prior to the claimed attack. The post, which had over 8,000 shares on social media sites, was of course total rubbish, and completely fictitious. Firstly I feel that the culprit should be held responsible for spreading stories likely to cause alarm and concern, and which may also have tied up Police time investigating the veracity (or otherwise) of the claim. Secondly, how can eight thousand people be credulous and gullible enough to share the claim on Facebook? It never ceases to amaze me that a significant minority will believe pretty much anything that is published on social media, especially Facebook – it is the digital equivalent of “it was in the newspaper, so it must be true”. There is a psychological theory called “ego investment” which may go quite some way to explaining why people tend to behave in such a manner. Ego investment basically means how much people care about a certain subject. That, in turn, dictates how much time and energy they'll spend investigating, defending, and sharing their knowledge about it. If they're not really invested in something, they won't put in any effort to vet it out -- because they don't really care. So why post it at all? It may be that a paranoid mind-set can override a dubious one, which results in a "just in case" attitude.  "It won't hurt me to post this, even if it isn't true -- so why not? Maybe I should ... just in case something might happen." On top of this there may also be what is termed “the lemming factor” – where Facebook users feel that if they are not reacting to a story, however implausible or bizarre, then they will be in some way losing out. This is very similar to the old phenomenon of chain letters; There’s a sense of ritualized behaviour of sharing it that makes you feel more in control—which is why people share the letters that say if you don’t share this, then something bad will happen—because the cost of not doing it is big, but the cost of sharing it is minimal. There is also the friendship element – if the hoax story has been posted by a friend, and you trust the friend, you are more likely to believe stories that they post – their critical faculties having been short circuited by their relationship. At the end of the day, social media hoaxes are so common and widespread that one would have thought that the general public would have become more inured to them by now, but this still seems sadly not to be the case.

The News Shopper are reporting that another big budget movie has been filmed using Crossness Pumping Station as a major location. The forthcoming film “Victor Frankenstein” which opens on the 3rd December. The film stars Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy in a remake of the classic sci fi tale. Crossness Pumping Station is used to double as Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory. It is far from the first time the grade one listed building has been used in television or the movies. The pumping station interior was used as the Masonic Temple occupied by the evil Lord Blackwood in Guy Ritchie’s 2009 version of “Sherlock Holmes”; it was also used in the 1989 Tim Burton directed “Batman” movie, and as part of the interior of the starship Nostromo in the original “Alien” movie. The interior of the pumping station is stunning, as you can see in the video above. It was constructed by the Metropolitan Board of Works Chief Engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette between 1859 and 1865, as part of Bazalgette's redevelopment of the London sewerage system, it features spectacular ornamental cast ironwork, that Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described as "a masterpiece of engineering – a Victorian cathedral of ironwork". The Pump Room was used to house giant custom – built pumps which enabled the incoming liquid effluent to be raised some 30 to 40 feet. The pumping engines were of enormous size and power. They were built by James Watt and Co. to Joseph Bazalgette's designs and specification, and were named "Victoria", "Prince Consort", "Albert Edward" and "Alexandra". The pumps worked at eleven revolutions per minute, and six tons of sewage per stroke per engine were pumped up into a 27-million-imperial-gallon reservoir, and was released into the Thames during the ebbing tide. The steam required to power these engines was raised by twelve Cornish boilers with single "straight-through" flues situated in the Boiler House to the south of the Engine House, and which consumed approximately five thousand tons of Welsh coal annually. At this time, the Crossness Works merely disposed of raw sewage into the river seawards, and in 1882, a Royal Commission recommended that the solid matter in the sewage should be separated out, and that only the liquid portion remaining should be allowed, as a temporary measure, to pass into the river. In 1891, sedimentation tanks were added to the works, and the sludge was carried by steam boats and dumped further out into the estuary, at sea. The smell of the river must have been awful – and to think that people swam in the Thames at Erith, only a couple of miles downriver during the popular summer season. You might well have come out from a dip looking a fetching shade of brown – and not from a sun tan! The whole of the Crossness Pumping Station was a real tribute to classic Victorian over – engineering – and possibly part of the reason so much survived after the giant steam powered pumps were decommissioned and left to rot for years. The pumping station became a Grade I listed building in 1970 and will remain on the Heritage at Risk Register until the restoration is completed. The Crossness Engines Trust, a registered charity, was formed in 1987 to oversee the restoration project. The station contains the four original pumping engines, which are thought to be the largest remaining rotative beam engines in the world, with 52 ton flywheels and 47 ton beams. Although the engines are original, they are not in their original 1864 configuration as all four engines were converted from single cylinder to the current triple expansion operation in 1901 and 1902. Prince Consort was returned to steam in 2003 and now runs on Trust Open Days. The other engines are not in working order, although work has begun on the restoration of Victoria.

