Canary Wars.

The photo above shows the tug, the GPS Avenger moored recently on Erith Pier. As you may already know, Erith Pier is the longest pier on the entire length of the River Thames (Southend Pier does not count, as it is judged to be on the Estuary, rather than on the Thames itself). The pier is of a rather unusual design, being of a “Dog – Leg” arrangement, with the longest part of the pier running parallel with the shore. The reason for this was that historically the pier was used for industrial purposes when the area now occupied by the large Morrison’s supermarket was a large deep water shipping wharf.  One of the main products handled by the pier and the wharf was the unloading and trans-shipment of giant rolls of newsprint paper from the paper mills in Sweden to a warehouse on the Europa Industrial Estate in Fraser Road, before finally being taken by lorry up to what was then the giant newspaper print presses in Holborn and Fleet Street. I recall, back in the early 1980’s, not very long before the deep water wharf finally closed down that the warehouse that stored the giant rolls of newsprint in Fraser Road caught fire. Once the paper was alight, it proved impossible for the fire brigade to put out. Fraser Road was blocked for nearly two weeks, as the emergency services contained the blaze, but left it to burn itself out. I can recall standing in the back garden of my parents’ house in  Upper Belvedere on a bright and sunny day, and being amazed by what appeared to be snowflakes falling from a cloudless sky. The flakes were actually specks of ash from the raging paper warehouse blaze a couple of miles away. The smell of burning pervaded the area for nearly a month, well after the fire burned itself out naturally – and left the warehouse building a burned out shell. From my recollections of the fire, nobody was seriously hurt, and there was a substantial insurance settlement to the owners of the Europa Industrial Estate. If you can recall the warehouse fire, and have any more information / memories regarding it, then please get in contact with me by either leaving a comment below, or by dropping me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The Apple Watch was released on April the 24th, 2015. Nearly a year later, it has become apparent that there really is not much of a need to get one. The smartwatch was the first entirely new product that Apple had released in five years, the first launched under CEO Tim Cook’s oversight—as well the first product in decades launched by Apple without the direction of Steve Jobs behind it. Some argued that it was the product that would give us insight into the future of Apple. A year later, that direction appears to be very boring. The short-term roadmap seems to be focused on iterations of existing products, and selling accessories, like new watchbands, for those products. But the Apple Watch is in itself an accessory, entirely tied to a person’s iPhone, and hasn’t shown that it can perform enough useful functions to make the average person think, yes, this is something that’s worth a few hundred pounds as it’s exciting and will help me in my life. Every Apple product in the last fifteen years or so has been two things: desirable and useful. They’ve made it easier for people to be creative, listen to a lot of music on the go, communicate with anyone in the world or find out any piece of information wherever they are. The Apple Watch looks good, but from a desirability perspective, some argue that the most interesting thing about it has been the collaborations it has had with Hermès, rather than the watch itself. Even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, in a recent Reddit question-and-answer session, was inclined to agree:- “I worry a little bit about – I mean I love my Apple Watch, but – it’s taken us into a jewellery market where you’re going to buy a watch between $500 or $1100 based on how important you think you are as a person. The only difference is the band in all those watches. Twenty watches from $500 to $1100. The band’s the only difference? Well this isn’t the company that Apple was originally, or the company that really changed the world a lot”. In terms of usability, the watch has proven a tough sell. US presidential hopeful and die-hard Apple fan Jeb Bush didn’t even know his Apple Watch could make and receive calls. The tiny screen doesn’t lend itself to complicated interactions, and third-party and native apps have struggled to show that they’re more useful than, say, just looking at the full-fledged apps on your phone. Apple has always prided itself on ‘thinking different’, and has stood out by creating differentiating products. But different in the case of the Apple Watch right now just means “weird.” Apple probably doesn’t want a product where using one gets you referred to as “that guy.” In an article for the New York Times this week, technology journalist Kit Eaton showed off some of his favourite apps for the Watch. There was a decent grocery-list-making app, a nice text-based game, and a sleep-tracking app. This was, presumably, the best he could find for a device that you have to charge every 18 hours or so, and costs about ten times more than a functional watch that does a better, quicker job of telling you the time. The best iPad costs about £900 (including the keyboard and stylus), and the best iPhone starts at £650. But iPhone and iPad sales are either stagnating or declining. This may well change with the new iPad Pro, a potential laptop-killer for the average person, and whatever new iPhone Apple launches later this year. Apple really needs a new, cheaper device to grow beyond the cycle of iPhone replacements. That was supposed to be the Apple Watch. I predicted as much when I wrote about the Apple Watch last year, hoping to be proved wrong. It looks like I was correct. My conclusion that it was a solution in need of a problem seems to have proved to be true. 

The Bexley Times is reporting that the Broken Drum, the Micropub in Blackfen is celebrating its first birthday. We now have three Micropubs in the London Borough of Bexley; the first was the Door Hinge in Welling, and the second the Penny Farthing in Crayford - thoughtfully located next to an Indian restaurant. The landlord of the Broken Drum is a chap called Andy Wheeler. When interviewed by the paper he said "We’ve offered 200 different ales, I don’t have one constant beer, I’m always changing, looking for local and national beers. Each cask holds 70 pints so it's just a case of simple maths - that’s not including the real ciders that we sell. It’s a breakaway from the noise of pubs or the restaurant-type pubs that just have a bar to drink at. We don’t sell lager, we don’t sell spirits and we don’t play loud music. People come in, enjoy a chat with each other and talk to people they don’t know. People can come in, chat and make friends, we have run three quiz nights and raised around £1,000 for the British Heart Foundation. We also donate to Alzheimer's UK, as the pub is named after a pub in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book series". Micro - pubs seem to have been a modern success story; they are cheaper to open than full pubs, and the licensing terms are less onerous. I am really pleased to see that they are all doing so well - and long may they continue.

