200,000!

The photo above was taken recently outside of the Mambocino coffee shop / cafe in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. The whole of the shopping centre is plastered with "No Smoking" signs. You may notice that the rubbish bin on the wall is directly under one sign, and there is another to the left of it. The stains on the wall surrounding the bins are the result of smokers stubbing out a cigarette before throwing the butt in the bin (at least most of the time - plenty still end up on the ground). This is not to obey the rules, it is mostly so that they can light up a fresh cigarette. The anti smoking law is so blatantly flouted in the centre that even staff employed by the shops in the centre light up in the banned areas. The whole thing is out of hand, and the reduction in the number and quality of security guards patrolling the centre is such that I have even (on the rare occasions when a guard has been around) seen a security officer dragging on a fag outside of Wilkinson's. I really think the whole thing is unenforceable; I cannot for the life of me see the point in having a rule that is not enforced. It just seems pointless. There would appear to be neither the will, nor the ability to uphold the law. Your thoughts are welcomed - please leave a comment below.

Some time on Friday afternoon, Google Analytics informed me that the Maggot Sandwich had just logged its' 200,000th unique page view. This does not mean that 200,000 people read the blog, what it does mean is that over the course of the six and a half years it has been running, just over two hundred thousand different people have read it. I do get roughly 20,000 regular hits each month - sometimes a little more, at present slightly less. I was approached by a marketing company a while back, who tried to encourage me to take advertising on the site. I refused. If I took adverts or some form of sponsorship, I would lose my impartiality. The fact I am free to praise or criticise as I see fit is not something I would give up, so no advertisers, thank you very much.

Erith Blockbuster closed for good on Monday morning; although some stores were sold top Morrison's, and others have been bought by a venture capital group, the Erith store is now no more. The store has been emptied of the little remaining stock, and it now stands empty, though last time I walked past, the lights were still on. I hope that the corner unit gets taken soon, as it would otherwise be a magnet for vandals and metal thieves (often one and the same).

The popular press have picked up on a subject that I raised on my entry "The Electric Gasper" on the 24th February. The whole privacy issue with the forthcoming Google Glass project has finally been made widely known via the BBC News website. You saw it here first!

I use public transport daily; nowadays it is usually the overland trains and the Docklands Light Railway. Something that has been noticeable ever since the invention of the smart phone is the “phone hunch” – people sit, transfixed by their mobile devices, and usually oblivious to the world around them. I see young mothers pushing babies in buggies, oblivious to their offspring as they are preoccupied by the latest FaceBook status update. I am of the opinion that a prediction made by Albert Einstein has now already come to pass. Einstein said " I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots". On a number of occasions I have been in a conversation with someone, only for them to suddenly reach for their pocket, pull out their phone then proceed to ignore me for several minutes, without so much as a “by your leave”. I find it extremely rude, though when I have challenged this behaviour before, I have been met with blank incomprehension.  They genuinely could not see that their behaviour was rude and inconsiderate to those around them. A new psychological condition has been diagnosed by psychologists, it is known as “Phantom Vibration Syndrome” a stress induced condition where the sufferer incorrectly believes that their mobile phone is vibrating to alert them to a call.  You can read more about the recognised medical condition here. It would seem that a significant percentage of mobile phone users are in a constant state of anticipation – for a call, text or tweet from their extended virtual network of friends and associates, and this builds stress that can exhibit as the perception of phantom calls. Some of the worst stress effects of mobile phones arise through social habit. Despite the phones' promise of making daily life more convenient,  they often make things  more difficult. A study by Intel has found that one in five people admit to being wilfully late because they can reschedule dates and meetings at the last minute via mobile phone, and three-quarters say that mobile phone ownership has made them 'more flexible when meeting friends'  (i.e., they are wilfully late, but lie about it). My own conscious decision not to have a mobile phone has made me a bit of an unusual case; it does mean that I am always prompt for appointments, and never cancel at the last minute. Because I am very organised, I would say that there are only one or two times a year when having a phone would be to my advantage, which really is not a significant issue in my case. For me the upside is not being constantly bombarded with messages that I neither want or need, and also when I am at work I don’t have the distraction that so many people have. All in all, it works for me.

Did you know that Status Quo have made a full length cinema movie, which is being released in the summer? I didn't until recently either. It turns out to be a knock about comedy adventure. After watching the trailer, I cannot decide whether it will be a knowing, tongue in cheek bit of fluff, or one of the most dreadful movies ever committed to celluloid. Judge for yourself and let me know what you think.

An early build of the successor to Microsoft’s’ much derided and very unpopular Windows 8 has “leaked” onto several file sharing sites. Normally when this happens it is the manufacturer deliberately releasing a very early build in order to garner feedback from enthusiasts and early adopters. The next version of Windows, currently named Windows Blue is available for download from a number of shady an disreputable sites (no, I am not providing any links, the chances are you would end up with a hard disc full of malware and other junk if I did, and I don’t want to encourage illegal downloading anyway).

