The Maggoty Man.

The photos above were taken on a very wet and windy Tuesday evening in the conservatory at the rear of the Royal Standard pub in Nuxley Road, Upper Belvedere. The second public meeting of the Save Belvedere Splash Park campaign was held. Nearly thirty people crowded into the conservatory. The main business of the evening was to elect a committee to actually run the protest campaign. Not long after I arrived at the venue accompanied by my camera, a lady came up to me and asked “Are you the maggoty man?” which left me slightly nonplussed. I knew what she meant, and wondered if she had also got it mixed up with The Matt Smith version of The Doctor, who was occasionally referred to as “the raggedy man”. I confirmed I was that person, which seemed to please her. I have been giving some thought to the whole terminology of online journals, and what the names imply. Personally I am forming the opinion that the term “blogger” may no longer be appropriate for the likes of Malcolm Knight, Darryl Chamberlain,  and indeed myself. In my opinion, blogging seems to denote the occasional postings of missives in a casual and inconsistent manner – a quick whinge about something to get it off your chest and into the world, whether the world is interested or not. Long term, regular postings in a consistent format that involves a considerable investment of time and effort, as well as a degree of subject research and accountability to the readership would seem to me to be more than mere blogging. I would suggest that a more suitable term should be "community journalism". What do you think? Does it sound pompous and self-serving, or do I have a  point? I would solicit your opinions and suggestions. Answers on a postcard please, or better still, leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

As I have commented recently, it does seem that the actions of Bexley Council Environmental Health Department are having a very positive effect. The “Scores on the Doors” ratings of many local food outlets have been steadily improving over the last few months. It has just come to my attention that traditional London Pie and Mash shop – Miller’s in Albert Road, Upper Belvedere has been awarded a five out of five star rating for food hygiene and kitchen cleanliness. This is excellent news; I know several friends who eat there on occasion, and the reports have always been that the pie and mash sold is of exceptionally high quality. In this time of fried chicken and dodgy mass produced burgers it is good to see that certain traditions are not about to die off. One friend has two primary school age daughters – they prefer pie and mash to McDonald’s or Burger King, and I know that Miller’s is their destination of choice. On a less salubrious note, I am pleased to see that the application made by African restaurant K’s Spice in Pier Road, Erith to open from 9am until 1.30 am the next morning, seven days a week has been rejected by Bexley Council planning department. The restaurant is located under a row of low – rise flats, many of which are occupied by people with small children. The level of noise and disruption that such long opening hours would cause are simply not acceptable. As if this was not enough, even though many “Scores on the Doors” ratings in the area are improving, as already mentioned, the K’s Spice has consistently had an unacceptable one star out of five for the last three inspections. Personally I think that the place should be compulsorily closed down until such time as it was able to meet or exceed a three out of five star rating – the level that is generally accepted as the minimum acceptable score. What do you think? 

