The chimney.

The photos above - click on any one for a larger view, were taken by me on Friday, just as the Christ Church Erith annual Christmas Tree Festival got under way. The event, which features eighty individually decorated and lit Christmas trees is held every year; it raises money for the church, and also for Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice. Several thousand visitors attend the event, which has become a cornerstone in the local social calendar. I was there on both Friday and Saturday in my capacity as a committee member of the Friends of Christ Church Erith. I was holding a donation bucket and handing out event programmes to the constant stream of visitors. Not just local people came to view the Christmas trees - a couple who had heard about the event on social media told me that they had come all of the way from Hounslow, and another woman said she had come from just outside of Southend! The high winds experienced on both Friday and Saturday did present some challenges; especially to the handful of trees in the West lobby - some got blown over several times, but did not seem to be worse for the wear after being uprighted. On the Saturday of the festival the Bexleyheath Rock Choir performed to a packed house. Tonight is the annual Christmas Carol concert, which is also always a standing room only event. If you are intending visiting the carol service, I highly recommend that you get to Christ Church by 6pm at the latest, if you want to get a seat. The carol concert is exceedingly popular. 

Over the last two editions of the Maggot Sandwich, I have outlined how Ring smart doorbells are a really bad idea, and have a very low level of security; last week Ring owner and local software developer Miles wrote a piece confirming my own observations; now another company who make smart door locks has come under scrutiny, when it turns out their own supposedly groundbreaking product is subject to very straightforward security exploits. On Wednesday, Finnish security house F-Secure revealed a vulnerability in the KeyWe Smart Lock that could let a sticky-fingered miscreant easily bypass it. To add insult to injury, the device's firmware cannot be upgraded either locally or remotely. This means the only way to conclusively remediate this problem is to remove the smart locks from your door and replace them with a standard mechanical lock. The KeyWe Smart Lock is primarily used in private dwellings, and retails for circa £155 on Amazon. It allows users to unlock their doors through a traditional metal key, via a mobile app, or with Amazon Alexa. Its Achilles' heel is what F-Secure describes as "improperly designed communications protocols". These allowed the firm to intercept the secret passphrase as it transmitted from the smartphone to the lock, using just a cheap wireless sniffer and Wireshark - a common free and open source program for intercepting and analysing computer network traffic. The KeyWe Smart Lock uses AES-128 encryption to communicate with the mobile app. However, the communication channel uses only two factors to generate that encrypted channel: a common key and a separate key calculation process. Both of these are trivial to overcome. The KeyWe Smart Lock uses BlueTooth Low Energy, which is based on the concept of advertisements. These contain information about device capabilities, the device name, and the device [MAC] address. It is from this address the common key is generated. Security analysts at F-Secure also figured out how to isolate and replicate the key-calculation process from the mobile application, rendering the second factor redundant. With the KeyWe's encryption rendered null and void, an attacker would merely have to identify a property using the lock, then wait for someone to come and unlock the door. They would then be able to intercept the passcode in transit and use it to break into the property. Smart devices are inherently insecure, and often the first vector a hacker will use when attacking a location, as the devices tend to have rudimentary security, and are connected to the location's data network, making them an ideal portal into your network, and thus all of your information. You have been warned. Comments to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Some time ago I featured a short article on The Priory Club on the corner of Woolwich Road and Picardy Road in Upper Belvedere, directly opposite the site of the former Belvedere Police Station. Tony from The Priory Club has written the following piece about the establishment; he writes:- "The Priory Club occupies one of the few outwardly untouched Victorian Villas in Belvedere (See picture). The Club, previously known as the Conservative Club occupied the building in 1912, buying the site from Flaxman Spurrell who in his day was a well-known archaeologist and photographer. (see Wikipedia). The Priory, possibly the oldest club in Bexley originally was exclusively for “Gentlemen only” ladies only admitted on special occasions and New Years Eve. About thirty years back a concession was made, and ladies attended as guests; but on Saturday evening only. In recent years the ethos changed, and they were permitted to become members, which led two years ago to a female becoming a committee member; Now the committee has both Lady Chair and Secretary. During the recent economic recession, The Priory like many clubs went through a period of decline as membership fell back, but in the last year things have picked up as numbers increase, now joint membership with a partner is offered at a discounted fee. Singers and guest speakers regularly entertain members and quiz nights are ever popular. The well- stocked bar offers a range of wines, spirits and ales at reasonable prices. Arguably the club has three of the best snooker tables in the borough and snooker is one of the major facilities available. A development programme is being enacted where funds raised will be ploughed back into improving the décor and facilities for members. Further information can be found on the priory Club website by clicking here".



For many locals, the Littlebrook Power Station chimney will have been a familiar landmark on the horizon. Early this morning it came down in an explosive demolition. I stood in my front garden waiting for it to come down, but nothing. I came home from shopping a little earlier, and it has now gone from the horizon. No explosion heard. I gather that several videos are available on social media, and that the News Shopper have featured the story - click here for the details. A video of the demolition can be seen above. Did you witness the demolition?