I reckon that Erith is the cheapest place to purchase residential property of anywhere within 30 minutes train journey of London Bridge station. There was a bedsit for sale on the Robinson and Jackson website that was on offer for £49,950. OK, it was not exactly large or well appointed (actually it was a squalid little shoe box of a place), but it was relatively modern, close to Erith Station, and a real foot on the property ladder for someone. It got taken off the estate agent's website pretty quickly, so I can only assume that it got a buyer very quickly indeed.

When standing in a supermarket queue, or waiting to pay for my paper in my local corner shop, I am struck by the large number of women’s scandal magazines that are on sale. I am thinking of titles like “Take a Break”, "That's Life!", "Love It!","Pick Me Up!", "Full House!" and a handful of others. Apart from having an almost compulsory exclamation mark in their titles, the other thing that all of these publications have in common is that they sell stories about personal tragedy in the same way that other magazines aimed at a mainly female audience sell celebrity gossip and slimming tips. These magazines are marketed as light reading, something to be absorbed whilst lingering over a cup of tea, yet they are filled with disturbing, harrowing stories that would only be covered after the 9pm watershed if they were a television show. The design, format and colour scheme of all of these magazines are rather formulaic; They generally have a young, smiling woman on the cover, a sort of "girl next door" type. The rest of the cover is filled with boxes and banners in primary colours - a means of grabbing the attention of a potential buyer. The trouble is that the content of the banners is horrifying - life changing events such as murder, incest, acid attacks, crimes of violence and personal tragedy. The irony is that many of the stories involve violence against women, yet they are read by mainly women as light entertainment. They seem to be the printed equivalent of the Jeremy Kyle show; I worry about the people who purchase these magazines. It strikes me that anyone who enjoys reading about the misfortunes of others probably has some issues themselves. I would be interested in what you think. Please leave a comment below; all comments are moderated and published within 24 hours at most.

Did you know that there are only two industrial buildings in London that have Grade 1 listed status? One is Tower Bridge, and the other is the pump house at Crossness Sewage Works. The ornate Victorian structure was designed by engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and architect Charles Henry Driver. It was constructed between 1859 and 1865 as part of his redevelopment of the London sewerage system. The pumping station was an essential part of the clean up of London’s water system, and led directly to the elimination of many water borne diseases, notably Cholera, which prior to this time was a significant killer. If you have not visited the pumping station, it is a cathedral in cast and wrought iron. The charitable trust that runs the building and that is nowadays responsible for restoring the giant boilers and pumps to a working state have just announced the schedule of days where the pumping station will be open to the public in 2013. The first event takes place on Sunday, April 21, from 10.30am to 5pm, and will be a local history fair with exhibitors organised by Bexley Civic Society. There will be another four steam days until October, but at the time of writing the exact dates are not yet available. The place is well worth a visit, whether you have an interest in engineering, architecture, local history or films and television. As I have mentioned before, the pumping station has been used as a location for both TV and films – the recent Victorian drama “The Crimson Petal and the White”, the first Guy Ritchie directed “Sherlock Holmes” movie (the opening sequence where Lord Blackwood is about to perform a human sacrifice in what looks like a Masonic temple was actually filmed in the centre part of the main pump hall). Many other films, such as the first Tim Burton directed “Batman” and the first “Alien” film also used the place as a major location. What is both interesting and ironic is that Sir Joseph Bazalgette is the great – great grandfather of TV producer Sir Peter Bazalgette, the person who brought us programmes such as Ground Force, Ready, Steady Cook and Big Brother. There is a running joke in the media industry that whilst Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for removing excrement from the home, Peter is now responsible for introducing it!

Erith based graphic design consultancy 4Q Graphix are looking for an office in or around the town. If you know of any spare office space suitable, and at a reasonable cost, please let Mark Smallcorn at 4Q Graphix a call; their details, and a bit about the company are below - click for a larger view.