There is another tech birthday this week, but it is not thirty years old as so many seem to have been over this year. This piece of technology celebrates its tenth birthday – the Firefox web browser. If you have been around for a while, you will no doubt record the 1990’s when the web first started to make an appearance. I can recall the heady days of 1996 and browsing the infant web on a PC running Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 3 over a corporate leased line. Even then, it was not a pleasant experience. Private users who were fortunate to have  dial up internet access preferred the Netscape Navigator web browser, which offered a more complete, if somewhat slow and buggy experience. As has been well documented elsewhere, back at this time web browsers were sold in boxes at computer stores. Netscape Navigator was around £35 in PC World – at this time web download speeds were far too slow to download an application, which might be several hundred megabytes in size. Netscape Corporation made a fortune, and for a couple of years they utterly dominated the web browser market. Microsoft came late to the web, but when they did they were ruthless. Microsoft immediately broke the near Netscape monopoly by bundling their rival browser called Internet Explorer free with new Windows PC’s, and by giving away Internet Explorer CD’s on the front of popular computer magazines at the time. Overnight the Netscape market share plummeted, their market capitalisation crumbled, and the company was all but ruined. For the next roughly seven years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had a virtual monopoly on the web browser market. By the time they had released version six, so confident that the opposition had been crushed that Microsoft publicly announced that they were not going to release a further version, as there was nothing left to do with the product Apple mac users were even further unsupported in that the Mac version of Internet Explorer was never developed past version 5. This stunning piece of arrogance soon came back to bite them squarely on the bottom. The Mozilla Firefox project was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla browser – an early open source update of the by then abandoned Netscape Navigator software suite, which consisted of a web browser, an Email client, an Internet Relay Chat tool and a basic “what you see is what you get” web page authoring tool. Hyatt and Ross felt that the Mozilla browser was too large, complex and bloated – very few people really wanted or used anything except the web browser element of the suite; instead they decided to branch out on their own in order to create a much lighter, faster and more efficient stand – alone web browser. Initially this was called Phoenix, but this had to be changed as a company had already go the name registered. The change was then made to Firebird, but again copyright issues were raised. Finally the name became Firefox – named after a breed of Red Panda. Version 1.0 of Firefox was released on the 9^th November 2004. The rest as they say is history. I have a small involvement in the early days of Firefox – I was a volunteer tester – I would download the nightly builds for both Windows and Linux and see how long it took me to find the bugs – which I would then report to the development team. It was quite a big commitment, but the team in those days was only about 25 people in total, and the actual software development team less than half of that, so one soon got to recognise names. Since then, Firefox has been instrumental in removing the dominance of Microsoft – who soon realised that they could not ignore the browser market after all; nevertheless they steadily lost market share, not only to Firefox, but also to the excellent Google Chrome web browser, and to a much lesser extent the rather clunky Apple Safari browser, and the very idiosyncratic Opera web browser (yes, it is still going – just!) If Firefox have done anything, it is to democratise web surfing – they are also the only major web browser company whose products are not tied to a large company, and whose programming code is truly free and open source, Happy Birthday Firefox – you deserve it!