Earlier this year a film was released to what turned out to be very little fanfare or publicity. About the only real notice anyone gave it was from the advertising posters that adorned local double decker buses at the time. The film in question was called Red Joan, and bearing in mind it starred Dame Judi Dench, and was directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, it pretty much sank without a trace. The film made a little over $10.5 million worldwide, barely recovering its production costs. The strap line for the film read thus:- "Joan Stanley is a widow living out a quiet retirement in the suburbs when, shockingly, the British Secret Service places her under arrest. The charge: providing classified scientific information - including details on the building of the atomic bomb - to the Soviet government for decades. As the interrogation gets underway, Joan relives the dramatic events that shaped her life and her beliefs". Does this sound vaguely familiar? It is, because Red Joan was a rather badly fictionalised and tediously dull version of the true story of former Bexleyheath resident, and infamous Soviet spy Melita Norwood. Back in August of 2016, I wrote that much of the evidence in respect of her giving the Russians details of the British atom bomb project was contradictory and unclear. Subsequent research I have carried out now lends a stronger argument that she did indeed betray British atomic secrets, and this was the reason that she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner – the Soviet approximate equivalent to the British George Medal. Melita Norwood worked as a secretary at the Tube Alloys project; ostensibly this was a group of Anglo – Canadian scientists, engineers and metallurgists carrying on research into materials which could better resist heat and corrosion for use in both defence and civilian industry. Actually most of this was a cover for what the project was actually dedicated to, which was the creation of Britain’s first atomic bomb, and a few years later with the creation of a British thermonuclear weapon. Contrary to much of received opinion, Britain was not privy to much of the nuclear research the Americans carried out after the end of World War II. The Tube Alloys project actually began in 1942, before the Americans began the much more widely known Manhattan Project. Many Tube Alloys staff did join their American counterparts at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge during the war, and contributed much to the creation of Fat Man and Little Boy – the weapons used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. Once the war had been won, politics took over and the non – US teams were repatriated, and the sharing of atomic information all but ceased under the terms of the McMahon Act of August 1946. (Ironically the Soviet Union got more British nuclear bomb design and construction information from Tube Alloys via the spying of Melita Norwood, than the Americans did by conventional means. The specific project to create a British nuclear weapon began in 1947 and was code named “HER” – which stood for High Explosive Research. After then Prime Minister Clement Attlee's government decided that Britain required the atomic bomb to maintain its position in world politics. In the words of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, "That won't do at all ... we've got to have this ... I don't mind for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked to or at by a Secretary of State in the United States as I have just had in my discussions with Mr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here whatever it costs ... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it." Initially the British atom bomb project was housed as Fort Halstead, near Sevenoaks in Kent, and also at the Royal Arsenal site in Woolwich (just imagine if there had been a serious accident – we might be calling Woolwich the South East London crater now). Later the entire production facility was relocated to Aldermaston, where it continues to this day. Britain’s early nuclear weapons were more than a little crude and shambolic; they lacked basic safety and security features, and potentially could go off on their own if the conditions were right. The main early post war bomb was called the Violet Club; it was a large implosion type un-boosted fission weapon that used a very large amount of Uranium 235 (which was less expensive and hard to enrich than the more efficient and powerful Plutonium 239 that the Americans and Russians used). Because of the very large weight – over 70 kilos of fissile material were used, the bomb was actually greater than critical mass (the amount of weapons grade fissile material needed to create a nuclear explosion) and could theoretically go off with very little provocation. The safety features on the weapon would have been laughable had the subject not been so serious. The arming switch of the bomb was secured with a bicycle padlock and an Allen key. The hollow sphere of Uranium 235 that made up the warhead was filled up with 133,000 steel ball bearings, so that if the weapon did have its’ conventional explosive trigger accidentally go off, the sphere could not be crushed and go supercritical, causing a massive nuclear explosion. The ball bearings had to be removed before the weapon was ready to use. The trouble was, during routine maintenance, the bombs needed to be rotated to access various panels (including those that contained the bombs’ internal power supplies – a couple of six volt lead / acid motorbike batteries – I told you these bombs were built on the cheap). There are several documented occasions when the rubber bung holding the ball bearings in place fell out when the bomb was turned upside down, and all the ball bearings fell out over the floor. This left a very live and unpredictable weapon that could have gone off spontaneously. Now you see why I only half jokingly referred to the South East London crater. Melita Norwood was not exactly secretive about her communist beliefs either to her employers or her friends and neighbours. The fact that she spied so extensively and so long for the KGB might lead one to wonder if other people knew her secret, and sympathised with her cause. Several books have been written on the subject of Melita Norwood and her long career as Russia’s top female spy; the best account is in my opinion “The Spy That Came In From The Co-Op” by Andrew Pierce. He conducted a series of interviews with Norwood in her house in Nursery Avenue, Bexleyheath from the day the spying story publicly broke in the spring of 1999 (he had been travelling to interview her on another subject, but the news story meant that he had a whole more important book to write than that he had intended).  