We are now getting emergency service call – outs to people threatening to throw themselves into the River Thames either from Erith Riverside Gardens or the Pier on an almost weekly basis. I am not sure if it is a number of troubled people, or one or two disturbed individuals who are making repeated attempts to jump into the river. Another incident occurred this week, as has been reported in the News Shopper. The emergency services – Police, Ambulance and RNLI have responded to each call – out with admirable speed, but as previously highlighted, the RNLI especially have a distance to travel, as their two bases on the River Thames are at London Bridge and Gravesend; Erith is roughly equidistant from either base. Whilst the RNLI do operate river patrols, the chances of them being in the vicinity of Erith when an emergency call is raised are slim, to say the least. Even at top speed, their vessels may take twenty minutes or more to reach the site of the emergency. A few prominent local residents have expressed their support for an RNLI substation at Erith. I am a supporter of the RNLI, and am a member of their “Shoreline” supporters organisation. I will be asking them if there are any plans to open a substation at Erith. As previously noted, there is what appears to be an ideal location for a small substation in the former Port of London Authority building adjacent to the Riverside Gardens and very close to the wooden jetty. I understand that the currently empty hut has water and drainage, along with mains electricity. It is large enough to house a crew of up to four people overnight if required. I have asked the RNLI if they have any plans in this respect, and I will report back accordingly when I get a response.

As a (relatively) well known Blogger, I have managed to get onto the radar of a number of public relations companies. As such I get almost daily Emails inviting me to all sorts of events, product launches and offers of freebies. I almost never take up these offers, as there are usually strings attached. The clients of these PR companies want bloggers to write favourable reviews of their products or services. I am not an advertising agency, despite Google (the owners and operators of the Blogger platform that the Maggot Sandwich uses) repeatedly trying to get me to take advertising, which I refuse to do. Despite this, having experience with the kind of approach that PR companies use when composing press releases. Local papers are currently reporting that Demand for Bexley property is higher than anywhere else in the country, according to figures released on the 6th April. Nearly three quarters, or 72 per cent, of flats and houses on the market in the borough are already listed as sold, research by online estate agents eMoov reveals. This story has almost certainly been seeded to the papers by a PR company; the story is really a hook to raise the profile of the online estate agent, rather than to highlight the situation in respect of property availability in the borough. What seems to have escaped much in the way of publicity is the sell – off of public open spaces in Bexley; the council are rubber – stamping the disposal of four sites, three of which are in the North of the borough. It has been well documented that Bexley Council wanted to rid themselves of the park in West Street, Erith – and I have to admit that of any of the parks in the area, it probably would be the hardest to defend, as the only people I ever see using the small grassed area are the local winos who occupy one or more of the park benches, and generally make the place look unwelcoming for any other potential users. The park should stay, but realistically I don’t see the level of opposition to it being sold off when compared to one of the other threatened sites – the Eastern half of Old Farm Park in Sidcup. The other local site is the two part park on opposite sides of Wilde Road in Northumberland Heath – a park unknown to all but very local residents - you can see it on Google Street View above. It is so tiny and cut in half by the road; by the looks of it the site would probably make way for four houses, two on each side of Wilde Road. Small as the park is, it is absolutely ideal for families with small children, some of whom will not have a garden of their own. Bexley Council seem content to sell off the family silver - especially in the North of the borough, in order to keep their supporters (who are mainly located in the wealthier South of Bexley) placated. 

Recently released figures show that London road users received more than £4 million in compensation last year following accidents and damage caused by deteriorating roads. It comes as the capital’s local authorities say they now face an £86.7 million shortfall in their annual carriageway maintenance budget received from Government, double the £39.9 million shortfall reported the year before. The Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey 2016, which excludes the main Red Route roads run by Transport for London, estimates it would need £706 million to bring the capital’s roads up to scratch in a one-time “catch up” cost, with an average bill of £22.1 million per borough. It estimates clearing the maintenance backlog in London would take 16 years, at current rates of repair. Local authorities in London filled in 131,151 potholes last year, costing an average £80 per pothole as part of a planned programme, compared with £47 in the rest of England, says the survey. “Emergency” potholes cost an average of £94 to repair in London. Overall, London authorities (excluding TfL) spent £11.4 million filling in potholes last year. Paying out the £4.1 million in compensation cost an additional £2.4 million in staff time, bringing total claim costs to £6.5 million.

A research team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health has unearthed more evidence that casts doubt on the traditional "heart healthy" practice of replacing butter and other saturated fats with corn oil and other vegetable oils high in linoleic acid. The findings, reported last week in the British Medical Journal, suggest that using vegetable oils high in linoleic acid might be worse than using butter when it comes to preventing heart disease, though more research needs to be done on that front. This latest evidence comes from an analysis of previously unpublished data of a large controlled trial conducted in Minnesota, USA nearly fifty years ago, as well as a broader analysis of published data from all similar trials of this dietary intervention. The analyses show that interventions using linoleic acid-rich oils failed to reduce heart disease and overall mortality even though the intervention reduced cholesterol levels. In the Minnesota study, participants who had greater reduction in serum cholesterol had higher rather than lower risk of death. Once again received wisdom seems to be counter to scientific findings. It will be interesting to see if other studies find the same result. It seems that whatever you eat or don't eat, some research project will find fault with it. I must admit to finding all of this contradictory advice very confusing. 

I have had a couple of emails from long – time readers this week; they both express concern about the recently started trial of Erith Market. The feeling I get from the messages is that the writers are very keen for the newly relaunched market to succeed, but they feel that it is being “set up to fail”. The fact that the market is only being held on a Wednesday, and not also on Saturdays is being raised as a major restriction on how successful it can be. One concerned reader wrote:-“ I hear are giving Erith Market a trial go. When they know it will fail before they start. They only seem to be catering for the unemployed and the elderly. Because they are the only one that can go to the market. The market should have been bigger and on Wednesdays and Saturdays like it used to be. Saturdays for the people that go to work all week”.  I think the sentiment is to be applauded – the market needs to be accessible to as many people as possible – not just those who are able to attend on what for many people is a working day. Personally I have missed the market on the last three weeks – the traders are in the process of packing up their stalls and loading stock into their vans when I get there just after 5pm on my way home from the office. Opening on Saturdays would be a bonus for all parties in my opinion, and would also benefit the Riverside Shopping Centre, as shoppers attracted to the market from Morrison’s would quite likely also visit the shopping centre. What do you think? Have you visited the market? Was it any good? Would it be better in your opinion to also have it running on Saturdays as well as Wednesdays? Do let me know, either by commenting below, or by Emailing me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