Some readers are surprised at the amount of time I spend working on each weekly update of the Maggot Sandwich; on average each update takes around ten hours of work to research, write, edit, create web links and metadata for. Much of the time is spent in research – I try to ensure that I report on facts, not suppositions, and bearing in mind I am both reporter and editor this can on occasions be extremely difficult. This week I have what would have been a couple of local scoops, but the Save Belvedere Splash Park team accidentally blew the stories before I had a chance to properly get the details. I had mentioned the stories to them in passing, and they unwittingly passed them on. Such is the nature of online media. I am constrained by only publishing once a week on a Sunday. Nevertheless I did uncover the following two news stories, one of which is solid fact, and the other at present is still a rumour that has yet to have been properly corroborated, but does come from a previously reliable anonymous source. The first, solidly confirmed story is that there are plans by giant brewing and hospitality company Marston’s to construct a large pub, restaurant and hotel on the North side of the Belvedere flyover at the junction of Picardy Manor Way and Eastern Way in Lower Belvedere. If approved, it could mean some much needed jobs for the area, as any such new operation will be rather labour intensive and will require a certain amount of staffing 24 hours a day. Marston’s are known for their quality real ale (they are the largest brewer of cask ales in the World), but they also run a very sizable estate of hotels and restaurants on top of the nearly two thousand pubs they operate around the country. Marston’s to my knowledge don't have any pubs in the local area; all I can find is one in the City of London (the Pitcher and Piano in Cornhill), and one in Braintree in Essex(Bailey’s Café Bar). Other than that there is nothing Marston’s – wise in the region, let alone the local area. The site, if it gets planning approval, will be very sensibly situated, close to the A2016 Eastern Way to Plumstead and Woolwich and the A 2016 Bronze Age Way to Erith, Crayford and Dartford, with its link to the M25 and the A2 / M2. I think the business planners at Marston’s have been one step ahead of almost everyone, and I can see the benefitting because of it. As I have covered recently, it is quite probable that a bridge or tunnel will be built at some point to link Lower Belvedere with Rainham in Essex; the proposed new hotel / restaurant and pub would be smack bang on the South side of any connection, and in a prime spot for business travellers needing a bed for the night. It is highly likely that any bridge or tunnel connection across the River Thames would require drastically improved local public transport, thus making the pub and restaurant accessible for any locals wanting to leave the car at home when they went out for a couple of pints, or a meal and a glass of wine. The fact that the newly built Belvedere Park residential estate is within a couple of minute leisurely walk would also be a great advantage. A new facility of this nature really has no local competition – the nearest rough analogue would to my mind be the Harvester outlets in Crayford and Dartford, though they are really too far away. The only place I can see that has anything to fear from a pub / restaurant combination is the Running Horses in Erith High Street. A few months ago when it had a previous health inspection, it only merited a woeful one out of five stars on the “Scores on the Doors “ rating system. Back in October it was re – inspected and I am pleased to say that it has seriously upped its’ game and now rates four out of five stars, an excellent improvement. The bottom line is that the pub does not attract anything like the number of customers it used to. Back in the late 1980’s the upstairs carvery was booked weeks in advance, and packed out every Saturday and Sunday. The food was plentiful, well cooked and reasonably priced; The Running Horses was synonymous with family lunches out, and for good reason indeed. Nowadays the reports of the food have been woeful – cold gristly meat, grey vegetables, congealed gravy and sullen service. As I have said before, I don't see the current owners have the financial clout and experience to pull what could be an excellent pub out of the mire. Currently it seems to be living a hand to mouth existence by supplying the lager needs of a handful of regulars who seem to spend much of their time in the smoking shelter outside of the front of the pub, come rain or shine. The Running Horses would seem to need a large injection of capital, both to upgrade the building and facilities, and also to publicise it to the larger area. I am pretty certain that it is not anything like an impossibility to return the hostelry to the glory days of the 1980’s, but in my opinion it requires new management and a pot of money. The only way I can realistically see this happening is if the owners of the Running Horses sell the pub to a pub management company like Spirit, who own brands like Chef and Brewer, John Barras and Taylor Walker. Alternatively I am sure that Wetherspoon’s would be more than interested in getting a foothold in Erith, as they have nothing in Belvedere, Erith, Crayford or Barnehurst, and their outlets in Bexleyheath are very busy. Personally I would rather see a regional brewer / pub owner such as Shepherd Neame or Fuller’s taking on the pub, as they both have excellent records of turning around failing pubs and moving them slightly upmarket with better quality food and drink. I am probably dreaming in vain; it is evident that Erith town centre really misses a quality pub, and there does not seem to be any likelihood of the Running Horses getting significantly better without third party intervention. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or drop me an Email to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The second piece of information is still classified as a rumour, as at the time of writing I have been unable to get any documentary proof, though I am still digging through various sources. The rumour does come from a previously impeccable source though, and I have no reason to doubt its veracity. I am told that the now long empty Potion building (formerly the White Hart pub shown in the photo above - click on the picture for a larger view) is being studied by Subway as a possible sandwich outlet / restaurant. This would be a logical move by the fast food retailer; Erith does not have any equivalent sandwich shop (Greggs is the nearest thing, I concede), and recently a large influx of potential new customers are present in the town – the students from the newly opened Bexley College Campus in Walnut Tree Road. They are already a noticeable presence in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre, and have definitely increased the takings of many shops. If the rumour has substance (and I believe I may have found a smoking gun - a company called Malthouse Retail that operates a variety of fast food franchises from as far away as Cardiff to as near as Epping in Essex is recruiting shop staff locally). If this is indeed correct, them Malthouse Retail behind the Subway franchise will have an uphill battle on their hands. The White Hart building is in a poor state of repair, and the kitchens need to be completely stripped out and replaced; the structure also needs a totally new ventilation and fume extraction system (don't forget that all Subway outlets bake their own bread on the premises, and need ovens with suitable flues and smell filtering, all of which costs a lot of money).  I am unsure if any new owner would be legally obliged to undertake the remedial works mandated to the operators of Potion – who infamously ripped out the acid etched glass and green, salt glazed Erith Pattern tiles on the exterior of the old pub. Bearing in mind that the building sits in the middle of a conservation area, it may be a condition of trade that a facsimile frontage is installed. Having said that, I know the Council planning department backed away from that idea a while back. At present the whole thing is pure supposition, with only minimal evidence at present. I will publish more news as it comes to me.  I am always reliant on you the reader for my stories – even if you don't want a name check, any story you send can be published in anonymity if you so choose; alternatively I have regular guest writers, and if you have something that you feel would be of interest to people, get in contact with me and we can discuss it. I don't have many rules, but there are a few guidelines I request that guests adhere to – nothing very arduous, just common sense behaviour.