Next week will mark a key event in the history of Erith. The much heralded regeneration of the Larner Road housing estate will begin. On Friday the 5th April, demolition of the seven large tower blocks will commence; all of the high rise elements of the original estate are being razed to the ground; the replacement £100 million plus development will consist of low rise accommodation and some conventional housing; part of which will be put on sale. The remainder will be administered by the housing association. The building programme is quite ambitious, and the construction workers will have a tight schedule to keep, as the first new houses are due for completion in 2015. A special viewing area will be set up for local residents to watch the demolition work as it happens; I would hope to get along there at some point over the weekend to photograph the work for posterity. The Friday commencement of demolition will be heralded with a party – A group of acrobats will be performing, live Zulu music from the Majuba Drummers. There will also be t-shirt painting, magnet making, a photography workshop and cinema showings of The Ballad of Larner Road film, that I featured on the Maggot Sandwich a couple of weeks ago. I won’t unfortunately be able to make this party, as I will be at work, and shortly after work I will be covering the 8th Bexley Beer Festival at its’ new venue – the Old Dartfordian’s Club in Bexley Village. I hope to have photos of the festival, ready for the next Maggot Sandwich update on Sunday. One of the breweries that will be exhibiting their wares at the festival is a brand new one. The Caveman Brewery is located in Swanscombe, and brews beers for a number of pubs and clubs around North Kent and beyond; their beers are even stocked at the prestigious Bricklayers Arms pub in Putney – consistently voted as one of the best pubs in the country. You can see the Caveman Brewery website here.

I took the photo above yesterday afternoon, dodging between snow and sleet showers. I have to say that I cannot recall it ever being so freezing cold at Easter before. The weather really is getting everyone down. Anyway, Erith Pier is host to a number of commercial ships on an almost daily basis. Generally they tie up for a day or so, before heading off to places unknown. Quite often the crews take advantage of the close proximity of Morrison's supermarket, and they have on several occasions been seen pushing trollies full of food along the pier and onto their ships. To my knowledge, this is the only place on the River Thames where a commercial ship can moor and the crew go shopping. Even the River Police have been seen going for a quick all day fry up in the cafeteria in the supermarket. Talk about a local service. I'm hoping to be able to make an announcement about the pier in the near future, but for the meantime, I need to keep my own counsel. Keep watching this space over the coming weeks.

I have heard consternation expressed that Belvedere Police station is reducing the hours it opens to just three a week. Many people seem to be unaware that it has been a public facing police station in name only for many years; most of its’ main functions are now undertaken at Bexleyheath Police Station, and I think it will not be long before the building is sold off to try and refill the Metropolitan Polices’ drained coffers. The hard fact remains that apart from being asked to produce motoring documentation, many people around the country don’t ever visit their Police station. In Erith, we have the Police office, next to the Farm Foods supermarket. It is not open to the public, but is a place where the various Safer Neighbourhood Police teams are based when not actually out pounding the beat. There are no cells or interrogation rooms in the building, just an office and storage facilities. This is the way that the police will be operating for the foreseeable future, reflecting the austerity the government is bringing to all public services. Having said that, I do detect an element of “do as we say, not as we do”. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a high level meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall as part of my job. I wrote a bit about it back then; what I did not say was that once I had got through the first two layers of intense security that surround the building (and pretty much all of Whitehall, for that matter) I was guided into an inner courtyard in which twenty Jaguar saloon cars were parked. It was obvious that they were government owned cars – they all had very similar registration numbers, and they were all less than a year old. After looking on the Jaguar website, the cars I saw, with the options they had, would have retailed at approximately £90,000 each. Whilst I am sure that the government would have got a bulk discount, a roughly £1.8 million bill for a bunch of ministerial Jags during a recession does strike me as “one rule for you, and one rule for us” and certainly sends out a mixed message. Personally I think Ministers should use public transport like the rest of us (with the added bonus that when they realised how horrendous it can be, they might be better motivated to actually get it improved!)

The ending video this week was sent to me by Alan, who (correctly) thought that it would appeal to me. The video was taken during the Earth Hour light switch off, it shows thirty remotely piloted UAV's equipped with LED lights. They are flown in formation to create the Starfleet insignia, as part of a promotion for the forthcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness movie. Very cool indeed.

The electric gasper.

The photo above shows Erith Blockbusters, which I took yesterday; closure is iminent, along with most of the rest of the chain. Morrison’s have bought a number of Blockbuster shops, as they think that this will be a cheap way for them to expand into the convenience store market. Morrison’s have an eleven percent share of the UK supermarket business in the UK, but in London and the South East, they currently only have a six percent market share. Buy purchasing ex Blockbuster sites, they aim to expand their portfolio a relatively small cash outlay. Suffice to say that the Erith Blockbuster store is somewhat unlikely to get such a rescue, sited as it is, directly opposite the Erith Morrison’s store, separated by nothing other than the car park. I have not heard if any other retailer has expressed an interest in the site, but I am keeping my ear to the ground. Another shop is about to close in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre, the long established family run business Warmlake Sports, which was one of the few shops to carry over from the old Erith Town Centre before the rebuild and refurbishment some years ago. More on the old town centre later. “The death of the high street”, which has been predicted by a number of publications, including the Economist, really seems to be happening. Walking down Bexleyheath Broadway last week, I found that around 25% of all shops were either closing down, or already empty. It was not just the well known recent failures such as Peacocks and HMV, but family run Kimberley hifi and even outdoor specialist Milletts has gone to the wall. Things are looking more grim for the retail sector than I have ever seen before. Not only are people spending less, but their spending habits are changing; people tend to do a lot more shopping around by using price comparison websites and other web based searches. Quite often the shopper will then end up buying online. I don’t see how the traditional high street business model can continue in its’ present form without some serious changes.