Over the course of a few months and many cups of weak and milky Co-Op 99 brand tea – purchased from the Long Lane branch, she told him her complete story, whilst sipping from her Che Guevara mug. Like many traitors, Melita Norwood had a very selective memory, and her politics remained those of the extreme left until her death in 2005. The fact that MI5 and Special Branch used the excuse that she was too old to prosecute is surprising – although the real reason is that she would have probably spilled the beans on other spies that the authorities had also failed to detect for decades. Intelligence historian and writer Nigel West (the pen name of Rupert Allason) has given the opinion that Melita Norwood did more damage to British interests than the far more well – known Cambridge five group of KGB spies. Perhaps to protect their own already shaky reputations, the security services thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie. After the treachery story came out, and Melita Norwood gained a degree of infamy, my Mother saw her on a local bus on a couple of occasions, and felt sorry for the old lady who was often the target of loudly whispered gossip by fellow travellers. Much of the shock surrounding Norwood's exposure was due to the fact that she seemed so ordinary. Her neighbours in Bexleyheath knew she was a life-long Communist who still took The Morning Star - she would buy 32 copies of each issue and hand them out to friends - but she never appeared other than a mildly harmless eccentric, the only evidence of radicalism being the CND posters in her window. She remained until the end a true believer in the myth of the Soviet peasant worker state that had first inspired her treachery. She hated all reforms of the Soviet Union's genocidal dictatorship. Norwood remained convinced that Communism could work and that capitalism was ultimately doomed to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. she was a quite unique and dedicated traitor. 

You may recall that last week I wrote about my own philosophy / policy on Christmas present wrapping, and how I employ reusable gift bags rather than using single use gift wrap which in nearly all instances cannot be recycled. I also don't send Christmas cards, as these too are absolutely terrible for the environment. Coincidentally the results of a detailed survey have just been published into issues which people have with packaging and wrapping in general. It makes for interesting reading. The report reads:- "A study of 2,000 UK adults found they spend 19 minutes a week trying to get into tricky packaging which is secured with too much tape, cable ties or even items which are screwed into place. A sixth of Brits will spend more than half an hour of Christmas day trying to free their gifts of their annoying containers. Vacuum-packed plastic wrap and stuck jars are also among the encasements many find themselves struggling to open. But a sixth have even broken scissors or knives from being unable to get into difficult packaging, while as many as two-fifths have hurt themselves in their bid to unwrap something. The study also found taped boxes, toys screwed into plastic, ring pulls and medicine bottles cause frequent annoyances for Brits. As a result, 84 per cent feel frustrated when unable to break into packaging, with one in three getting riled up when stuck opening a product or packet. A fifth will even feel defeated by the containers they can’t get into. These annoyances are caused by several challenging factors, with three in 10 complaining too much tape was used which made it hard to get into a packet. A fifth of those polled get annoyed because they needed a screwdriver to free a product from its packaging, and a third have grown frustrated simply because it took too long to get something from its container. Nearly a quarter have also ended up damaging or breaking the product itself. This has led to one in four having an argument due to struggles to get into a product, with nearly two-thirds having a fallout with their partners. A further three in 10 have bickered with their children, according to the research. The same number have even been put off specific brands because of the frustrations they’ve experienced with the packaging encasing the products they’ve bought. It also emerged businesses could be missing out on £1.5billion, as a fifth of adults have avoided ordering a particular product online over concerns about being able to open it. More than two-fifths would be more likely to buy again from a brand which had packaging that was easy to get into, with the average Brit finding issues with one in every six products. Nearly half have had to ask for help after failed attempts to relieve a product of its packaging confinement, giving up after just eight minutes of struggle. This has left one in 10 feeling embarrassed and an equal percentage getting fed up, with a fifth frustrated after turning to others for assistance". What do you think? Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

One of my regular sources of local information, who prefers to remain nameless alerted me earlier this week to a development that I had thought abandoned, but it turns out the project is still going ahead. The image above shows the elevations and floor plan for the building located at 28-40 Pier Road Erith. This is the building that currently has the discount supermarket Farm Foods on the ground floor, along with the adjacent Police office. The upper floor - which years ago used to be the home of a nightclub, is to be repurposed as an African church and function centre. If this sounds somewhat familiar to the existing P2 Events Centre a little further along Pier Road, then it is. I find it strange that another church group are planning on duplicating an existing facility that is less than one hundred metres away - and as I have covered in the past, the P2 Events Centre has had a brief, and very troubled history. The beleaguered owners of the P2 Events Centre and the former children's nursery in Electricity House located at 33A Bexley Road, Erith have put both spaces up for rent. As I recently wrote, the temporary planning permission for the two areas of the building has been withdrawn by Bexley Council. The P2 Events Centre is on offer, details of which can be seen by clicking here. The proposed rent for this shabby space is a staggering amount for what was formerly the Erith Snooker Centre - an incredible £95,000 a year - that is £7,916 a month. They will never get anything like this amount, especially as the future of the entire Electricity House is in some doubt, with the individual leases of the occupiers being progressively bought out by Bexley Council. This does make one wonder if the developers of 28-40 Pier Road are flogging a dead horse. It is always good to learn from the mistakes of others; something the current evidence does not seem to support. The organisation who have successfully won planning permission to redevelop the former nightclub space in 28-40 Pier Road are called The Household Of Faith Ministry, who currently meet in the Erith Leisure Centre. 