I took the above photo a while back in August when the rumour first surfaced that Electricity House was possibly going to the the subject of a redevelopment plan; thus far nothing has happened, and the story has gone cold. Nevertheless, the site is being allowed to fall slowly into rack and ruin, and no money has been invested in the building in a very long time indeed. It is only a matter of time before the property owner takes action. It would be great to see it undergoing a complete, but sympathetic restoration. Somehow I just don't see this actually happening. If any reader has heard any new stories or rumours about the future plans for Electricity House, please Email me and let me know - I rely on my informers.

Microsoft are pitching their forthcoming Windows 10 operating system heavily towards the education sector; they will be rolling out tools to enable remote administration of laptops running the new OS to make it more attractive to non – technical staff to administer. Meanwhile Google is making a dent on this lucrative market with Chromebooks. The internet giant has been promoting the use of the Linux based Chrome OS with specific tools for schools to manage the devices, their apps and users. Its Chromebooks for Education programme is helping schools deploy large numbers of devices with an easy management system. While it is possible to purchase a small Windows laptop for about the same price of a basic Chromebook, the associated management and support costs (not to mention the expense of a Windows licence for each user) are enormous in comparison. In addition,  Chromebooks are pre-loaded with apps such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, with similar functionality to Microsoft's Office suite. Schools can easily provision each Chromebook with specific educational apps, remotely wipe the entire device in seconds, and reuse the laptop for a new class without purchasing any more licenses. There is no manual setup for different users and the machines are administered throughout the school, no matter how many Chrome devices they have, or where they're being used. Google claims that there is no manual maintenance, security patching, or time-consuming support. Since Chromebooks are specifically designed to work online with cloud storage there is no risk that students could lose their work and applications. Each student receives an unique Google account and cloud drive where all documents, preferences, and apps are installed, allowing them to work on the school provided Chrome OS device or any other computer, tablet or smartphone able to run Google Drive. If a Chromebook is lost or compromised it can be wiped out remotely with the "power wash" feature. Despite this, the use of Chromebooks outside of the USA is still somewhat limited in schools; Apple have very cleverly marketed the iPad at the educational sector in the UK, and in many places it has now become the de facto standard. Apple has always been a strong player in the education market. While other PC vendors were mostly focused on the corporate and government sectors Apple was cultivating niche markets such as education, press and design. The effort is paying off, and Apple can claim leadership in the education market. Many schools offer “£10 a month” leasing schemes, which enable pupils to have a centrally managed iPad complete with technical support should it break, and full replacement insurance if it is lost or stolen for a relatively reasonable monthly fee. This generates a reliable monthly revenue stream for the specialist educational resellers who operate the schemes. Microsoft need to simplify their offering for education empowering schools and teachers to manage devices, licenses, and content easily – the tools within Windows 10 partly address this, but it may well be too little, too late. They also need to provide free development tools for educators so they can create unique content;  otherwise the current trend of schools moving to iPads and Chromebooks will continue and the professionals of tomorrow won't be used to Windows anymore. This more than any other single reason is why I feel that the once dominance Microsoft and Windows had on the PC is now coming to an end.