Regular readers will be more than aware that I have been very keen on Bexley Council’s participation in the national “Scores on the Doors” food hygiene scheme, which is aimed at any outlet offering food to the public. Last week reader Brian submitted his review of the Ark Christian book shop and cafe. The place was graded as a 2 out of 5 stars when it was inspected in August last year. Brian’s very complimentary review of the place makes me think that the standards must have improved markedly since the inspection; I am trying to discover how frequently the Environmental Health inspectors check each food outlet, and if it is possible for an improving outlet to request a re – visit and new scoring. One place which only got inspected in mid January this year is the excellent Robin Hood and Little John in Lion Road, Bexleyheath (see the photo above). It is no surprise to me that this paragon of well kept real ale and proper home cooked food scored the maximum five stars out of five for excellent levels of food hygiene. I would have expected nothing less. The Robin Hood and Little John is most definitely not a gastro pub – they serve proper food, in substantial portions at a very reasonable price (click here for their menu as a PDF), which can be washed down by six regular real ales and usually a couple of guest ales, as well as a couple of craft ciders. I understand that they also sell lager, though I am not quite sure why. They have won the Bexley CAMRA “Best pub in Bexley” every single year that they have been eligible to enter; in fact Bexley CAMRA had to change the entry rules to allow other pubs to stand a chance; in reality the competition is about what local pub will come second – first place is a no brainer. I would strongly recommend you try this gem of a hostelry, it is without doubt the best pub in the area by a mile.

I think a lot of rubbish has been written by the Daily Mail and the Express recently; they have been publishing articles stating that millions of Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants will be arriving in Britain just as soon as the temporary migration ban expires. I don't know why they think this will be the case. How will they get here? - We've already eaten all of their transportation!

As many longer term readers will be aware, I am a big fan and user of the Linux operating system. I have been using it in one form or another since 1997 when it was clunky, difficult to use and really only suitable for technically experienced users. Nowadays it is as easy, or easier to use than Windows. Most people think that Linux is for geeks, and yes, us geeks do use it, but a lot of “civilians” use it too, often without realising it. Most TV set top boxes run Linux, as do pretty much every kind of embedded device; most popularly, the Android OS is actually Linux with a swish graphical user interface nailed on top. I digress. Much of the reason that Linux has not got much traction on the consumer desktop is because the software available for it is limited compared to the Windows environment; this is especially true in respect of  games – though this is now beginning to change. The largest game developer by revenue is Valve, and they have ported many of their most popular games onto the Linux operating system, these can be downloaded by anyone with a Steam account. At present only the Ubuntu distribution is supported, but as this is the largest and most widely used distribution, it should not be a major issue. I know of one hardcore gamer who has not considered Linux until now, but he is now about to install the free and open source Ubuntu, purely for the purposes of gaming. The reason for this relatively sudden move into Linux as a gaming platform is that it is widely rumoured that Microsoft are going to launch a Windows 8 app store, in a similar way to how Apple launched their app store a couple of years ago; Apple get a percentage of the purchase price of each game or other application downloaded from the store – Microsoft can see an opportunity for a new revenue stream by restricting software downloads to their own store. Valve are vociferous in opposing this change in business model, and as it is looking like Microsoft are going to hold firm, Valve are looking at the alternatives. The attraction of using Linux as a gaming platform is easy to see. On the same hardware, Ubuntu Linux runs between 14 and 24 per cent faster than Windows 7 – speed is essential for a gaming platform. Valve have written new graphics drivers for Ubuntu – which has historically always had the best hardware driver support of all Linux distributions. It seems to be a win/win for end users – a superior operating system that is free to download and use, and has no digital rights management  (DRM) to cripple what you do with the computer. Hopefully as at first the hardcore gamers, then the more mainstream users will realise that there is a lot more to computing life than what comes out of the Microsoft factory at Redmond. It will also be a healthier, multiple operating system environment, encouraging competition and thus benefitting the consumer in the long run.