Now for the weekly local safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association. The update is somewhat shorter than normal this week, due to several ward reports not having been filed for various reasons. Firstly the update from Barnehurst ward:- "Good news for Barnehurst residents there have been no burglaries on the ward since the 15/11/2019. We have suffered a theft of a Jet Ski. This was taken from a trailer in Eversley Avenue. The Incident was captured on camera and shows two males at 03.06pm on Tuesday 10th December 2019 at the location removing the Jet Ski from the trailer. Please continue to ensure doors are double locked and your vehicles are left safe and secure". Belvedere ward:- "We have visited Court Lodge in Erith Road to speak to residents in relation to crime prevention and home security in the run up to Christmas. We were able to supply residents with various items and literature in relation to several topics. PC Holmes spoke to the residents about Smartwater, and there are several residents that we are hoping to supply this to in the coming days. As previously mentioned – Smartwater is now more widely available for the ward, and if anyone is interested please contact the team.There was a burglary in Milton Road on Thursday 5th December in which entry was gained via the rear door of the property (forcibly). Small items of jewellery were taken. The house is currently under renovation meaning there were minimal personal items within. There was also a burglary in Elmbourne Drive over the last weekend. Entry was gained via the rear of the property – the occupants of the property are currently away from their home but we will be speaking to them upon their return. There have been several instances of graffiti throughout the ward, which have been removed by Bexley Council. Should anyone see any of these, please report them to the team". Bexleyheath ward:- "4/12/19 overnight Theft From motor Vehicle Heathfield Road Glass from two wing mirrors stolen off of van 5/12/19 1730 – 6/12/19 1200 Theft From Motor Vehicle whilst parked at Goals Bexleyheath Wallet stolen whilst vehicle left parked up unlocked. 7/12/19 1615 – 1700 Asda Bexleyheath Purse stolen from handbag after withdrawing cash from cash machine located at Asda 8/12/19 0020 – 0050 Nyne Bar Bexleyheath Theft of Handbag whilst left on seat in nightclub 8/12/19 1130 – 1300 Purse and Phone Stolen from handbag whilst shopping at Bexleyheath Broadway 9/12/19 1200 – 1300 Purse Stolen from handbag near The Fragrance Shop, Bexleyheath Mall. Please ensure that doors and windows to properties are locked and secured with keys (lift the handle and turn the key in the lock) where applicable – revisit home security and lighting now the dark lights are coming. Please be careful with purse/wallets whilst out shopping, make sure they are secured inside your bags with a zip type handbag. If there is anything you wish for us to be aware of in your area please do email or phone". Crayford ward - no report received this week. Erith ward:- "No burglaries in Erith this week -Have a crime-free Christmas. We're working hard over Christmas to keep you and your family safe, but there are steps you can take to help us. When you're out shopping • Stay alert and be aware of what's going on around you, especially in busy shops and crowded streets where thieves and pickpockets may well be operating • Keep valuables in inside pockets of clothing or bags. Keep a close watch on them, and try not to keep them all in one place • Only carry the cash and cards that you need. Always shield the PIN pad when entering your PIN • Be careful where you park your car, especially if you will be returning to it after dark. If parking in a multi-storey car park, choose a well-lit space as close to the exit as possible and away from pillars. Reverse into position. Visit www.parkmark.co.uk for details of approved car parks • Avoid going back to your car to leave your shopping part-way through your trip. If you have to keep presents in the car, make sure they are out of view in the boot, the car is locked, and keep the receipts with you • Deter pickpockets and muggers. Don't overburden yourself with bags/packages. Be extra careful with purses and wallets. Always carry a purse close to your body and not dangling by the straps. Put a wallet in an inside coat or front trouser pocket, likewise with your phone and keys • Try and avoid taking young children into busy shopping areas. If it is unavoidable make sure they know what to do if they lose you e.g. tell the nearest counter assistant that they are lost and never leave a shop without you. Agree a meeting point with older children, in case you get separated • Never leave your bag unattended on your trolley whilst shopping and don't leave it in your vehicle when returning your trolley • Don't get loaded down with too many bags. Try to keep one hand free • Keep car doors locked whilst driving in built-up areas, especially if you've got bags or presents in the car". Northumberland Heath ward - no report received this week. Slade Green and Northend ward:- "No Burglaries to report this week, two vehicles were broken into and property taken over night on Saturday 7th or 8th December. Both vehicles were on the Frobisher Road estate. Items taken were a lap top and a phone. Please do not leave any belongings in your vehicles when unattended. Even if it is only for a minute and even if they are hidden in the boot etc. PCSO Mark read the 6th Lesson at the St Augustines Carols by Candlelight service last Sunday which was very well attended. This coming weekend from Friday 13th until Sunday 15th December is the Erith Christmas Tree Festival at ChristChurch Erith. We will be attending at various times with our colleagues from Erith SNT, culminating in the carol service at 6.30pm on Sunday evening.  