The photo above was sent to me earlier this week by Maggot Sandwich reader and local history enthusiast Raymond Ratcliff.  It shows Bexley Road, Erith, back in 1910. You may recall that last week I featured a photograph showing a row of shops called Station Parade from the late 1970’s / early 1980’s. Station Parade was later built on the site of the tram shelter shown above. It is fascinating to see how the local area has changed over the years, not always for the better.  It is interesting to see that the shelter at the tram stop has open sides; knowing how the wind whistles along Bexley Road nowadays, it cannot have been any fun to stand at the tram stop in the winter, as I doubt it would offer very much protection from the weather. The boy in the photo seems to be staring at the photographer. I would imagine he was saying something along the lines of “Mister – wot are you doin?”. A fascinating snapshot of times gone by. If you have any old photographs of the local area which you would like to see featured on the Maggot Sandwich, please drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Hackers have been using ransomware - a type of malware in which attackers can steal or delete the contents of users’ computers if they don’t pay a ransom - for the past 25 years. Now, it seems, the same tactic may be used on medical devices such as insulin pumps and pacemakers. Ransomware in medical devices is the single biggest cybersecurity threat for 2016, according to a recent report from research and advisory firm Forrester. As of yet there are no documented cases of hackers holding a user ransom by his medical device, but experts are realizing that cybersecurity for medical devices—really anything connected to the Internet, including surgical robots—is lagging woefully behind the digital protection arming other systems and gadgets. Experts quoted in a recent piece in Bloomberg Business estimate that the security around medical devices is about a decade behind the overall standard. Earlier this year, the Federal Drug Administration issued a letter warning American hospitals and patients that a pump commonly used to ration out proper dosing of medicine in IVs could be vulnerable to attack. Threats to medical devices may have been common knowledge (enough to make up a plot twist on the TV show Homeland) but no one paid much attention because there didn’t seem to be any clear benefit to a hacker. Who would want to mess up Joe Blogg's drug infusion pump? But as more health insurance providers find themselves under fire, it’s clear that hackers have set their sights on the healthcare industry. And with the prospect of a ransom, that threat feels all too immediate and personal, especially since it’s not cheap—most hackers ask for $200 to $10,000, according to the FBI. Between April 2014 and June 2015, hackers’ extortions via personal computers cost American victims $18 million. What has happened in America invariably happens in the UK sooner or later. Unlike on a personal computer, individuals can’t put digital security measures in place to protect their biomedical devices. It’s up to the manufacturers of the device’s hardware and software to put the proper security protocols in place. Hopefully they can do so before ransomware becomes as big of an issue as predicted. Many cyber-security vendors view ransomware as 2016's biggest threat, and to help drive this point home, a Symantec security researcher demonstrated how easy it can be to infect smart TVs and how hard it can be to clean the infection afterwards. The researcher did not reveal the TV's make and model but said it was running a modified version of Google's Android operating system, which many brands also use for their smart TV products. To infect his TV, Symantec's research team used a common ransomware family that targets Android devices. This ransomware shows an annoying ransom note every few seconds, overlaying the message on top of the screen, making the device inoperable. Most Android ransomware works on Android OS-based TVs the investigation team said that infection of his device was made possible due to the lack of TSL / SSL encryption for sensitive communications between the TV and remote servers, used for app installs or firmware updates. With a simple MitM (Man-in-the-Middle) attack, the researcher placed the ransomware on his device by spoofing a game installation package. The ransomware installation didn't encounter any roadblocks and soon took root on the device, blocking the user from using it. After installing the ransomware, Symantec then studied methods to have it removed. Their quest was not as successful as they wished, and they found that the ransom note made it almost impossible to carry out a factory reset, start a support session with the TV maker's support staff, or execute other operations. They were eventually able to remove the ransom note, but only because they had activated the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) tool before installing the malware. This tool allowed him to connect the TV to a laptop and remove the ransomware from there. Other types of malicious attacks are also possible on smart TVs Besides ransomware, Symantec says that smart TVs are also vulnerable to other types of threats. Attackers can hijack smart TVs to perform click fraud, crypto-currency mining, steal user personal data, extract various authentication credentials used by smart TV apps, or even add the TV to a DDoS botnet. To prevent malware from infecting smart TVs or stop malicious actors from carrying out other types of attacks, Symantec provided a series of mitigation techniques that smart TV owners can employ. Some of the most useful tips recommend that users always keep their TV's software updated to the latest version, that they disable features that they don't use, and only install apps from verified sources. Additionally, users should enable app verification in the TV's settings, inspect the TV's built-in security settings, and turn up the defensive features to max, and always disable remote access to the TV when not needed. As I have previously written, in my own experience, Smart TV's are seriously overrated. 