Whilst carrying out some research for this weeks’ Maggot Sandwich update, I came across some references to the shops in the old Erith Shopping centre, before it was refurbished and pretty much rebuilt – see the photo above for an idea as to what it was like (in a word – horrible!) The multi storey car park was dark and intimidating, and the stairwells always smelled of wee. All in all it was a pretty depressing place, which many locals consider to have been deeply flawed from when it was originally built. I have heard older residents say with conviction that it was a major mistake to have demolished the original Erith Town Centre; certainly a lot of the buildings that were knocked down would nowadays be granted listed status. There was a restaurant in the town centre, squirreled away under the car park, in the darkest and most ominous part of the concrete monstrosity; it was called Monroe’s Carvery. I never visited the place, but it seemed to turn over a steady business, in the days before the McDonald’s and KFC drive throughs in Manor Road opened. It was a very old fashioned place – in addition to the carvery, they served dishes such as Duck a la Orange and Veal Cutlets, washed down with a bottle of Blue Nun and followed by Black Forest gateaux. I thought that this kind of retro dining experience had died with the fall of the wrecking ball, but I was proved wrong. Monroe’s lives on in spirit via a very long established restaurant in Bellegrove Road, Welling.  The Avenida has been around for donkey’s years, and I don’t think that the place has been changed in all that time. Their menu would have been cutting edge in about 1976, but now it is extremely retro in a non ironic manner. If the place was moved into the West End, it would probably be a hit with trendy twenty somethings wanting a taste of the seventies. Instead it continues to plough its’ own furrow. Not my cup of tea, but some people seem to like it.

As I walked home from the station on Monday afternoon, I noticed some activity on the old brown field site that used to house Erith Tram Shed. The land has been derelict and covered in undergrowth for years. I investigated, and was pleasantly surprised to see that work had just begun on the new Bexley College campus! Workers were clearing the ground at the riverside end of the plot of land, and setting up some portacabins as site offices. The old car park in Stonewood Road has been set aside as a store for building materials and construction vehicles. The campus will replace the old skyscraper buildings off Tower Road down by the Pom Pom, which are being sold off for redevelopment as yet more housing. Bringing the college into the centre of Erith will be a boost the local economy and a benefit to the students as well. It really is an all around win. I just hope that the redevelopment plans include step free access to the London bound platform at the adjacent Erith Station. Hopefully over the coming months we will get a better idea as to how the campus is going to pan out.

I was pleasantly surprised about the reader feedback to my questions surrounding electronic cigarettes last week; it would seem that former tobacco smokers who have switched to electronic cigarettes have found the process of then moving off smoking completely to be easier than with some other methods of quitting. I was a bit cautious about my feelings for the electronic fags, but it would seem that they are a massive improvement on conventional cigarettes – not only are they several magnitudes less health harming, but they don’t make noxious smells either, which was one of my main objections. Hopefully if these devices become more widespread, it may lead to people going out to their local pubs more frequently. It has been a norm to see a huddle of smokers outside licenced establishments come rain or shine. If, as one of my respondents says (and my further research has confirmed) they are legal to use in confined public places in the UK, it may encourage those smokers who stopped visiting the pub when the smoking ban was introduced to return to their local hostelry.  Please feel free to leave a comment below. It will be moderated and published within 24 hours. I have to use comment moderation, as I get around a hundred spam messages posing as reader comments every day. The Maggot Sandwich averages around 20,000 user hits a month, and I feel that it has in some ways become a victim of its’ own success.

You may recall that I recently covered the resurgence of interest in Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) otherwise known as cold fusion; the phenomenon was big news in the late 1980’s but those behind the “discovery” were not able to reproduce a sustained reaction in laboratory conditions, and LENR got written off as a con and a fraud. The research has since been continued by others, who seem to have confirmed that there is indeed something positive going on. The U.S Department of Energy are now so interested, that they have hired Professor George Miley of the University of Illinois Fusion Lab to head a team to investigate LENR and produce a report on it. If the U.S Government are interested in this alternative method of energy generation, and are prepared to invest several  million dollars in so doing, it is pretty likely that a workable LENR generator will be produced soon. I am aware that a number of private engineering ventures are working on generators right now. It is possible that the era of cheap, endless, pollution free energy is shortly to be with us. It sounds like a story that is too good to be true; I just hope that this is not the case.

You may have seen mention of the public launch of the Google Glass project over the last few days. Glass aims to change the way humans interface with computers. Looking very much like a pair of glasses, but with one tiny lens, Glass provides the user with real-time, contextual information about the environment. It could be a glimpse into the future of computing. It is the next phase in enhanced reality. I think the project is interesting, but I have my doubts as to the real life use for the web enabled spectacles. The ability to take photos and video in real time and to instantaneously post it online, along with automatic geo tagging and facial  recognition does mean a further erosion in privacy. The fact that images recorded via Google Glass mean that anyone captured has their details automatically uploaded to Google's servers seems like a gross invasion of privacy to me. Nevertheless, it is an insanely clever piece of technology. I am guessing that the glasses use a Bluetooth connection to an Android mobile phone, which then makes the connection to the Google Cloud, where all the clever voice recognition heavy processing is actually done. As a non mobile phone user, this immediately disqualifies me, not that I would be personally interested anyway. It strikes me that the kind of people who would most benefit from Google Glass are the kind of people who lead rather more adventurous and less cerebral lives than I. See a demonstration of the enhanced reality spectacles below, and feel free to leave a comment as always. Don't think for an instant I am anti the technology as such, just cautious as to the ways in which it can be exploited for the wrong reasons. I have compiled this entry on my Samsung Google Chromebook - more on Google Chrome OS next week.