As you may know, in my "day job" I work for a very large multinational company with offices in Canary Wharf. I recall that last August Canary Wharf tube station was closed for a couple of days, with no real explanation as to why. A number of very large lorries were seen parked up near the back entrance to the station, and some people speculated that the security services may have been carrying out some kind of anti terrorist drill. It has only now become clear exactly what was going on. You may have seen the trailer for the forthcoming "Rogue One - A Star Wars story" online, and very impressive it looks too. If you are not aware, Disney are releasing a Star Wars film every year in December; they are alternating the new Episodes 7,8 and 9 trilogy "main story" with "side story" films, and Rogue One is the first side story film. It is a prequel to the original Star Wars - A New Hope (Plain "Star Wars" to those old enough to remember when it originally came out), and will cover the story of how the Rebel Alliance stole the construction plans of the Death Star, which later enabled Luke Skywalker to destroy it in The Battle of Yavin. Last August principal photography of several key scenes in the new movie were actually shot in Canary Wharf tube station. The screen capture from the trailer I have shown above makes it abundantly clear as to where it was filmed - anyone who has visited the very architecturally impressive station will be struck at what a great location the place makes for what I take to be part of the interior of the Death Star.

I see that the News Shopper has picked up on a story I originally featured back in May 2013. It concerns the “Scores on the Doors” health ratings of restaurants, takeaways and food outlets in the London Borough of Bexley. When I originally featured the issue, it was to show that at the time Bexley came at the bottom of the league when it came to restaurant hygiene ratings, and that West Street in Erith was the worst of the worst, with a total of seven food outlets getting zero out of five possible stars for food hygiene. Things have now changed very much for the better, with much improved ratings – none of the previously zero rated outlets still have a zero, and nearly all are 3, 4 or 5  star rated now. What has happened in the most recent hygiene surveys is that shops that serve very limited food items are now being rated, unlike before. One shop that has suffered because of this is Sam’s 99p shop in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. I cannot understand why the store has had to be inspected, as a vast majority of its business is in retailing small domestic items. It does sell cans of soft drink and other pre - packed food items on a limited basis, but it does not prepare hot food or even sell sandwiches. Why it needs to be hygeine tested is beyond me. If you have any insight into this, then please let me know. 

As I predicted a couple of years ago, the vinyl album comeback shows no signs of slowing down. According to UK industry body BPI, vinyl sales for the first three months of 2016 were up 62 percent over the same period last year, with 637,056 LP albums sold. Vinyl now holds a 3.9 percent share of the UK album market, up from 2.1 percent in Q1 2015—not bad for a format that many thought was long dead and buried thanks to CDs and downloads. This is the highest vinyl sales have been for the last 20 years (the Official Charts Company began monitoring sales in 1994) and, if the last eight years of uninterrupted growth continue, could see vinyl sales climb as high as they did back in the early 1980s. The BPI estimates annual sales in 2016 could be as much as 3.5 million. Indeed, while music subscription services like Spotify and Tidal are extremely convenient, according to a recent report by the BBC, they're not hindering physical vinyl sales, but are in fact boosting them. Half of consumers said they listened to an album online before buying a vinyl copy, according to an ICM poll shared with the BBC, with those using advert - funded services being even more likely to head down to a record shop. Amusingly, despite audiophiles and vinyl fans arguing that the format sounds better, a full 48 percent of those who bought vinyl records admitted they had yet to actually play them. Seven percent said they didn't even own a turntable, instead picking up vinyl for its collectability, to support bands, or to use as decoration around the home.

Finally a new video showing some of the less well - known aspects of Amateur Radio. Do give the short film a watch, and feel free to leave a comment below. 

The 20th Earl of Suffolk.

The photo above shows the tug the GPS Avenger, moored on Erith Pier recently. It is a pity that few people outside of the town realise that Erith has a strong maritime heritage, and close links with both the River Thames, the North Sea, and the English Channel. It is the really unique selling point of Erith in the London Borough of Bexley, being the only town in the borough with access to the River Thames. 