The ending video this week is from a relatively new YouTube channel called "Harry's Garage". It is put together by motoring journalist and former Evo Magazine publisher Harry Metcalfe. Harry is fabulously wealthy (but not in the Jay Leno league), and has a fantastic private collection of vehicles which he stores at his family pile in West Sussex. Unlike Top Gear or some of the other motoring channels on TV and online, Harry's presentation style is laid back and thoughtful - he obviously knows and cares a great deal for his vehicles. Many of the cars featured are exotic supercars from the 1980's to the present day, but Harry has a particular soft spot for his 1954 Series 1 Land Rover, which you can see in the video below. Please feel free to leave a comment or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

All in the best possible taste.

A possible outbreak of unpleasantness has been avoided after some prime diplomacy between the local Police and the operators of “Amazing Bikes” – the specialist motorcycle restoration and customisation company based in Maypole Crescent on the Darent Industrial Estate in Slade Green. Amazing Bikes run a biker’s get together / club on the last Friday of every month. The event attracts a large number of motorbike enthusiasts from all around the region. This popularity has had a bit of an unintended result; the sheer number of bikes heading along Manor Road has in the past caused noise disruption to local residents; a handful of bikers did not do themselves or their club any favours by pulling wheelies and treating Manor Road like a race track. For some reason the main offenders in this respect were not young kids – they were middle aged blokes with £700 leathers, riding powerful racing bikes – exactly the type who should have known better. The August meeting was particularly bad in this respect, and it caused a lot of bad feeling from the residents of Manor Road. You can read some opinions on this page of the Erith Watch website here. Subsequent to this, the North End Safer Neighbourhoods Police Team met with Amazing Bikes on the evening of the September meeting. Some diplomacy and mutual accommodation have been undertaken. The Police report that the club meeting was very well organised, with proper event marshals. They have reminded the club management that they need to ensure members don’t act irresponsibly on their way to and from the monthly meetings; any further transgressions will attract the attention of the traffic division. Understandably nobody wants to go down this avenue. To give Amazing Bikes their due, the speeding and bike gymnastics witnessed by local residents back at the end of August were not repeated at the September meeting; the riders kept religiously to the 20mph speed limit on Manor Road, and the number of bikers using the route was drastically lower than on previous occasions. I think that the darker evenings, and the wet weather may also have had an influence on the situation. If the bikers can keep the noise and minority bad behaviour at bay, I don’t see a problem with peaceful coexistence. Time will tell.