Above you can see two photos which show part of Erith in a "then and now" way. The upper photo was taken in around 1935, and shows James Watt Way looking North; To the right of the photo can be seen The Prince of Wales pub, and ahead is the Royal Arsenal Co-Operative Society shop, on the corner of Manor Road. Just out of the shot, to the left would have been the construction site for the forthcoming Odeon Cinema, which opened in 1937. You can see some period photos of the cinema by clicking here. In the lower photo, you can see the McDonald's drive through burger bar where the pub once stood, and in place of the RACS shop, there is now a KFC fried chicken drive through. To the left, on the site of the Odeon Cinema (demolished in 1999, even though it was a grade 2* listed building) is a block of flats with offices and the new, faceless Erith Library on the ground floor.  I think pretty much anyone who has spent time living in or around Erith is of the opinion that the old Victorian town centre should never have been demolished. If it was still in place now, the town would be a significant tourist attraction. 

The following warning has been published by Bexley Neighbourhood Watch Association:- "SCAM WARNING We have had several co-ordinators report the same delivery scam to us. Whereby you receive a phone call from a courier company asking when you would be home so that they can deliver a package which requires a signature. Once arranged a uniformed delivery man arrives with a basket of flowers and a bottle of wine. The courier cannot tell you who has ordered the flowers but says that the message card would be sent separately. However, there is a consignment note which states that because the gift contains alcohol that there is a £3.50 delivery/ verification charge which supposedly provides proof that the gift has actually been delivered to an adult (of legal drinking age). The courier refuses cash as payment and says that the delivery company requires payment by credit or debit card. He then asks you to swipe your card on a mobile card machine with a small screen and enter your PIN on the keypad. A receipt is printed out and given to you. By now you have given the fraudster all the information necessary to create a "dummy" card with your card details including the PIN number. WARNING: Be wary of accepting any "surprise gift or package," which you neither expected nor personally ordered, especially if it involves any kind of payment as a condition of receiving the gift or package. Also, never accept anything if you do not personally know or there is no proper identification of who the sender is. Above all, the only time you should give out any personal credit/debit card information is when you yourself initiated the purchase or transaction!"

Leader of Bexley Council Teresa O’Neill has been awarded an OBE in the in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, for services to the community and local government in London. She received the award from Prince Charles on November the 19th. O’Neill has become the first sitting councillor in the borough's history to be awarded an OBE. To anyone who has any awareness of how Bexley Council operates, the news of the award will be of little surprise, but some considerable consternation. In my personal opinion the award was totally unwarranted – she’s overseen the dismantling of much of the leisure infrastructure in the borough, including the selling off of numerous parks and open spaces, the closure of the much loved Belvedere Splash Park, and the proposed disposal of a number of other public resources. Teresa O,Neill is the queen of selling off the family silver, with no thought for the future. For more details on why Teresa O’Neill does not deserve public recognition for her works, you only need to take a look at Malcolm Knight’s excellent “Bexley is Bonkers” site to get a real idea of what has been going on locally.