Our next Community Contact Session is on Tuesday 17/12/2019 at the St Augustines Welcome café from 1pm. Please come along and say hello, there is a surprise Santa expected". Thamesmead East ward - no report received this week. West Heath ward:- "Two burglaries across the ward over the last week. On Wednesday December 4th between the hours of 6.10pm – 8.05pm the rear doors to a property in Bedonwell Road were forced, the alarm ripped from the wall and an untidy search was conducted within the property. It is believed the address was targeted for family gold but at this stage of the enquiry it is not known if any items were stolen. Residential burglary in Elmstead Crescent on Thursday December 5th between 3pm – 6pm. The middle part of the UPVC door was removed in order to gain entry. The suspect removed the bulb from the security light before searching several upstairs rooms and stealing cash and three CCTV cameras. No vehicle crimes have been reported to us this week which is good news. The team are continuing to focus on high visibility patrols across the ward to detect and deter crime in the lead up to Christmas".

The historic end video this week comes courtesy of Pathe News, and coverage of the granting of the charter for Bexley back in 1937. It is fascinating to see just how many local people turned up for the event. Please feel free to send observations and comments to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The Exchange.

The photos above show the progress on works to restore the historic Carnegie Library in Walnut Tree Road, Erith. The first phase of building works, funded by the Mayor of London and London Borough of Bexley, is progressing well. Extra funds were provided by Bexley council to completely renew the roof. Other works include dealing with water ingress, the restoration of the weathervane and revealing the parquet flooring in what will become the ‘Bookstore Café’. The first phase of works is due to finish in September. This will allow The Exchange (the organisation which has taken a long term lease on the historic building, which is currently in the process of applying for charitable status) to partially reopen the Old Library for public use in the autumn. On June 14th, The Exchange will be opening the doors of the Old Library to provide tours of the space. They will be joined by Luisa Baker, Project Manager from London Borough of Bexley and Robin Lee Architects. Because of a recent break-in, The Exchange are having to take extra security precautions, so please do book onto a tour in advance of the day. The Exchange and London Borough of Bexley have received initial support from The Heritage Lottery Fund and the Architectural Heritage Fund to develop the second phase of the regeneration project. The £137,900 will be used to progress our plans for the upper floors of the building, as well as testing out activity ideas, business planning, continuing conversations with the community and delivering a major fundraising campaign. In the next 12 months, they need to raise another £300,000 which will support an application for a full grant of £980,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. To support this major fundraising campaign, The Exchange are on the hunt for a new member of the team. The Fundraising Officer will work closely with The Exchange Directors to develop funding bids and events that reflect the ambitions of The Exchange and the future role of the building within the community. More details can be found by following this link. As the refurbished Carnegie Library be opening in Autumn this year, The Exchange will be needing some help. If you are interested in supporting them in a voluntary capacity, they would like to hear from you. There will be a range of opportunities available including, Events, Learning, Research, Marketing and Gardening. If you are interested, visit The Exchange website to download a Volunteer Application Form. 

As has been (somewhat inaccurately) reported in the News Shopper, there was a very large multi agency raid, carried out on the Darent Industrial Estate on the Slade Green Marshes. The operation, which involved the Metropolitan Police, the Fire Brigade, The Home Office and Revenue and Customs happened on Wednesday morning - I personally saw a large convoy of vehicles, including a number of police buses full of officers, heading Eastwards along Manor Road at around 8.45 on Wednesday morning.  Prior to heading out to begin the operation, all the agencies had convened in the car park of Morrison's in Erith for a pre - raid briefing. I feel that this was quite a risky thing to do, as many of the people - legitimate and otherwise - who work on the Darent Industrial Estate use Morrisons on their way to and from work, and whilst any passers - by would not know the purpose of the large gathering of official vehicles, any criminal would be suspicious that something big was up. The official Police report from the Slade Green and North End ward reads thus:- "Our team were involved in a joint operation this morning with our police colleagues from Erith, Northumberland Heath and Belvedere SNT along with Immigration Officers, Trading Standards and other government agencies. An early morning entrance was made out on the Darent Industrial estate and at the time of writing there had been 2 arrests made for immigration offences, several stolen vehicles recovered and one establishment closed for operating with an incorrect licence. There are pictures on our Twitter page". I gather that there was rather more to the raid than just picking up some illegal immigrants and stopping a company operating with an incorrect licence. Hopefully more information will make it into the public domain in the near future.