The mystery around the platform extensions on some of the stations on the Dartford to London train line deepens once again. As recently described, some of the extensions were completed, or very nearly so (such as at Erith station) whilst others were apparently abandoned whilst half built (Plumstead is a good example). I thought that this would have been an end to it, at least until the next financial year. I notice that a whole new set of portable site offices and workshops have been set up in the car park of Erith station (incidentally, I cannot recall when it was last actually used as a car park – it has been out of bounds to rail customers for several years). At present I don’t have a clue as to what work is now to be undertaken – but from the number and size of the units, it looks like they are likely to be around for quite some time. The units are converted from sea containers – the interiors have been refitted to turn them into offices and workshops. The bonus is that the units are extremely strong and difficult for a thief to break into, as the windows and doors are covered with steel hatches when the units are unoccupied. If any reader has an insight into this new spate of building work, please let me know.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of a piece of software that shook up the online world like nothing before it. Until 2002, most computer users had only one real choice of web browser. Microsoft's Internet Explorer had something like 98.5% of the market, as the once wildly popular Netscape suite had imploded some time before – the ins and outs of the way Microsoft rose to such dominance in the browser market are not something I will detail here; suffice to say that that battle is very well documented online, should you choose to read more on the subject. So confident of their continuing dominance with Internet Explorer, that Microsoft stopped development with Internet Explorer 6. They famously said that there was nowhere left to take a web browser.  The fact that IE6 was even then renown for being a buggy, slow, full of security holes pile of junk was neither here nor there. M$ had decreed the browser war was over, and that was it. Only not quite. At the end of September 2002 a very early (and at that time somewhat rough and clunky) new open source web browser called Phoenix appeared for online download. It was written by two programmers – Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross, as a fork of the Mozilla (now called the SeaMonkey) software suite – an integrated web browser, Email client, newsgroup reader and web page designer. The two men wanted to remove the bloat from the massive combined package, and concentrate on just the web browser element, as they correctly surmised this was the way forward. Initially they renamed their new browser Firebird, but encountered copyright and other legal issues – there was already a database server application using the Firebird brand. In February 2004 the browser was renamed again – to (and you have guessed this already, I suspect) Firefox. Since then, Firefox (and more recently the Chrome browser from Google) have gone on to utterly shatter the Microsoft browser monopoly, to the point where Internet Explorer is now a minority web browser – despite the continued and very irritating campaign of TV adverts that are currently airing in the UK and elsewhere. The statistics I get from Blogger regarding visits to the Maggot Sandwich show that Firefox is now the most commonly used web browser by readers, closely followed by Chrome, with Internet Explorer coming in third. This may be a bit unrepresentative of the “real world” though, as a lot of companies and government departments still use Internet Explorer, as they have web based applications specially coded to the quirks of that browser family. A lot of corporates are still stuck with IE6 – even though this has been out of support for what seems like an age. To give IE its’ dues, the latest versions (9 and 10) are actually not bad at all, although they are limited to the Windows platform. Much credit to this dramatic improvement can be handed to the Firefox team, who upped the bar on web browser development, and showed Microsoft that they could no longer rest on their laurels. Happy birthday Firefox.

The News Shopper finally picked up on my story about the installation of the Erith Wind Turbine from last week; they currently are featuring a story first posted by them on Tuesday about a man from Slade Green who was taken aback at the sudden appearance of the 285 foot tall structure located adjacent to the junction of Manor Road and Ray Lamb Way; to be honest, the guy cannot take much interest in local events – it was on the Bexley Council planning website for several months prior to work commencing, and notices were attached to a number of lamp posts in the area directly surrounding the proposed site. All I can surmise is that he must have walked around with his eyes half shut. I always read planning applications when I see them posted locally (it is where a significant number of my local stories originate). I also keep an eye on the council planning website – despite it being a bit of a nightmare to successfully navigate. I don’t think he really has very much of a case. Quite a handful of other locals have taken up the cudgel, agreeing with him - and none seems to have been aware of all the planning publicity. I do think the council could have leafletted nearby houses just out of courtesy though - it would have only taken a few minutes to stuff a flyer through letter boxes, thought there would always be a danger that it was binned after being mistaken for another bloody pizza menu. If you live in close proximity to an area designated as for industrial use, it somewhat goes with the territory that new and potentially unusual structures may appear from time to time. I knew that when I moved into the area – it is one of the factors that keeps the house prices affordable, so it is a two way street. The NIMBY's who oppose the wind turbine should have picked another back yard. I do think that the wind turbine is imposing – when you enter Erith and look Eastwards, it does dominate the skyline, that had previously been notable for the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre structure and the pseudo barnlike bulk of Morrison’s. Now the wind turbine makes a new land mark for the area; in my mind somewhat preferable to the hideous fish sculpture (tm) that the town has been notorious for over the last few years. There has been little local resident feedback other than in the News Shopper (whose talkback comments do tend to attract a certain number of habitual whingers - which devalues their worth, in my opinion) so far; it will be instructive to learn what other people think of the newest architectural addition to the town. If there was going to be a wind turbine in the borough, it was always going to be on the cards that it would be located in Erith - it is the only town in the London Borough of Bexley that has direct access to the River Thames, and thus the strong winds that regularly blow upriver; it is close enough to the main national grid power cables to minmise transmission losses, and Bexley Council generally treat Erith and Slade Green as the arse end dumping ground of the borough anyway. To summarise, if you don't like developments in the industrial area, you should not have moved next door, as it is what happens around here. Sad but true.