I have concerns that Erith is soon quite possibly to be swamped by a flood of dumped shopping trolleys. As has been widely reported in the local press, Morrison’s supermarkets are in the process of removing the coin locks on their fleet of shopping trolleys, as according to their customer feedback, people don't like having to temporarily employ a pound coin to free up a trolley. This is all fair and good if the theft and / or dumping of trolleys was to be discouraged in some other manner, such as having an electronic perimeter past which the trolley wheels lock – as is often used by Waitrose. Unfortunately Morrison’s have no such plans – they are effectively allowing free and unrestricted access to their trolleys on the sites where the locks have already been removed. Thus far the Erith branch has escaped this fate, though I have no information for how longer this situation will continue. One can imagine what would happen if people have free reign with them – Erith will be covered by abandoned trolleys, and you can be certain that local scrotes will not only take them to throw in to the River Thames, but would also try flogging them off to scrap dealers. It has been reported by the News Shopper that a similar situation has arisen in Sidcup, where the pound locks were removed inJuly last year; now Sidcup residents are complaining about the number of trolleys which can be found abandoned all over Sidcup, and even further afield. Parked cars have been damaged by being hit by errant trolleys, and all sorts of disruption caused. I really don't want to see a similar situation in Erith. I definitely think the whole idea is a bad one; I understand that a basic shopping trolley costs something in the order of £70 for the supermarket to purchase; even if Morrison’s have a dedicated team of trolley – wranglers, there will inevitably still be a large number that permanently go missing.   If anyone works for Morrison’s, and can give any inside information as to the plans for the Erith store, please drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com – any information will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Some readers may be aware that I am a radio amateur (often referred to as a Radio Ham) I hold an Advanced class licence, with the international callsign M1CXN. To be honest I am currently not the most active ham, only operating on the 2 metre VHF radio band. The next stage of the refurbishment of Pewty Acres is to completely re - engineer the shortwave radio antenna that until last June stretched down my garden. The old antenna was a relatively modest contraption that was only used to receive radio signals from around the world on Shortwave. The new antenna will be somewhat more sturdy, and capable of transmitting signals of up to 400 Watts in power - for which I am legally licenced and qualified to do. A great deal of the work to make radio communication possible was down to one visionary man. Guglielmo Marconi was a 22-year-old technology genius, who, stung by the lack of interest in his work in his homeland, moved to a new country to develop his ideas. Whilst born and educated in Italy, he only really made a name for himself when he emigrated to the UK. In a single year, this individual extended the performance of a key, then brand new technology by a factor of more than 20. It sounds like an outlandish tale even by modern Silicon Valley standards, but by the end of 1901, had pushed the range of wireless communications from just over 80 miles (128km) to 2,000 (3,220km). Marconi’s breakthrough turned conventions about the then-new wireless technology on its head, earning him a joint Nobel Prize for Physics nine years later. If one technology dominated the early 20th century, it was wireless – thanks largely to Marconi. Before TV, Marconi's work established wireless as the world’s first mass medium, trouncing the long established electric telegraph and replacing print in many areas. He facilitated the spread of communications, entertainment, politics and propaganda around the globe in a fast-modernising world of motor-driven cars, and propeller-powered aircraft. Long-range wireless transmissions made the oceans a safer place, too, allowing ships to stay in touch with the land long after they had journeyed over the horizon. Marconi’s work also allowed the development of the SOS signal – and his company received the first one in 1910. Contrary to popular opinion, Marconi did not invent radio – that was a chap called Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist. Marconi did massively increase the transmission range, efficiency and sensitivity of radio designs. Marconi was fortunate in that he came from a wealthy family who not only owned a lot of land, but were also part of the Jameson whisky distilling dynasty. Marconi set up a wireless transmitting and receiving station in Poldhu, South East Cornwall – a location picked as it was very close to the Atlantic, and the ships that traversed it – at that  time Marconi believed that the main use of wireless would be for ship to ship, and ship to shore communications. In June 1901, Poldhu communicated with a station at Crookhaven in County Cork, 225 miles away. In September, high winds blew down the masts, but that wasn’t going to stop Marconi making history. With a temporary pair of 160-foot masts he set off for Newfoundland in Canada to receive transmission of the first transatlantic wireless signal – from those masts. On the 9th  December, he used cable telegraphy to ask his team to start sending signals. On the 12th December 1901, he heard their reply: an "SSS" in Morse. Wireless radio communications had crossed the Atlantic, and further tests found that Poldhu’s range could exceed 2,000 miles. January 1903 saw the first transmission from the US, from American President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII. This may have been the first example of poorly timed international calls due to time differences; Poldhu received the message at night, after the post office in the nearby village of Mullion had closed, so it didn’t get through to the king until the next morning. How times change.

Transport for London (TfL) have announced something that I predicted some time ago; a river crossing to join the London Borough of Bexley with the Borough of Havering by means of a crossing between Lower Belvedere and Rainham. The News Shopper have reported that a new crossing at Belvedere would mean an additional 70,000 businesses and 165,000 jobs within an average commuting time of North Bexley – though how this figure is arrived at is somewhat unclear. Back in April last year I came up with the following possible solution to the current problem of cross – river communication:- My suggestion, provisionally entitled “The Arthur Pewty Memorial Tunnel” would stretch between the Ferry Lane roundabout, South of Rainham town centre and the A2016 Bronze Age Way / Picardy Manor Way roundabout in Lower Belvedere. In effect, this would connect the A13 and Rainham in South Essex with the A2 and M25 via Bronze Age Way, and the South Circular via the A2016 Eastern Way towards Woolwich. It could also have the added bonus of connecting Rainham and Belvedere railway stations via a regular bus service through the tunnel. My vision would be of a structure very similar in size and scope to the existing Medway Tunnel which links Strood with Chatham in Kent. The Thames tunnel would use the same kind of immersed tube construction that the Medway Tunnel does – that is, sections of prefabricated tunnel sections are sunk into the river, joined together, then the water is pumped out. This relatively new method of construction is well suited to shallow and medium depths of water, and creates tunnels which are both very strong and relatively cheap to construct. Unlike the Medway Tunnel, I would hope that the Lower Thames tunnel would permit the use of bicycles via a raised cycle / walkway kept physically separate from the vehicular traffic. As previously indicated, by the time any tunnel of this nature had been constructed (which I understand normally needs an Act of Parliament) the level of harmful pollutants emitted by vehicles will be far lower than the already pretty low levels now, and many of the cars may well be zero emission via either conventional batteries, Hydrogen fuel cells or possibly even LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) power, if one is somewhat on the optimistic side. More on LENR power next week - it is not the pig in a poke that many once thought. This would not be the only new link needed across the Thames South of Tower Bridge; I suspect that the proposed Gallions Reach crossing will probably go ahead in some form or another, despite the traffic having to run through a housing estate and close by a large residential nursing home on the South side of the river.  I would not hold your breath about a quick build for the proposed new bridge – even if funding is sourced, and planning procedures go smoothly, it is unlikely that any new bridge or tunnel would be completed before 2025. Please feel free to leave a comment below, or drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Millers Pie and Mash shop in Albert Road, Upper Belvedere (don't call it "Nuxley Village" - there is no such place - that name was invented by Estate Agents who did not live in the area, and had no knowledge of the local history when they began selling properties in the vicinity). The shop has just been awarded a five star rating on the Scores on the Doors website, for the second time around. This is excellent news indeed; I know of several local people who use the shop regularly, and report that the quality of the traditional London fare it serves is very high indeed. It is good to see an independent local business that is doing everything it can to maintain a very high quality product and service.

Southeastern Railways are making some changes to the services running from North Kent into Cannon Street – one of the busiest lines in the South East of London, and one of the prime commuter routes. It has to be said that for once they have listened to the opinions of rail travellers. Early morning and evening services are being increased, with additional carriage capacity – though the once promised twelve carriage trains will still not be making an appearance – due to the length restrictions imposed on any train due to the layout of Woolwich Dockyard station – which has a tunnel at either end, preventing any train over ten carriages stopping at the station. I am led to understand that the type of train used by Southeastern has a door control system that is “all open / all closed” rather than a selective system whereby the driver can prevent certain doors from opening, as is the case with the Docklands Light Railway. At stations such as Cutty Sark for Greenwich, the DLR train front most and rear most doors stay shut, as those parts of the trains are still in the tunnel – passengers wishing to get off have to move to the central part of the train in order to disembark. Automated announcements are made on every trip, but it is not uncommon to see travellers wondering why the door in front of them won’t open. The same kind of approach cannot be undertaken on the overland trains, and the option of running twelve car trains, but just not have them stop at Woolwich Dockyard station is also apparently not available – unlike during the 2012 Olympics (where many locals think that the real reason trains did not stop at Woolwich Dockyard was to prevent overseas tourists seeing what a dump the station and surrounding area was, and rather than invest some money in improving the environment local to the station, trains instead just whizzed through without stopping).