High Street implosion?

Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that my powers of prediction are rather better than they really should be. As you may well know, the days of me sitting down at my computer on Sunday afternoon to write the latest update to the Maggot Sandwich are long gone. The amount of research, and the sheer work involved putting together a weekly update that averages 2,800 words, means that I now start the next entry within hours of the previous one being published. By Monday evening, it is not uncommon for me to already have around a thousand words written for the next entry. The down side of this, is that sometimes my musings can be overtaken by events. On Monday evening I wrote that I thought that Blockbuster, who have a large store in Erith, would be one of the next retailers to go broke. By Wednesday afternoon my prediction was proved correct rather more quickly than I anticipated. More on this shortly.

There has been a lot of fuss in the press this week about horse meat being found in cheap and nasty burgers from Tesco, Aldi and a few other high street outlets. Personally I don't have a problem with eating horse - I have done in the past, and it it not very dissimilar to lean steak; I have also eaten Ostrich (very tasty indeed - like a cross between turkey and fillet steak) and Wildebeest (not very nice - it tastes like the smell of new leather) I fail to see what the problem is. Teresa May was quoted in the week, saying that "this was an issue of concern to all consumers" - not to me it isn't - I shop at Waitrose.

I have come to the conclusion that Matalan in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre only sells garments in Small, Medium, or Extra Extra Extra Large. I can never find anything in sizes to fit me, whatever it is that I am looking for.  I have heard the same complaint from others; it strikes me that if they don’t give more attention to both stocking levels and customer service (Matalan never seem to have any staff, other than on one or two tills) they will end up going the way of HMV, who famously went bust last week. HMV have been a “zombie company” for quite a while, despite posting record profits only two years ago. To my mind HMV were always an “also ran” in the entertainment media market; they never had the breadth of stock of somewhere like Virgin Records, and they could never offer the keen prices of the long gone and much lamented Our Price Records, a store chain I am sure I am not alone in missing. Digital downloads are only part of the reason for the demise of HMV; until their very recent ruthless price cuts they were always an expensive option. Many people still want a physical recording, rather than a download, but put off by the previous high prices in HMV, they inevitably end up buying from Amazon instead. This change in content purchasing behaviour from a majority of physical purchases now changing to a majority of downloads is set to continue.  Blockbuster famously also bit the dust last week. The American owned chain was the death knell for nearly every independent video store in the early 90’s. You may recall that in the 1980’s, almost every village would have a family run video hire store, stocked to the gunwales with VHS video cassettes. These shops were very successful for a number of years – before the advent of satellite and cable TV, the terrestrial television stations showed very few new movies, except a small handful at Christmas. VHS video machines were incredibly popular at the time, due I suspect at least partly to the lack of movie choice. The independent video hire shops fed this market with a diet of a sprinkling of Hollywood blockbusters, padded out with an incredible number of B movies and low budget direct to video films usually starring Chuck Norris or Cynthia Rothrock (who I suspect was actually a shaved Chuck Norris in a wig, as you never saw the two of them in the same place, a la Batman and Bruce Wayne). Quite often, groups of kids would hang around the shops, playing arcade games and waiting for one of the scarce copies of the premium movies to be returned by the previous renter - there would often be a scrum to get to the counter to snatch this precious cassette and bag the rights to take it home for the evening. Happy days. All this came to an end when big hitter Blockbuster arrived across the pond from the USA, building large stores on the edge of towns where you got free parking and discounts on multiple film hires – they were even fairly flexible about returning movies. The downfall also coincided with the advent of DVD. Many family run video hire shops could not afford the overheads of restocking with the (then) very expensive DVD format, and quietly closed up. Blockbuster effectively became the only significant player on the block, a position it has held until relatively recently. Now it has been being assailed by the likes of Netflix and Lovefilm. Blockbuster launched its’ own online movie rental service, but it did not seem to have made much difference to its' market traction. Blockbuster had an extensive estate of large and expensive physical stores. The shop in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre was seldom busy, and must have cost a small fortune to run; I doubt it ever made a profit. I feel sorry for those who will lose their jobs in the liquidation, but the whole physical media hire business model has become unsustainable now that fast broadband network access has become ubiquitous and cheap. To mourn for the loss of jobs in the video hire industry is akin to mourning the loss of lamplighter jobs in the late Edwardian era – it is something inevitable now that technology has changed, and business practices are forced to change to accommodate it.  Better to get out before the physical hire market collapses completely, and to get into another line of work. It is going to happen, it is merely a question of how long before the business finally goes down the tubes. Now that Blockbuster have crashed, there is little left for physical media hire. We are most definitely seeing the end of an era.