Plans to build a new bridge across the Thames between Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe on either side have reached completion in a new feasibility study. The proposed ‘Rotherhithe Bridge’ would have the longest bascule span (opening bridge) in the world, at 600ft (184m), for use by pedestrians and cyclists. It would be the first bascule bridge on the river that would open to let shipping through since Tower Bridge was completed in 1894. Pedestrians and cyclists would use two separate parallel spans, each 15ft wide, avoiding conflict that occurred between walkers and riders in the nearby Greenwich foot tunnel last year. The bridge would run east-west from Millwall on the Isle of Dogs to Rotherhithe, roughly following the London Underground Jubilee Line deep below the riverbed, just south of Westferry Circus. The pedestrian approach from Millwall would start at Westferry Road, while the longer cycle approach would wind its way from Canary Wharf’s Westferry Circus upper deck. The scheme is a response to demand in south-east London for a river crossing which would cut commuting time and congestion on other parts of London’s overstretched transport network. Commuters from Rotherhithe would get easy access to the DLR and to Crossrail opening in 2018, while cyclists from east London could cross to Surrey Quays without a long and polluted traffic route detour to Tower Bridge or the dangerous Rotherhithe Tunnel. Up to three million people a year would use it, the proposers envisage. Cost is estimated at £88m, taking up to five years to build. Bearing in mind the bridge would be for pedestrians and cyclists only, I cannot see much objection to the scheme. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Thirty years ago this month, hugely successful and very popular offshore radio station Laser 558 went off air for the last time. The station, which began broadcasting in May 1984 was financed and operated by business and broadcasting executives. Laser 558 used disc jockeys from the USA. It was based on the ship MV Communicator in the international waters of the North Sea. Within months the station had a large audience due to its strong signal, fast moving American presentation style, and continuous music mixing current records with oldies. However, insufficient advertising starved the station off the air in November 1985. Below is a contemporary news report which ironically does much to promote Laser 558, which for a short time was more popular in London and the South East of England than BBC Radio One. 

Worse than ever?

You may recall that back, almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a feature on the Pizza Hut franchise in Northumberland Heath, and how appalling dirty and unhygienic the place was. The News Shopper also had it as their headline story at the time. The scandal ended up being covered by several national newspapers, the conditions were so bad. The shop ended up being closed for emergency remedial cleaning work; I had thought that the story was now closed; On Friday morning an anonymous person uploaded the following comment onto my original blog posting. I am reproducing it here, as it is shocking, and if true (and I have no reason to believe it is not), then the public needs to know. I work in this "disgusting" pizza hut you mentioned and let me just say, you have mentioned the fact that "Apparently the place has received a deep clean and its’ hygiene standards are improving". The shop was recently given a new shop front to improve the customer perception of the shop but this was as far as improvements actually went. The general conditions within the shop is probably in my opinion worse than ever. In November 2011 most Pizza Hut delivery units were franchised off to private companies and this is when the trouble started. The company that runs this and many other stores in the surrounding area presented managers with such unreachable targets that they soon all left. This then left it open for the company to get in their own managers. Just before Christmas 2013 conditions within the shop were so bad I was having to work in pools of water leaking from various fridges walls and ceilings. Toilet facilities at one point were completely non-existent, the toilet was in fact broken and laying on its side exposing the sewage pipe where rats were seen and making the whole inside of the shop smell of raw sewage. Dates on ingredients are changed to extend the shelf life rather than discarding then like they should be. Things like the can opener, vegetable slicer and oven are no cleaner really now than they ever were. Finally, Just to say that if any of your readers think that eating here may make you sick, believe me, even I won't eat from here. I have passed the information onto reporters at the News Shopper, as they have the resources to carry out a full investigation, and I do not. It will be interesting to see what they discover.