The News Shopper is reporting that the second phase of demolition of Littlebrook power station is due to happen on Saturday the 9th of June at 11pm in the evening. Littlebrook "A" will be demolished in a controlled explosion which will cause the Dartford crossing to be closed for a time. Several major power plants around the country are being decommissioned due to their not meeting new and very strict environmental pollution standards. Littlebrook D Power Station was closed down in March 2015. Littlebrook was actually a series of four separate power stations adjacent to each other, located on the south bank of the River Thames, next to the Queen Elizabeth 2 Bridge and the Dartford Tunnel. The first power station on the site – Littlebrook A, was the coal-fired Littlebrook A Power Station, built by The Kent Electric Power Company in the early 1930s. It was opened in 1939. Coal was initially brought to the station by rail, until a riverside pier was completed. The station was later converted to burn supplementary oil over coal, and remained in use until it closed in 1973.  The construction of Littlebrook B Power Station was delayed by the Second World War, and came into use between 1949 and 1950. Like the A Station, it originally burned coal, but was later converted to burn oil instead. It had a capacity of 120 MW and remained in use until 1975. Littlebrook C Power Station was opened between 1952 and 1956 by the Central Electricity Board, and had a total generating capacity output of 240 MW. Like the two earlier plants, it was originally coal-fired, but was converted burn fuel oil by 1958. The station continued operating until it was replaced by the D Station in 1981. This station was built in response to a rapid demand for electricity as the Country emerged from austerity of the post war years.  The most recent station, Littlebrook D was an oil-fired power station and was built by the nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board. The station was built by The Cleveland Bridge Company with construction starting in 1976.  The first unit commissioning underway by 1981. The 1980s still saw a potential threat from the Cold War, and as such the CEGB designed Littlebrook D as a robust station with high plant redundancy, meaning that the station would form a pivotal role should disaster have struck the city of London. At this time, London was still dependent on several smaller generating stations within the city itself. Littlebrook D was one of a number of stations throughout the UK with black-start capabilities, meaning that it was able to start generating without an external power supply - the station would be one of the first to start generating should the UK experience a partial or complete blackout. Littlebrook D played a vital role in restoring power supplies to the South East of England in the days following The Great Storm of October 1987. As well as providing a black-start power supply to the country, the fact that they could synchronise and ramp up to full load in under five minutes means they were used to generate at the request of The National Grid Company (who operated the UK electricity grid system) to deal with short-term peaks in demand. Such peaks typically arise during the winter months, where evening demand is higher due to lighting and heating requirements. A modification was made to one of the boiler units which allowed for alternative fuel trials. Several were trialled at the Littlebrook D site as part of ongoing research into generating energy from more sustainable fuel sources. One of the main alternative fuels tested was wood chippings, but the energy density these supplied was far lower than fuel oil, so a far larger bulk of chippings was required to create a similar output of electricity. This was deemed to be unacceptable, and the trial was a failure. The station was finally owned by RWE nPower which is owned by the German utility company, RWE. They decided that Littlebrook would "opt-out" under The Large Combustion Plant Directive, an EU law aiming to deal with air pollutants created by the combustion of fossil fuels. This essentially meant that Littlebrook D would have to cease to generate after 2015 in its final configuration. The station ceased operating on 31 March 2015. The demolition of Littlebrook "A" will coincide with the already planned closure of the QE2 Bridge for maintenance, so as not to distract drivers. The 10-second event will not be visible from outside the station boundary and the site will be off limits during the demolition. Although the explosion and collapse may be heard off site, any noise will be over very quickly and non-harmful dust is extremely unlikely to go beyond the station’s grounds. The other main structures will be blown up throughout the year and into 2019, with the site fully cleared by 2020. What is currently not clear is when the iconic chimney - which is visible in much of Erith, Slade Green, Crayford and Dartford will be demolished.