The campaign to save the much loved Belvedere Splash Park rumbles on; I have heard views from a number of different local sources, and it would appear that the park was not quite as dead in the water (to coin a pun) as some had feared, though the vote at the Council meeting on Thursday night to close the park for good may well change that. I am aware that Cory Environmental Ltd have offered a substantial sum of money towards the refurbishment of the Splash Park, but that the Council have said that it would not be sufficient to cover the costs. I find this strange – from what I have discovered, when the Council hired the original installation contractors, they did not carry out much in the way of due diligence. Normally when undertaking a substantial capital project of this nature, the project team would draw up a scope of works and terms of reference document, and send this out to five or six potential contractors. When those contractors had returned their responses, the three most suitable candidates would then be called in to conduct a presentation and questions and answer session with the project leaders. A final choice of contractor would then be made, and a contract signed. From what I have heard Bexley Council pretty much opened the yellow pages and stuck their finger on a name. When they subsequently wanted a quote for refurbishment of the nine year old Splash Park, they only went back to the original installer. This is really not the way to conduct a major public work, and it is no wonder that the figures being thrown about are somewhat on the high side. If no element of competitive tendering is employed, the contractor can pretty much charge as much as they think they can get away with. The other problem is that I have heard from an inside source that Cory Environmental are currently up for sale, and looking for a buyer. Any sale of the company could well result in changes to their corporate social responsibility policies, and could mean an end to funding for projects like the refurbishment of Belvedere Splash Park. Time will tell. This is all part of Bexley Council's campaign to sell off any and every open space in a desperate bid to raise cash. London Live have recently covered the story - you can see the video report here. Is the Belvedere Splash Park finally doomed, or will someone intervene at the last minute? I really cannot say. 

Another anniversary has come up this week; did you know that the humble wine box is fifty years old? The Australian invention, known over there as a “goon”, has been occupying wine drinkers fridges since it was first developed back in 1965. The wine box actually owes a lot to the space race and NASA.  The bladder that is located inside the cardboard outer box is made of a material called Mylar – or more correctly, Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate. This form of polymer was originally invented back in the mid 1950’s by American chemical giant DuPont, for use in early spacecraft. The inert, tough and flexible plastic has since found hundreds of uses in everything from drum skins, the magnetic media in recording tape and computer floppy disks to tiny flecks of it being added to nail varnish to make the varnish “sparkle”. It is a very versatile material that is tasteless and impervious to liquids and gases, thus making it an excellent choice of material to form the wine containing bladder that sits within the reinforcing cardboard box. The clever concept of the wine box is that the Mylar bladder collapses as wine is drained from it, so air does not seep into the container  - which would cause it to begin oxidising and would seriously shorten the shelf – life of the wine once it was opened. As it is, wine inside a wine box remains drinkable for around six weeks once the seal has been broken. Having said that, I don't know of anyone who has managed to make a wine box last anything like as long as that! At one time wine boxes were thought of as being suitable only for student parties and barbecues; nowadays the quality of wine found in boxes is far higher, and they have achieved greater social acceptability.

One building more than any other dominates the skyline of Erith, and that is the clock tower of Christ Church. Interestingly the spire was built quite a bit later than the main church building, and the spire celebrates 2015 as its centenary year. The bell ringing group from the church has sent me the following news:- The tower and spire were added to Christ Church Erith in 1914-15. Documents held in the Bexley Local Studies and Archives Centre provided the inspiration for this project. A grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund has enabled us to produce a series of displays on three floors including ground floor displays and CCTV links to the ringing chamber and bells. If you would like to see more of the building itself and look at our displays then please come along to Christ Church, Victoria Road, Erith to one of the tower open days on the following dates:-

March 22nd 2015 3-5pm
April 19th 2015 3-5pm
May 17th 2015 3-5pm
June 7th 2015 11.30am-12.30pm
June 21st 2015 3-5pm
July 5th 2015 11.30am-12.30pm
July 19th 2015 3-5pm
August 16th 2015 3-5pm
September 20th 2015 3-5pm