During my enforced period of quarantine whilst I suffered with Gastroenteritis recently (fortunately not caused by eating from Pizza Hut, as I don't eat takeaway pizza), I decided that I would grow a beard. Actually I was so unwell that I could not be bothered to shave, but that is another story. Once I recovered, I decided that it was high time for the beard to go, as it was getting itchy and anyway, I don’t think a beard particularly suits me. I am one of those individuals who uses a Gillette Fusion wet shaving razor. It is claimed by Gillette (actually a company in name only, as they are 100% owned by Procter and Gamble) that each fusion blade will give many comfortable shaves before they need to be replaced. The number of shaves varies between adverts and promotional material, but nevertheless they do cite multiple uses. In my own experience I am lucky to get three shaves out of a single blade unit before it is too blunt to use, and in the case of the beard removal, a single use was enough to completely knacker a brand new blade head. Bearing in mind that a four blade pack of Fusion blades costs £9.95, this is no small expense. I have read research which states that each blade head costs the manufacturer around 5p per unit to manufacture – which, by the time the supermarkets have taken their cut is a total mark up of 4,750%. Nice work if you can get it. If you search around online, and even look for buying these type of blades in bulk, there are surprisingly few discounts of substance to be had. One would have thought with such a huge profit margin, some savvy retailer would have bought a few lorry – loads and set up a discount service. I can find no evidence of this. I then got to doing some thinking. Why has no savvy business person seen the gap in the market, and gone to some manufacturing supplier in somewhere like China where high quality, well engineered kit can be made to a customers’ specification in fairly short order, and got them to make huge numbers of “own brand” blades that are compatible with the popular razor hand units, then sell them online at a fraction of the outrageous prices charged by Gillette / Procter and Gamble. I got so taken up with this idea that I contacted a very good friend, who just happens to be MD of one of Britain’s’ most highly respected market research / market analysis companies, and asked his professional opinion on the matter. He said that a couple of the big supermarket chains tried this very approach a few years ago, but soon found that it was a bigger problem than they had initially expected. Procter and Gamble, owners of the Gillette brand, supply something like 25% of all the goods sold in most UK supermarkets. As soon as Procter and Gamble heard of this endeavour, they rolled out their heavyweight lawyers and started muttering about copyright infringement. The supermarkets backed down, unwilling to cause potential disruption to other goods in their supply chain. Thus the whole “own brand” razor blade project withered on the vine. My business contact did say that he could see a potential way an entrepreneur could challenge the current corporate razor blade monopoly – but it would need someone like a modern day Richard Branson to attempt it. In essence, the entrepreneur would need to set up a business in somewhere like the British Virgin Isles, and conduct all business from there (a place where it is very difficult for third parties to carry out malicious prosecutions). They would need to hire a Gillette product manager – someone who knows how the company works and how they think. The blades could be made in China, then shipped in bulk all over the world; all ordering would have to be done via an online shop located outside of the European Union. If this could be kept up for a year or so, to the point where the blades had got a degree of market penetration as a viable alternative to the much more expensive “big name” versions, you might well end up in a situation where Gillette / Procter and Gamble would be forced to lower their exorbitant prices due to the newly introduced competition in the market place. To be honest, this is all a bit of a pipe dream; the idea of selling lower cost, high quality razor blades to compete with the big producers is such an obvious business opportunity that if there was any viable way to do it, someone would have done it by now. The fact that they have not really goes to show how tightly the market is already tied up. Please leave a comment below.

Last weekend local drivers had a new challenge. Bexley Road, from the roundabout by the railway bridge and Fraser Road, as far up as Park Crescent, was blocked off from very early on Saturday morning to midday on Monday. I went for a snoop when I heard the news; The News Shopper is reporting that a Mini Cooper crashed into a parked Mercedes saloon in the early hours of Saturday morning, and this left a mixture of Diesel and engine / transmission oil on the road. Apparently the driver of the Cooper was badly hurt, but his passenger did a runner – which sounds very suspicious indeed. The Police had blocked off the road for a stretch of several hundred metres, and the Fire Brigade had spread some kind of moisture absorbing granules over the leaked fluid. I am unsure why the section of main road was closed for quite so long; all I can assume is that there was damage to the road surface – which would not be surprising – petro chemicals eat away at tarmac like acid eats away at metal. It may well have been that the Borough Surveyor needed to check the damage before the road could be re – opened. Residents in the adjoining side streets have been most put out, as drivers have been using diversions to skirt around the normally very busy closed section of Bexley Road.

The photo above was kindly sent to me by local history expert Ken Chamberlain; it is my current favourite shot of old Erith, as it shows so much life and activity, and is not a posed photograph. It shows the view looking Northwards along the High Street, towards the River Thames. Unfortunately it is impossible to take a modern equivalent photograph from the same location as the historic one, as the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre is now in the way, and the road layouts in and around the centre of Erith have drastically changed in the intervening years. The one thing we do know for certain is that the photograph was taken in 1910. By the looks of it, the shot was taken late on a Saturday morning in Spring or Summer - there are a lot of adult men in the photo, most of whom would be at work if the photo was taken during the week; secondly the shadows are very short, indicating the photo was taken around midday. Quite why so many people are standing around in the street is unclear. There are no apparent indications of preparations for a parade or other festival; it just appears to be a very busy street scene. The one building that is still readily recognisable in modern Erith is the Cross Keys pub, which is shown in the distance in the old photograph. Nowadays it is being renovated and converted into offices and meeting rooms for management consultancy the Aleff Group. They are making sure that the external appearance of the building is as close as possible to the original, as they are keen to preserve the building, which is located in Erith’s conservation area. They take the preservation of the historic building very seriously, unlike the people who ran the nearby White Hart, and who ripped out the listed frontage to install hideous plate glass. I don’t normally like seeing empty premises, but the Potion Bar that replaced the White Hart was definitely a bad move, and I have to say that many locals are glad to see the back of it, now that the business has failed. I may be a tad on the optimistic side, but it would be nice to see the building housing a proper sit – down restaurant. The trouble is, the work required to bring the building up to a decent standard in order to open such a restaurant would almost certainly be prohibitively expensive.