The CD and CD player have just turned thirty. The Sony CDP-101 CD player (see photo above - click for a larger view) was launched on the 1st October 1982 in Japan, though it did not make it into the UK until the following year. My friend Andy, a fellow Saturday boy in Silica Shop bought one; I recall when he first played it to me - I was impressed by the total silence between tracks, but it was so toppy and squeaky that "Holiday" by Madonna sounded like it was being sung by Minnie Mouse! I also pointed out to him that it sounded like his loudspeakers were wired out of phase, which he hotly contested. It was only very much later (actually, when I was researching this piece) that I discovered that the CDP-101 used a single Digital to Analogue converter to save money. Normally, CD players have a Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC) dedicated for each audio channel. The Sony CDP-101 only had a single one, which had to process the audio for both the left and right audio channels. This was done as a money saving exercise - the DAC was the single most expensive component in the player. The down side of this cost cutting was that audio from the left and right channels was out of synchronisation by eleven microseconds due to DAC timesharing - this was what I was incorrectly detecting as speaker phase shift, though the sonic results were the same. Everyone of a certain generation can vividly recall when Tomorrow's World presenter Kieran Prendiville famously spread strawberry jam on a CD by the Bee Gees and then got the disc to play on live television. What most don't recall is that the jam was spread on the label side of the disc, not the data side; also, early discs were half again as thick as later production ones, and were far robust than those that were sold to the public. 

As an anonymous poster has recently commented, I thought that I would give my readers some background information on event that was planned, but never came to fruition. Back in 2008 my former employers, Radio Caroline planned to move their then newly restored radio ship, the Ross Revenge to a mooring on Erith Pier. I was involved in the plan, as working for Caroline is a bit like joining the Mafia – you never really leave. The organisation is run by volunteers, and pretty much everything is powered by goodwill. Because of my close proximity to Erith Pier (Pewty Acres is less than five minutes walk from the pier) I would have been the ship’s key holder when it was not crewed. The plan was to moor the ship on the pier for a few months, broadcasting using a special event radio licence. This was designed to coincide with the release of the Richard Curtis film “The Boat that Rocked”. The biggest obstacles were the Port of London Authority (PLA) and Bexley Council. The council were concerned that the ship would lay on the Thames mud, and kill small worms that were apparently unique to the area. They did not realise that ships moor at the pier all of the time. I had to trudge round to the pier from Pewty Acres every time a new ship moored up, in order to get photographic evidence to back this up. The police were concerned about the Ross Revenge attracting anti social behaviour – primarily from local chavs trying to break into the ship when unmanned, in order to steal anything they could. The fact was (and is) that the Ross Revenge is built like a fortress; following the illegal 1989 Anglo Dutch raid on the vessel, it was re – engineered to make a future boarding next to impossible. The doors and portholes were armoured – it would take several hours with oxy – acetylene torches to gain ingress to the locked ship. Secondly, any scrotes seen acting suspiciously on the pier would have no means of escape. If the Police sealed off the entrance to the pier, in Morrison’s car park, there is no other way for a person to get away, other than by jumping in the river – and the last time this happened, it ended up in a death. So the perception of risk was far greater than the reality. I understand that there was also an objection from a resident of the retirement flats nearby; from my understanding, several of their claims were malicious – they basically did not want to have a “bunch of scruffy pirates” nearby. They were also worried that they might get harmed by “radiation” from the ship’s radio transmitter. The fact was, the main 50 Kilowatt medium wave transmitter would not have been used. All Restricted Service Broadcasting Licences specify the maximum available transmission power, and this is usually no more than a couple of Watts – not even enough to power an incandescent light bulb. A much smaller, dedicated transmitter would have been used – it is not economic to “turn down the wick” on either the 50kW or either the 10kW or 5 kW transmitters on the ship to less than ten Watts. To be honest, had the 50kW transmitter been powered up in a fit of madness, every fluorescent tube in half a mile of the antenna would have spontaneously lit up, powered by the intense radio frequency field. I have seen this happen myself when I was on board in 1990; the induction of RF into fluorescent tubes is quite a spooky experience – seeing a tube light up on its’ own is counter intuitive (and you can have great light saber fights, as long as you don’t clash the tubes, or wave them around so hard that they shatter!) Anyway, for various reasons that I am not fully party to, the Ross Revenge never made it to Erith. It was a great lost opportunity, as for at least part of the time, the ship would have been open to paying visitors. I was looking forward to guiding locals around what once used to be my own floating home. Incidentally, if you watched "The best possible taste" on BBC 4 earlier this week, the dramatised documentary about the life of Kenny Everett - the section with him on board the Radio London ship, the Galaxy in the mid 1960's, was actually filmed on the Ross Revenge at its' current mooring in Tilbury.