It would seem that the short lived reign of the supermarket self service checkout may possibly be coming to an abrupt end. In a recent study a team at Voucher Codes Pro, a sales coupon website, quizzed 2,532 shoppers about their supermarket habits and found that close to a quarter had committed theft at a self-checkout machine at least once. (A figure from the same report suggested that the total cost of items stolen through self-checkout machines in 2017 came in at more than £3 billion, up from £1.6 billion in 2014, though I believe that the numbers are somewhat speculative). Some steal by accident, the study found, perhaps on account of a scanning error – honest mistakes. But many perpetrators know exactly what they are doing. Often, perpetrators will construct what they perceive as legitimate excuses for theft. Some feel justified in taking items when the checkout machine they’re using doesn’t operate smoothly (it is the machine’s fault). Others consider the items they steal as a kind of payment for work they’re completing on the supermarket’s behalf. Still more reach the self-checkout machine, look around, and see nothing but the inhuman trappings of a faceless corporation. Few would steal from an individual grocer. But from a multinational conglomerate? What difference does it make? The situation has been described as that individuals can neutralise guilt they might otherwise feel when stealing by telling themselves that there are no victims of the crime, no human being is actually being hurt by this, only some mega-corporation that can surely afford the loss of a few quid. In fact, the corporation has saved so much money by laying off all its cashiers that it is almost morally necessary to steal from them. I am vehemently opposed to self service for a number of reasons; firstly it has been demonstrated that the average time to complete a supermarket self service transaction is up to three times as long as one carried out by a staffed till – and that is without allowing for system errors. Secondly, why would you have a dog and bark yourself? Quite often the checkout person adds to the whole retail experience, and can problem solve on the go. Elderly people, or customers with small children can also find self service stressful. On top of this, the supermarkets only introduce self service as they think it will reduce their staffing overheads. This has proved to be a false economy, as although the number of checkout staff is reduced, the number of supervisors and security operatives has to increase – who tend to be paid a higher rate than the checkout staff. This particular matter has caused Wilkinson’s to remove them, as they discovered that the self service tills actually cost more by the time all the overhead costs were factored in; they were also finding the incidence of thefts and under age purchasing were on the rise. Self-service tills cost about £9,000 each, including installation, and manufacturer NCR estimates that they pay for themselves in about 15 months. A third more tills can be squeezed into a store and checkout staff can be deployed elsewhere. But the devices — and their frequent complaint of “unexpected item in bagging area” — are disliked by many shoppers, who argue that retailers are asking customers to do their work for them, and that it reduces interaction with staff. NCR argues that the counters cut prices. “Staff can be redeployed to the shop floor, so it can actually improve service,” A claim that has since found to be incorrect in very many cases. NCR believes that it is benefiting from modern social change, especially the growing convenience market. People are making more shopping trips, for fewer items — hence the spread of convenience outlets to meet demand — a phenomenon attributed by analysts to the breakdown in the nuclear family and traditional working patterns. NCR believes, moreover, that shoppers’ desire for healthy and fresh food and a growing desire to have cravings satisfied immediately have also driven the convenience boom. In my opinion, part of the whole shopping experience is the service and interaction with the staff - and as has been previously proved, the auto tills are not very secure. In fact, the whole chip and PIN security system is indeed threatened, as I have written about in the past. I refuse to do the supermarkets' work for them - and I detest these impersonal infringements on our shopping experience. In 2016 a report was published by the Criminology Department of the University of Leicester on self service checkout tills. The report found that installing self-service checkouts raises lost revenue by 122 percent. Some of it is accidental – people forget to scan items, or get confused by instructions; other times shoppers get so frustrated with self-service kiosks that they feel justified in not paying. The report  states that mostly people shoplift because the technology makes it so easy. Mobile phone scanning technology is just as vulnerable – the study found that at the end of a typical shopping trip, up to ten percent of items had not been scanned, leading to “shrinkage” (loss through wastage or theft) of about 3.9 percent of turnover. Unfortunately the technology makes it very difficult to prove that customers are deliberately stealing.  Often it is difficult for retailers to discern between malicious actions and honest mistakes – was the customer absent-minded or consciously fraudulent? – and proving intent can be perilous. Charge an honest shopper with theft and lose their business. Let a perpetrator off the hook and suffer a reduction in profit. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or alternatively Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