This week I have a guest writer, who for reasons best known to themselves, has asked to remain anonymous. He's one of a small team behind a very influential online publication that has its' roots in the local area:- One little known aspect of the north of Bexley borough is that it saw the birth of a science fiction venture that still continues today. The Science Fact and Fiction Concatenation began in 1987 as an annual fanzine produced by a group of local scientists and engineers reviewing the SF genre. The editorial team has since now largely dispersed across the UK but the zine still continues, including with some editorial support from those still within what was the old Erith borough (now Belvedere, Erith, Slade Green and Northumberland Heath), in an on-line largely text-only webzine. Over the 1990s interest expanded and SF enthusiasts from overseas began to take interest including from Eastern Europe with the Iron Curtain coming down. This led to SF2 Concatenation appearing at Eurocons and a trilingual edition (English, German and Romanian) in 1994. This edition saw Concatenation's first of, to date, 4  European SF Society Eurocon Award wins for 'Best Fanzine' and other categories: all  Concatenation's European Award wins have been when the Eurocon that year was in another country than Britain, and this is a small matter of pride for the team garnering such attention away from their home turf. In addition to running the zine, the team have engaged in a number of allied projects. These have included a number of Eastern European (Romania and Hungary) cultural exchanges in the late 1990s to early 2000s. In addition to members of the team going to Eastern Europe and staying with local fans there (including  to see the eclipse of the Sun in 1999, the team sponsored Eastern Europeans to visit Britain. Among the many things they did included a welcome by Bexley's Deputy Mayor, visiting Dartford Groundwork, seeing the Crossness Engines in Thamesmead, and broadcasting back to Eastern Europe via the BBC World Service. Another of the projects was to catalogue all the SF works up to 2004 that have won SF enthusiast popular voted awards and publish this as a book called Essential Science Fiction A Concise Guide. Today the Concatenation site is still maintained by a couple of locals to the north of the borough. Others who have left the area (and are now elsewhere in Britain) do still contribute. This summer will see a reunion as many of the team will join a few thousand of SF enthusiasts, writers and professionals at the annual World SF Society Worldcon which, (called Loncon) for the first time in many decades, will be in London! Indeed it is arguably worth passing this news along to anyone locally you know with a penchant for science fiction as this year the SF World is coming to our door step. So you can see from all of this that there are those in the north of Bexley borough who have an eye on the future and the far horizons of other worlds.

As I have mentioned in the past, there are weeks when writing the content for the Maggot Sandwich is a real uphill struggle, and other weeks when it pretty much writes itself. This week I have had an embarrassment of content, which makes nailing the update together very straightforward. Reader Stephen dropped me a line midweek to ask if I had heard of a new online service called Jabbakam.com which takes feeds from web cams and network connected CCTV systems and enables groups of people and communities to be able to share the video feeds, irrespective of geographical location. This somewhat coincided with a story in the News Shopper which relates to an Erith resident who has installed four CCTV cameras on the outside of his house in order to monitor and record any criminal activity occurring on his private property. The Council have decreed that he will have to apply for planning permission for the cameras, as apparently under the Town and Country Planning Act, cameras on private dwellings have to be located a minimum of ten metres apart, otherwise they need planning permission. When this law was passed, I could understand this; back in the 1980’s CCTV cameras were large, bulky and unsightly items which definitely could adversely affect the looks of a property. Nowadays modern cameras are tiny and extremely discreet, and any requirement for planning permission now seems utterly superfluous. It seems to me to be a classic case of the law not keeping track of technology. It also seems that the house owner – a chap called Michael Hix, has been unfairly targeted. There are a large number of local structures that have multiple CCTV cameras mounted on them, all of which are very unlikely to have requested planning permission. My understanding of the position the Police take regarding private CCTV is that they are not really bothered, just as long as the cameras are only pointing onto the owners’ property – they (quite rightly) take a dim view of CCTV cameras pointing out into the public street. This seems to be a more enlightened view than that taken by Bexley Council. The fact is, a mobile phone can be used as a portable CCTV recorder just by downloading a suitable app. This video can be shared worldwide with services such as Jabbakam, and the council are living in the Stone Age if they think they are able to control such actions by using a blunt force such as the planning rules. The game has changed, but the Council are unaware of it.