Blog comments, like buses seem thin on the ground, then suddenly a bunch of them will turn up at once, as was the case following last week’s update regarding the noisome Pizza Hut takeaway in Northumberland Heath. It would seem that I struck somewhat of a chord with certain readers. The unanimous opinion seems to be that Bexley Council Environmental Health Department should automatically shut any food outlet scoring zero stars on the “scores on the doors” points system. Bearing in mind that there are currently fifty such unhygienic establishments in the borough, that would be a lot of enforcement for them to carry out.

Over the past year or so, I have been reporting on a number of technological anniversaries, and this week is not an exception. It it the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Lisa computer. The Lisa was the first generally available computer to have a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Xerox had produced a couple of earlier models, the Xerox Alto, and the later Xerox Star computers, both of which had a GUI in the mid 1970's. Neither was a commercial product, more of a research project with a limited production run. Apple did licence the desktop analogy and aspects of the overall look and feel from Xerox, which they then developed into the Lisa. The Lisa cost $10,000 in 1983 (an absolute fortune), and to be honest it was a slow and underpowered machine, even by the standards of the day. It is generally regarded that the Lisa was a flop, but it did make Apple $100 million profit, even though relatively few units (100,000) were shipped. The Apple Macintosh was developed in tandem with the Lisa (in fact, most of the original Mac software was developed on Lisas). What the Lisa did do was bring the concept of the GUI to end users and the general public, and completely shape the face of modern computing like no other single product. Apple Lisas are now exceedingly rare indeed. There is a complete, fully working one in mint condition on EBay right now - and look at the price of it! You can read more about the Lisa by clicking here. The video below is a very rare American TV commercial for  the Lisa; it features a very young "before they were famous" Kevin Costner as the Lisa using businessman. Those of you with very long memories may recall I featured this clip about four years ago, but I feel that it could to with a a swift re-showing, just for the cheesy eighties feel of it. 

Word reaches Pewty Acres that E4 have given the green light to the producers of sci fi comedy series "Misfits" for a fifth season of the show. I suspect that this may well be the final season, as many of the locations that are key to the look and feel of the show are shortly to be demolished. "Misfits" is filmed in and around Thamesmead, principally at Tavy Bridge and Southmere Lake Community Centre. Much of the area is being redeveloped, and the current, late 60's brutalist concrete architecture which features so heavily in the show will be no more.