And now to the traditional ending video; I have had some very positive feedback regarding my coverage of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) a couple of weeks ago. People were generally fascinated by it, and several wanted to know more. I pointed them in the direction of Aerosight - the company that owns and operates them. The video below is a piece of test footage, and thus not as slick as the original promotional video I shared when I first talked about the company, and their recent test flights in Erith. This footage, shot in a field, has a humorous ending - look out for the blonde bloke with the fishing rod...

Flickr, Flock and a Front Door.

I took the photo above a couple of months ago with my Nikon D200 camera, along West Street in Erith, early one Sunday morning - click on it to enlarge. It would appear that some of the local low lives (of which there are burgeoning numbers) had stolen and burnt out some poor unfortunates' moped. I uploaded the picture onto my Flickr account and thought no more about it. Recently I was checking my Flickr statistics, to find that several people had been downloading this particular shot and marking it as a favourite. Amazing - it certainly was not intended to be any form of art - just a Chav knackered moped!

I don't know if you can recall back when I first started writing the Maggot Sandwich; the first handful of entries were submitted using an application called Flock - a free and open source web browser based on the code from Mozilla Firefox, with additional functionality added that enables direct access to Blogs, photo sharing sites and loads more Web 2.0 applications. When I last played with Flock it was not mature, and lots of features were either broken or unavailable; this has now changed and it is certainly worth you downloading it for free and trying out. It is not for everyone, but it is certainly worth investigating. Flock is available for free download for Windoze, Mac OSX and Linux.

I had a bit of a problem on Friday morning; I was just leaving the house when I experienced a primary failure of the residential ingress / egress control and security system (the front door lock broke!) This cost me the thick end of £180 for an emergency locksmith. Ho hum.

Below is a video taken at last years' FarnFest music festival; you may recall I took some photos that you can view here if you have not already done so. Ian was standing in for the band Oxide's singer who was unavailable - and rather a good job he made of it too. Sorry for the slightly duff sound on this clip - there were technical troubles with the audio feed to the camera I am led to understand.



Despite the use of professional camera, the operator definitely had a bad case of the shakes, if the footage above is anything to go by. It was however a very good gig. You can see my original blog posting here. Captain Colin of the Polstar Group website has already commented accordingly. Do check out his website - he has a 500 ton, 150 foot long North Sea trawler for sale!

This weeks' main video clip is from a band you probably have never heard of. Excuse the mullet haircuts and general fashion dodginess - this clip dates back to 1983. The band were somewhat of a cult in the early to mid eighties, though they are still together and gigging today - they were regulars at the old Marquee Club in Wardour Street. This track "The Ceiling Speaks" is the opening number from their second album - ladies and gentlemen, I present Twelfth Night...