Malcolm Knight of the Bexley is Bonkers website has reported that, just as he correctly predicted, Bexley Council are in the process of halting the move of Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre from Bexleyheath Library to Bromley. Indeed, his sources indicate that Bexley Council never formally approached Bromley Council regarding the project, and that the whole thing could well be something he describes as an “Aunt Sally” – something set up to make the council look good, as if they have actually been listening to the views of the local population, and amended their plans accordingly, when in fact they had never seriously intended on moving the Archive in the first place. The wording on the Bexley Conservative Party website is currently very vague and non – committal, but it does begin to sound like the Local Studies and Archive Centre may well be safe – for now, at least.

Things are looking even bleaker for the Arabfly Dangleway – otherwise known as the Emirates Airline Cable Car. As I have said in the past, the service gets very little use, and it has been losing money hand over fist since it originally opened just prior to the 2012 London Olympics. Figures have recently been released, which, according to the Evening Standard, show that for the second quarter of the 2013/14 financial year, the income from the cable car was thirty five percent lower than budgeted.  The Mayor’s office had predicted that the £60 million cable car would generate £8.3 million in tickets for the period, but in reality it only took £5.4 million. Transport for London are still in denial, publicly stating that the service is not making a loss, but this can only be because of the quarterly £3.6 million sponsorship package supplied by Emirates Airline, which is effectively propping up the entire enterprise.  As I have previously wondered, once the sponsorship deal comes to its’ first potential break point, I feel that it would be unlikely for Emirates to continue, as the whole cable car issue has become a farce – Boris is reluctant to intervene to improve the ticketing structure, and pretty much anyone who has any familiarity with the service is aware that it is a vanity project which was built in entirely the wrong part of London. It goes to nowhere from nowhere, and over a warehouse, truck park and a couple of derelict factories – all in all, not a very enticing prospect. The fact is, the current exclusion of Oyster card, London Travel Card and Freedom Pass users from the cable car has done nothing to encourage commuters to use the service – which in any case is far quicker by tube. I regularly pass underneath the cable car when I use the Docklands Light Railway, and it is quite usual to see nobody in a cable car at all; indeed there have been occasions where the operators have switched the system off until a customer turned up – just to save on the electricity bill! Whatever does happen, I seriously doubt that it can carry on in the current manner for very much longer – it is haemorrhaging money. Boris needs to pull his finger out.

I read with disgust that Thamesmead resident Michelle Roberts, who was found guilty by Basildon Crown Court of a number of cases of theft - including from her own family members at a wake after the death of her Uncle; she is to be sentenced in March - you can read the full story on the News Shopper website here. Apart from anyone's normal sense of affronted decency after hearing of the crimes against innocent and often vulnerable victims, what makes it worse for me is that I used to know her. She was a care assistant at my late Dad's nursing home. We don't think she ever managed to steal anything from him, but we have no way of knowing what she may have stolen from others. She's thieving scumbag and a nasty piece of work; she deserves to be locked up for a very long time indeed.

I am afraid the ending video this week is somewhat predictable. Pretty much every media outlet has been banging on about how we are at the 30th anniversary of the launch of the original Apple Macintosh computer; I decided not to give the event as much coverage as I otherwise might, due to the fact the story has been so widely reported elsewhere. Anyway, here is a short video summary of the history of the Mac range. Please feel free to either leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Scabby Road?

The photo above is a bit of a pale shadow of the famous Abbey Road crossing. This one is not in North London, but rather in Bexley Road, sunny Erith. Click on either photo for a larger view. I doubt that you would find a local Paul McCartney equivalent crossing at this point with bare feet, due to the prevalence of broken glass and dog poo in the area.

I note from a couple of articles in the local news that Dartford Station is about to have a grand total of £7 million spent on it to modernise and upgrade it. This is indeed a good thing; a pity that even a small percentage of the same amount of cash could not be spent on Erith station - which is still surrounded by metal barriers and warning tape, the best part of three months after the initial problems with falling masonry came to light. The endeavours of the authorities have been laughably inadequate in the intervening time. Nothing seems to be happening to remedy the situation, despite the protestations from Network Rail. 