Last week’s video of the documentary about the Avro Vulcan raid on Port Stanley airport during the Falklands War in 1982 has brought some very interesting feedback from an unexpected source. More of that in a bit; my own memories of the Falklands War are still strong. I had been given a poster featuring the crest of every ship in the Royal Navy some time before the conflict began, and I dutifully crossed out each ship as it was sunk or badly damaged. By the end of the war there were a depressingly large number of black crosses. I was still at school at the time, and smack bang in the middle of the Falklands War, I went on a geography field trip to Barry Island in Wales. The school party stayed at Barry Island Butlins – at the time a scruffy and run – down place with indifferent staff and greasy, inedible food. During the evenings the school kids were given pretty much free rein of the holiday camp, providing we did not leave the premises. There was a kids disco run by a very dubious looking Welsh Jimmy Saville clone. One evening he was playing some terrible records (“Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners seemed to be on almost constant rotation) when one of a large group of Spanish school kids that were also staying at the camp ran up onto the low stage and grabbed the DJ’s microphone. He began a chant amongst the Spanish kids of “Malvinas, Malvinas!” It had to be said this ended in pretty short order when Phil Peskitt, school bully and all round hard man, leapt onto the stage and punched the Spanish kid on the nose, knocking him over. A small riot then ensued. All of the teachers from my school who were supervising the event seemed to be looking in the opposite direction during the whole incident! There was plenty of military activity around much of South Wales at the time; mainly due to the fact that the army used the area for training. We got to see lots of Harrier jets and military transports rushing here and there, and when we visited Pen Y Fan, the second highest peak in Wales, there was a small group of scruffy and very tired looking blokes in old fashioned army greatcoats and hob nailed boots climbing up and down the mountain. We did not really think very much about them, but with hindsight, these were almost certainly troops training for SAS selection. Anyway, for more memories from that dark time in our recent history, we have a guest contributor to the Maggot Sandwich – Malcolm Knight of the Bexley is Bonkers website, who had a very important role in the Falklands conflict. Here are his memories of the time:- From 1979 until 1984 the phone line to Port Stanley was entirely my responsibility. Not many calls and no one was very interested in it. It only operated for 2 x 2 hours a day and Stanley/London was their only public comms to the outside world. In Jan 82 the number of calls started going up and I upped the hours of operation eventually to 24/7. I didn't monitor the conversations, in retrospect I wish I had broken the rules and done so. I reported up the management chain that something weird was going on but was ignored and to be honest I never suspected an invasion or I might have kicked up a bigger fuss. Before the Vulcan raid the MoD got twitchy about the local small population on Ascension telling their relations abroad about the RAF build up. Ascension Is. comms was entirely mine too and they had no other access to the outside world - so I stopped the potential leaks by the only method I could think of. I pulled the appropriate plug. The day after the Vulcan raid the MoD called me to say I could stick the Ascension plug back in again and I asked if they were going to bomb Stanley again. Probably they said (with appropriate reticence) so I said in that case I wasn't going to restore the Ascension plug. They took some persuading that pulling the plug before the night of a raid was going to send a signal to the outside world. The pattern would be detected, if not by someone in Argentina but certainly by the Spanish nationals I employed in the exchange and whose loyalties could not be trusted. They got the point eventually. I spoke to the manager of the Falklands telecoms during the conflict and met him afterwards. He said his staff worked with machine guns pointing at their backs so they didn't try to send 'coded' messages abroad. One of the things the Argies did as soon as they got on the island was set up a public phone service to Buenos Aires. The Falklands had no satellite link at the time - it went in pretty quickly afterwards! - so the Argie link was HF (Shortwave) radio, no encryption, nothing, so I sat a Spanish speaking Englishwoman on the end of a suitable receiver connected to British Telecom's aerial system at Rugby, so I could know what was going on. Not official, just me being nosey. All we got was government talk about changing the currency and putting Argentinian postage stamps in the post office. They certainly intended to stay. Half way through the war the Argentinians came up on the Stanley circuit, which had been dead since they took over, and asked to speak to me and together we arranged to re-establish normal telephone services immediately. This was standard practice between nations at war, just carry on regardless as far as possible. The agreement was that on our single circuit one call would come from them alternating with one from us.  In typical British fashion we had queued the UK requests for calls and proceeded to connect them in that order. Unfortunately that meant that all the calls came from newspapers and the Argies got very stroppy with me accusing me of some underhand trick when none was intended. I had to agree that all calls would be inbound from then on. Most were from worried Falklanders anxious to call friends in the UK as there had been no telephone service for several weeks. Sometimes the calls got No Reply and when the Falklander claimed special urgency I got in the habit of phoning the appropriate local radio station if available and getting them to put out an SOS to get back to their phone quickly! All very unofficial of course but in most cases it worked a treat and the radio station staff were always pleased to do it. I met the Falklands' comms manager because Mrs. Thatcher invited him to London for the victory parade. The Ascension Island people didn’t get their service restored until the war was over.  What a fascinating story. Not something I have seen recorded in any history of the Falklands conflict. Thanks for letting me re-tell your memories Malcolm!

A story that seems to have thus far got under the radar of most local news outlets is that the owners of the famous, and now decommissioned cruise liner the Queen Elizabeth II are hoping to be allowed to permanently moor the vessel at Carlsberg Wharf, directly opposite the O2 Arena on the  banks of the River Thames. They want to convert the ship into a luxury floating hotel with 550 cabins, seven international restaurants and a cinema. If the plans get approved (and Boris is backing it) the ship would employ a crew of around 1,500 people, bringing permanent jobs to what is an otherwise economically depressed area. It would also add a touch of glamour to Greenwich Peninsular – not the most aesthetically pleasing place at present. Bearing in mind the cruise liners and gigantic luxury super yachts that filled the South Quay in Canary Wharf at the time of the Olympics (click here to see my photos) I think that this project could well be a winner. The QEII is currently moored in storage in Dubai; whilst the work to convert her into a floating hotel would be extensive, I think that the kind of publicity the project would bring to the region could only be a positive thing. I am sure the novelty of a luxurious floating hotel would add a sparkle of glamour to a part of South East London that could surely use it. If the project does not take off, there is a strong possibility that the QEII would be scrapped. Not a pleasant demise for what is one of the World’s best known passenger ships.

Erith Model Railway Society have their annual exhibition at the Bexley Business Academy in Yarnton Way, Thamesmead on the 26th and 27th of January. Over eighty stands and twenty five different model railway layouts will be featured. The entry price will be £6 for adults, £5 for concessions and £3 per child. You can read more about the exhibition by clicking here. You can see some HD footage of last years exhibition in the video below. It certainly looks like a hell of a lot of work goes into the event; I wish them well. Comments below, as always.