I was surprised to discover that the local area has a strong link with Charles Howard, the 20^th Earl of Suffolk. Charles Howard led what can only be described as a colourful and eventful life.  He was the son of Henry Howard, 19th Earl of Suffolk and his American wife, the former Margaret Leiter ("Daisy"), sister of Lady Curzon and daughter of the American businessman Levi Leiter. The 19th Earl was killed in World War I at the Battle of Istabulat, in Iraq. After leaving the Royal Naval College, Osborne at 15, he attended Radley College, but quit in 1923 to join the sailing ship the Mount Stewart as an apprentice officer. After his return from a round the world voyage, he was commissioned in the Scots Guards but was later asked to resign from his post by his superiors because of his "wild ways". In 1926 he returned to Australia; where he first worked as a junior cattle station operator, and later owned a large farm jointly with Captain McColm, who had been Captain of the Mount Stewart. The earl was a great animal lover, and unlike many of his class he hated hunting and shooting, and was a keen amateur naturalist. In 1934, he married Chicago-born ballet dancer  Mimi Forde-Pigott, with whom he had three children. The Earl enrolled at Edinburgh University, graduating three years later with a first-class honours degree in Chemistry and Pharmacology. In his early twenties, the Earl was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh. The Nuffield Institute of Medical Research at Oxford University offered him a research post in the area of "explosives and poisons".  As Liaison Officer for the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research during World War II and was instrumental in evacuating the French stock of heavy water and radioactive isotopes that had formed the French nuclear research programme, just ahead of the German invasion – he also managed to liberate over $10 Million worth of gem diamonds and 600 tons of high quality machine parts in the process. For this and other escapades, Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Supply, later described him as "one of the most remarkable young men employed by the Government on dangerous missions." Morrison told the House of Commons that "A considerable service has been rendered to the Allied cause by the safe arrival of this shipload of materials”. Following his return from France, the Earl worked for the Ministry of Supply as a Research Officer learning how to defuse bombs of new and unknown types.  The Earl served as part of an unexploded bomb detachment in London during the Blitz. The detachment consisted of himself, his secretary  Morden, and his chauffeur, Fred Hards. They called themselves "the Holy Trinity" and they became famed for their prowess in detecting and successfully tackling thirty-four unexploded bombs with "urbane and smiling efficiency." Morden stood by his side taking notes, as the Earl worked at defusing the bombs. On the 12^th May 1941 Charles Howard was working at a “bomb cemetery” on Erith Marshes. A “Bomb cemetery” was a place where bombs that had failed to explode, or bombs were transferred there after being temporarily made safe for transport, and then destroyed using controlled explosions. The Erith bomb cemetery was one of the largest in Greater London. The Earl was tasked with defusing a particularly difficult type of 250 Kg German bomb that had been dropped over six months earlier, and had been around for so long that the bomb cemetery staff had nicknamed it “Old Faithful”. The Earl attempted to defuse the bomb, but was killed along with his secretary Morden, and his chauffeur Fred  Hands, along with eleven others who were nearby when he tried to remove the fuse, as it had been fitted with a type of booby-trap called a Zeus 40. Sir Winston Churchill wrote of Charles Howard “One bomb disposal squad I remember which may be taken as symbolic of many others. It consisted of three people, the Earl of Suffolk, his lady private secretary and his chauffeur. They called themselves 'The Holy Trinity'. Their prowess and continued existence got around among all who knew and 34 unexploded bombs did they tackle with urbane and smiling efficiency, but the 35th claimed its forfeit. Up went the Earl of Suffolk in his Holy Trinity. But we may be sure that, as for Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, all the trumpets sounded for them on the other side”.  In 1973 the BBC produced a television play on the life and death of Charles Howard called “ The Dragon’s Opponent”. A memorial to the Earl can be seen in a dedicated stained glass window in St. John the Baptist church in Charlton. The 1979 ITV television series “Danger - UXB” which featured the fictional (but both historically and technically accurate) exploits of a wartime Royal Engineers bomb disposal team had an episode (“Cast iron Killer”) featuring a bomb fitted with a Zeus 40 anti-handling device just like the one that killed the Earl of Suffolk. I would strongly recommend that you watch the entire series of “Danger - UXB” (available on DVD from Amazon and other online retailers), as it makes very compelling viewing; despite the story being fictional, the methods used to defuse the bombs, and the situations the team find themselves in are accurate. The programme was titled and partly based on the memoirs of Major A. B. Hartley, M.B.E, RE, Unexploded Bomb - The Story of Bomb Disposal, with episodes written by John Hawkesworth and four screenwriters. The series was filmed in 1978 in and around the Clapham, Streatham and Tooting areas of South London.

For many years I have been a fan of BBC TV's "Top Gear" - I have found it to be highly entertaining and something that I would go out of my way to watch. The current series on BBC 2 on Sunday evenings is I have to admit starting to pall with me; the show is getting tired, and I feel that it would be a good idea to either give it a re - vamp, or end it entirely. I think one of the problems with TV shows like "Top Gear" is that in recent years the rise of amateur and professionally produced car shows online has really changed the game. An example is below. "Harry's Garage" is a car show hosted on YouTube that reviews both new and classic cars, most of which are owned by Harry, the eponymous millionaire car enthusiast who also presents each episode. Unlike Jeremy Clarkson, Harry is quietly spoken and somewhat thoughtful; his deep knowledge of the vehicles he reviews is evident, and he really makes for a likeable and engaging presenter. See what you think - in the video below, Harry does an in - depth review on his 1987 Ferrari Testarossa. Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Electricity House.

The photo above shows a new visitor to Erith Pier. It is a newly built tug called the GPS Avenger, and it is normally based in Chatham. I think it was waiting for the tide to come in before it went home - click on the photo for a larger view. Erith Pier is a popular local attraction to both anglers and people just out for a walk on a cold but sunny morning. The pier is definitely something that few outside the local area are very, if at all aware of.

The News Shopper are reporting that Erith's Cross Street Law Centre is finally going to close some time towards the end of March. The Centre, which has provided legal advice to local people on low incomes since 2006 has lost a large portion of funding from the Council; on top of which, changes to the legal aid laws by the Government have meant that it is no longer possible for low income families to get free advice on legal matters relating to employment disputes, marital breakups, and issues relating to personal debt – all areas in which the Cross Street Law Centre specialised. The closure of the centre will lead to three paid staff being made redundant, on top of two who have already gone, which is a further blow to the local economy. Once again it is very expensive to have a low income. Private solicitors are very expensive indeed, even for those people on a relatively healthy income, and for those on benefits it is an impossibility without external financial assistance. Stopping legal aid effectively blocks people on limited incomes from access to the justice system. I am unsure whether the Citizen’s Advice Bureau will be able to take up the slack in this respect; somehow I think it unlikely.