The Maggot Sandwich is rapidly heading towards the 20,000th unique visitor; at the present rate of page views, the event should happen at some time in the next week or so. Bearing in mind that reader statistics were only enabled in June 2010, I don't feel that this is too shabby at all. The site has regular readers in the USA, Brazil, India, Japan, and all around Europe. Thanks to one and all for your valued support. 

The photos below shows the kebab shop and small parade of shops adjacent to the hideous fish sculpture on the roundabout that leads into / out of Erith.

I was perusing the Wikipedia entry on the Atari ST range of computers during the week, and I noticed a couple of things that prompted my attention. The entry refers to the Computers' advertising tag line "Power without the price" and infers that this was a central Atari theme; I can say for certain that this was not the case. As you may know, in my youth, I worked for the largest stockist and distributor of Atari products in Europe, the Sidcup based Silica Shop. The slogan was dreamed up by them, not Atari.  The second, and to me the most telling point is the mention of the fix recommended in the official Atari engineering manual as to how to remedy an ST that when fired up, did not come to life as expected, but instead showed a brown screen of death. Wikipedia terms it thus: Early 520ST owners became accustomed to the "Atari Twist" and the "Atari Drop" service procedures. "Atari Twist" seemed to help discharge built-up static electricity (Atari soldered-down the metal shielding to fix the problem) while the "Atari Drop" appeared to help re-seat chips which may have become partially unseated over time. Actually, the Atari Drop was a procedure that more often than not fixed the brown screen of death issue - which was caused by a couple of ROM chips coming loose in their housings. The short drop of the computer onto a hard surface would knock them back into position, fixing the problem. I know, as it was me that came up with the fix. I had a number of customers with brand new 520 ST machines that would not start up on first boot. On one occasion I turned the computer over to check the serial number, ready to fill in a warranty return form. On turning it back over, I accidentally dropped it onto the wooden counter top, at which point the computer burst into life. I tried this with several other machines that were exhibiting the same problem, and all but one of them was similarly fixed. After talking to Atari Engineering UK, based in Slough, the "Atari drop" became an official remedy, and described in the engineering service manual. One of my minor and very anorakky claims to fame. It is ironic that I never actually owned an ST myself; they were always far too expensive, even allowing for a substantial staff discount at the time. A photo of an Atari ST is below - click for a larger version.

There has been a lot of hot air and consternation in the popular press about the cancellation and scrapping of the Nimrod MRA4 fleet this week. It is a pity that the expressions of outrage were not better based on factual reality. The planes' electronic systems were more than fifteen years out of date before ever having left the ground, and their role would nowadays be far more efficiently be undertaken by a remotely piloted vehicle. You can read a detailed and compelling explanation of why the Nimrod fleet were an expensive embarrassment, that was cancelled not a moment too soon by clicking here. The planes would have each cost more to buy and operate than a space shuttle, had they gone into service, and all they actually were 1950's era Comet passenger airliners with some rather non special electronics installed.

If I ever come into a substantial amount of cold, hard cash, and was looking to buy a prestige car, I would spend it on one of these.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have become very keen on a TV show called The Salvager, which is hosted by a chap called Rico Daniels. He takes all kinds of waste materials and outright scrap; he then re - uses them to make unique and interesting items of furniture and more. It has been on Freeview TV whilst I have been visiting my Dad in his nursing home, and it makes a very interesting background to my time in Dad's room. I would strongly recommend the show as something rather different and compelling. Rico Daniels is a real character - a biker, former Guardian Angel and general one of a kind person, and all the better for it.

Here is an accessory if you have an Apple iPhone 3 or 4 , and feel that you miss the bulk and presence of a mobile phone from the late 1980's - you can now have all the convenience of a modern phone, with the retro looks of one from yesteryear - see below.

I don't know if you ever try clicking on any of the links to the right of the body of this text; I have a number of links to local websites and online resources that you may well find of interest. The links are fed by an RSS feed. As soon as one of the sites gets an update, it goes to the top of the links list; the newer the content, the higher up the list the link appears. All good stuff. You can see the local Erith weather conditions from Bob Hewitt G4MHJ - a fellow radio amateur by visiting his weather station website here. 

I have always been a big fan of the author Douglas Adams, and his seminal work, the incomparably brilliant Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You can read the original novel online by clicking here. 

This week's video is a clip from the 1980's television series - probably the best version, and indisputably better than the dire 2005 movie of the same name. Here you have an explanation of the best cocktail in existence - the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Take it away...