You may recall that back in October last year I wrote about how having a BrightHouse store opening in a town was a sure indicator of poverty. It would seem that BrightHouse are not alone in this respect. Some of the (quite rightly) reviled payday loan companies are opening high street branches – as if their TV and web based advertising was not enough. It would seem that their huge profits from their outrageously high – and to my mind immoral, if not technically illegal interest rates are being ploughed into property. I sense that the whole payday loan industry realises the public revulsion for their activities, and are trying to make as much money as possible, before draconian legislation is introduced to clamp down on them. I think that the biggest threat to the high street in general is one thing that so far has been largely ignored, or indeed people in the most part are unaware of. We all know how many betting shops have been opening all over the UK for the last few years. It seems like every high street now has three or four shops, whereas in the past one might have sufficed. What I have discovered is that the reason for the explosion in the number of shops has got little if anything to do with more people wanting to put a few quid on a horse, or bet on the outcome of a football match – in fact research shows that “conventional” betting is now a minority activity for UK betting shops. What people are visiting betting shops for nowadays is something else entirely – the Fixed Odds Betting Terminal (FOBT).  This bears little resemblance to the old style “one armed bandit” which would accept your 10p in the slot. Fixed Odds Betting Terminals are slick, computerised devices that offer games such as poker, blackjack and roulette. Gamblers can place bets using debit or credit cards, and it is possible to lose £100 every twenty seconds on such machines. In the betting shop industry, these machines are known as “the crack cocaine of gambling” as studies have proved that they are four times more psychologically addictive than any other activity in a bookmaker. There are currently no reliable estimates of the number of people (and it is usually young men) who are addicted to FOBT machines. The insidious spread of bookmakers on British high streets can be followed back to 2005, when Tony Blair’s government passed the Gambling Act, which at the time was feared to allow the creation of “super casinos”. This did not happen; instead it opened the doors for a deluge of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. There are currently 33,000 such terminals in the UK, and they generate £1.5 billion in profit for the bookmakers. The real reason for the explosion in the number, rather than the size of bookmakers shops is simple. The Gambling Act 2005 placed restrictions on the number of FOBT’s in each bookmaker. What it did not do was place any restriction on the number of bookmakers on any high street. Consequently you may see several bookmakers in the same area, all from the same parent company. If a bookmaker wants to run more Fixed Odds Betting Terminals in a particular area, all it has to do is get permission to open another shop. Until recently many local councils have been reluctant to  block these extra shops, as they bring in council tax revenue, and often occupy otherwise empty premises. This attitude is starting to change, as the realisation that FOBT machines suck cash out of hard pressed communities – yes, the shops do employ a small number of staff –  but these usually on very long hours, and paid the minimum wage. Most of the bookmaker chains are owned by FTSE listed companies who  operate aggressive, but technically legal tax avoidance schemes – so the money that comes out of bookmakers does not go back into the local economy. Personally I have absolutely no interest in any form of gambling – I regard it as a tax on the stupid; I have been into a bookmakers once in my life – to place a bet for a disabled friend on Grand National day 1988. That was the first and the last time. The only way to reduce the attraction of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals would seem to be to be simple – the law should be changed to bring them alongside “ordinary” one armed bandits in having a maximum stake of £2, and proportionate maximum pay out. The bookmakers would hate this, as their main revenue stream would be cut overnight, but bearing in mind how little tax revenue comes from them, it would be a relatively painless move on the part of the government. Somehow I doubt this will happen, as the gambling companies have very effective lobbyists in Parliament. Meanwhile they continue to hoover up cash from impoverished communities all over the UK. There is a national campaign to get FOBT's treated as other gambling machines - you can read all about it here.

I am certain that I am not the only person driven to distraction by the amount of unsolicited mail that I get through my letterbox on a daily basis. The local fast food places are not the worst sinners in this regard, though regularly receiving pizza flyers from the Brent does somewhat perplex me; Pewty Acres is miles outside of their delivery area, and even if they did get an order from Erith, it would be a cold and congealed mess by the time it did eventually arrive. No, by far the worst offender is Virgin Media. I am aware that they offer some good products at a relatively competitive rate, but the fact that I choose not to avail myself of their services does not deter their marketing department. They hatch increasingly stealthy methods to get me to open their envelopes filled with marketing materials – “hand writing” the labels and making it unclear who the sender is seems to be a popular ploy. Nevertheless I am compelled to open them all in order to remove the address details and any personal contact information for shredding before the bulk of the post is consigned to the paper bag, ready for recycling. This is all time and effort that I would rather not be spending on something I would rather not have received in the first place. Any thoughts I might have had about swapping my television provider were instantly quashed by this intrusive advertising  - Virgin, the more you spam me, the less chance you have got of ever getting any business from me. Indeed, my feeling right now is that I would rather cut off both my legs with a blunt and rusty bread knife than buy anything from Virgin. Do you have any similar experiences? Leave a comment below.

Between 1982 and 1984, a large number of new and innovative home and office computer systems were released, at the beginning of what we now refer to as the technology revolution. These systems have now, or shortly will have reached their thirtieth birthday. The latest computer to commemorate its third decade is the Sinclair QL. “QL – don’t you mean the Spectrum?” I hear several readers ask. No, the QL, a computer designed to supplement the Spectrum as a business and scientific computer, aimed at a professional market. It was designed to compete with the IBM PC and the Apple IIe, both of which were very expensive in the British market. A IBM 5150 PC with a floppy disk, monitor and printer would set you back the thick end of £2000 or more, depending on specification. It is a lot of money now, and was an utter fortune back then. What Sinclair set out to do was produce a computer with similar or better specifications than a PC, at a price not exceeding £399. Clive Sinclair had ambitions to do for the business market what he had for the home market only a year or so earlier. Lofty ambitions indeed, but at that point Sinclair were awash with cash – the Spectrum was a phenomenal success, and was selling like hot cakes. The QL design was very clever; the number of electronic components inside it were kept to an absolute minimum in order to keep the production costs down (it is said that Sinclair copied this technique from Apple, who has pioneered “low component count” designs with the Apple II). Instead of using conventional floppy disk drives, the QL used “Microdrives” – which were tiny cartridges with a continuous loop of magnetic tape inside them. The QL looked great on paper, and the company advertised the computer widely, as you can see in the photo above - click for a larger version. The problem was that the design was nowhere near complete when the orders started coming in. Contemporary accounts say that the QL was around six months from completion on its launch date. The problem was, Clive Sinclair set his staff some impossible deadlines. Eventually the machines were released, but the early ones were blatantly not ready for the market. A hardware “dongle” cartridge had to be plugged into the back, as the computers’ internal ROM software would not fit onto the originally specified chip. Later on these early machines would be recalled by Sinclair to be “upgraded” with a full internal ROM set. In actuality, the recalled machines were scrapped, and the customer sent a brand new machine, as this was cheaper than actually carrying out the upgrade. On top of this, the internal micro tape drives were incredibly unreliable. They were meant to be an equivalent to a floppy drive, but they were nothing of the sort; they were a kind of mini cartridge with a thin and very fragile loop of tape inside. It turned out that one of the reasons for the reliability was that the drives were located directly over the TV modulator, and interference from it caused read and write errors. One contemporary report from a Dixon’s warehouse manager said that of a thousand QL’s delivered from Sinclair, only one hundred and ninety actually worked as advertised. I know when I worked at Silica Shop in Sidcup, I cannot recall a single faultless machine.  If this all was not bad enough, the keyboard on the QL had a fatal flaw which was quickly discovered. If you turned an early machine upside down, the keys would all fall off! This eventually got resolved, but not before irritating gits (i.e. me) would go into Dixons or Boots and rearrange the QL keyboard letterings to make rude words! QL was meant to stand for "Quantum Leap", but most in the industry at the time (myself included) referred to it as the "Quantum Lurch". What is ironic is that Sinclair intended the name to signify that it was a huge jump in performance for the price, but as you will know, quantum designates something on the smallest scale possible. Probably an accurate description in hindsight. The QL did have some interesting design features, and the Psion business software that was bundled with it was actually very good indeed once the bugs were ironed out, but the hardware was just not good enough – too expensive and there were not enough games for home users, and not “grown up”, too fragile, and not reliable enough for a professional environment. Sinclair lost a fortune on the machine, and nowadays it is a relic that many don’t remember. Things pretty much went downhill for Sinclair from then on. The Spectrum continued to be developed, before being sold off to Amstrad to try and cover the costs of the next big commercial flop – the Sinclair C5 personal transport – but that is another story, and one I have told before. 

The advert above (click on it for a larger view) comes from a vintage map of Erith I have owned since my schooldays. I have been in contact with local history guru Ken Chamberlain, as I was unsure of the vintage of either the map, or the advert it contained. Ken very helpfully gave me quite a bit of information, which I will relate here.  It turns out that it dates from a few months between November 1938 and the very early months of 1939. Back then, services like electricity, gas and water were the responsibility of the Council. I did not realise how relatively recently Erith was electrified; I had always assumed that it had happened around the turn of the 20^th Century, but from this evidence, this was far from the case. The office mentioned is the building that is what is now home to The Celestial Church of Christ African church, the Erith Snooker Centre and the row of shops facing the car park in Pier Road. The building is very run down and exceedingly scruffy now, but from contemporary accounts when the building opened in November 1939, the building, which is correctly called “Electricity House” was a minor Art Deco masterpiece. Back then, as well as containing a large showroom displaying electrically powered domestic products, which were available for hire purchase to use on the newly installed Council power supply; the building also was home to a dance hall with a large Canadian Maple dance floor, and a small Pathe cinema. In the very short period between when it opened and the outbreak of World War II, the Erith Electricity Board was astonishingly successful - it offered the cheapest domestic electricity rates in the whole UK. Just one old penny per unit. Ten thousand local people signed up in the first month alone, no doubt attracted by the offer of free electrical device installation when you opened an account. The board made a profit of £13,000 in their single year of operation. This was a stunning amount of money at the time. The money was meant to be used to improve and expand electrification, and generally make things more pleasant for local people. It is unlikely these facilities got much, if any use, as once war was declared other priorities took over. In 1940 Electricity House was handed over to the authorities, and the building was re – assigned for war work - and in 1947 the £13,000 profits got absorbed to no benefit for Erith people when the London Electricity Board was formed, and the whole thing nationalised. Below you can see a photo of Electricity House taken in early 1939, which is from Ken's own collection, which he has kindly given me permission to reproduce here.  Below it is a photo I took earlier this morning from as close as I could possibly get to the location of the original photographer. Unfortunately there is a brick wall in the precise location nowadays, so I got as close as I could.

London Travelwatch is the independent, statutory watchdog set up by the London Assembly to monitor and advise on all forms of transport within the capital, out as far as the M25. This week they published a report which shows that incidents of antisocial behaviour are on the increase, especially in respect of tram and bus journeys. The main cause of the increase is poor behaviour by school children, with the report citing examples of violence, swearing, vandalism, threatening behaviour and racially motivated abuse. This is not the expected boisterous behaviour from a bunch of kids on the way home from school – this is outright criminality. The report also finds that bus drivers and station staff are unwilling or unable to deal with this behaviour (probably scared of either being beaten or stabbed, or landed with a false accusation of child abuse), and that it mostly goes unremarked and unreported. I know from the experiences of myself and others that people try to avoid using the buses when large numbers of school children are around – and at Bexleyheath Clock Tower on schooldays, the local police normally assign a couple of PCSO’s to try and maintain some kind of order. The report also states that interviews with passengers have shown that many will even go so far as getting off the bus when trouble with school children starts. From the report findings, it does sound very much like the decision to give school children Oyster cards allowing free travel on public transport was a major mistake. Kids often get on the bus for one or two stops, then get off, as they were too lazy to walk – completely pointless, and to my mind a misuse of a privilege; in addition most school children don’t live very far from school, and could greatly benefit from the exercise – we are forever being told about childhood obesity – surely this would be one way to combat it? For those children with a genuine need for public transport, it would seem to both myself and many others that instead of a blanket “go where you please, when you please” Oyster card as is now the case, they instead should be issued with a warrant for a journey with a specified starting and ending point which was valid only during term time.  What do you think? Would this be too draconian, and affect the considerable number of good kids as well as the little hoodlums? What do you feel the answer is, if there even is one? Whatever the outcome, I don’t feel that maintaining the current situation is tenable, and it would appear that London Travelwatch are in agreement with this. 

Regular Maggot Sandwich reader Joe Ferreira dropped a comment on last weeks’ update. He had come across a story on MSN about how the London Borough of Bexley came bottom in the UK charts when it came to food outlet health inspections. Sky News also covered the story online. You may recall that – using the “Scores on the Doors” own statistics, I determined that not only is Bexley the worst Borough, but Erith is the worst town in the Borough, and West Street is the worst location, with a total of nine outlets with a zero star rating. It would appear that cutbacks mean that fewer places are being checked, and even when they are, little enforcement action is being taken because of the associated costs. If any readers have any direct experience of this, please do let me know.

The ending video this week is something that I stumbled upon by accident. It is an official information film about the development of Stage One of Thamesmead from back in 1970. It shows the idealism and good intentions that went behind the construction of the new town, and gives little insight into how it would all go horribly wrong in a very short time. The place looks lovely in many of the shots during the 25 minute film. It is sad tho think that Thamesmead so shortly thereafter became a concrete nightmare. It is ironic that many of the buildings featured have now, or will shortly be demolished. Watch and feel free to leave a comment below.