Now for the weekly safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association. Firstly, Barnehurst ward:- "Good news again for Barnehurst as we did not have many crimes. Officers from the Barnehurst team served a local resident with a Community Protection Notice due to Anti-social behaviour. The team will continue to have a zero tolerance approach to Anti-social behaviour. If you wish to report any Anti-social behaviour on the ward please contact us on 020 8721 2577. The Barnehurst team met the new ward councillors, who are Councillor Brain Bishop and Councillor Howard Jackson. The meeting was extremely productive and positive as we are hopeful that we will work well together in making Barnehurst ward a safer place. Please join us for our community contact day on Wednesday 30th May at 1pm at Barnehurst Golf Course. We will discuss any ward issues that you have and we will also provide residents with crime prevention advice. Two new Neighbourhood Watches are in the process of being launched. Residents from Merewood Road and Beechcroft Avenue have volunteered to act as Coordinators. We are keen for other residents to come forward in the hope to get full Neighbourhood Watch coverage in every street". Bexleyheath ward:- "As previously mentioned the new ward boundaries are now in place across the borough. The name of our ward is now Bexleyheath Ward, previously Christchurch. Please make sure you have the right contact details for us which is below this update. We are getting to know the new areas on our ward with residents. We are communicating with previous ward officers to make sure we have a smooth changeover. In relation to what has been going on the ward. Over the last week, we have had no reported residential burglaries which is fantastic news. As part of our business as usual we continually patrol the ASB areas on our ward at various times which includes open spaces, car parks and areas you have informed us of. We have had various reports of ASB around the ward involving, youths in Martens Grove Park, vehicle meets in ASDA carpark, drugs and involving motorbikes and cars. We have noticed an increase in graffiti on the ward in Martins Grove Park, Russell Park, Marriot car park. The council have been notified to remove them as quickly as possible. If you do notice any graffiti on the ward. Please contact the council and they should be able to remove it as soon as possible, this can be done easily online. Normally anything offensive/racial you would need to report it to Police also. We were notified of an incident of Criminal damage to a motor vehicle in the cinema car park but are awaiting details. As part of Bike Week we have been invited to be a part of this initiative which is on Saturday 9th June along the Broadway between 10am and 2pm where be lots of stalls etc and we will have our bike marking stall as well as the MSC holding a recruitment stall. There is no charge for this so please pop along if you are available with your bikes and get them marked, feel free to mention to others who may not get this information. Please don’t forget to come and see us at our contact sessions which are advertised. The next one is on the 30th June will be at Lidl Bexleyheath between 4pm & 5pm, come along if you wish to speak to us if you are around then. Their seems to be a little confusion with regards how to report crime. You should either dial 999 if it is an emergency, dial 101 for all non emergency’s, via the Met police website, or in person. If you want to pass on information then please email our mail box or Crimestoppers 0800555111 Other means of contacting us are obviously Twitter, Facebook, email and the ward phone as per below. For crime prevention advice, please look at the Met Police website which has the information that you may find useful. Remember In an emergency please dial 999 and 101 for non-urgent reporting". Crayford ward:- "At approximately 03.30 hrs on Sunday 20th May, a house in Woodside Road was raided by armed police and a firearm was found within the property. The next morning at approx. 06.00 hrs, officers again entered the property and made an arrest. There have been reports of criminal damage to motor vehicles this week. Between 21.00 on 17th May and 07.00 on 18th May, a Black Ford Fiesta had its tyres stabbed multiple times outside an address in Wolsey Close, this is a hire vehicle. On 27 April at 02.15, what was believed to be a firework was thrown in to a car parked in Dale Close, there was damage to the soft hood and it created a dent. Between 13.00 on the 18th May and 16.30 on the 19th May the front passenger window of a vehicle was smashed and the door damaged whilst parked in the underground car park at Tanners Close, Perry Street, there were also historic issues reported such as eggs being thrown at the vehicle. There was an attempted robbery in Halcot Avenue on the 17th May at 11.49. The victim was chased on his moped and an attempt was made to ram it. It was believed that the suspects were trying to steal the victim’s vehicle but then crashed their own vehicle, no threats were heard. On Saturday 19th May at 19.50, two males entered the Bottle and Basket in Crayford Way and demanded money from the till with the threat of a weapon. The person working in the shop, whilst very frightened was able to activate the panic alarm and the suspects fled the scene with nothing, police were very quickly on the scene. Our team came across a damage only accident and assisted with a road closure whilst awaiting the council to clear an oil spill in the road. Two males were also arrested, three mobile phone tickets and one speeding ticket issued to motorists as part of our ward panel promise. We have carried out foot and mobile patrols of areas coming to notice for anti-social behaviour and looking at ways to suitably reduce and prevent this issue. Our ward panel will be held on Thursday 31st May, if you would be interested in attending, please contact us". Erith ward:- "We held 2 free bike marking events in Erith last week marking almost 20 bikes for local residents, I will arrange more dates for this in the future. We are still working hard on trying to get 100 percent Neighbourhood Watch coverage in Erith I am guessing we are at around 70 percent at the moment. Some upcoming dates for our Community Contact Session - feel welcome to pop along: Wednesday 30/05/18 we will be in Erith Library from 11am". Northumberland Heath ward:- "No burglaries have been reported to us for several weeks now which is great news. One theft of motor vehicle from Austen Road which was stolen on May 11th but was not reported until May 18th. The vehicle has since been recovered. One criminal damage to a window in Cartmel Road on the evening of Friday May 19th. Several bottles of milk have been stolen from a doorstep in Nurstead Road the early hours of the morning on Thursday May 17th. This has happened to the same victim over the last month or so. The Clarkes travel shop in Bexley Road have reported lead missing from the roof of the premises to the value of £2,000. It is unclear exactly when this took place. The team will be at the Sunshine Café next Wednesday May 30th at Noon for our coffee with cops event". Slade Green and North End ward:- "A garage was burgled sometime Monday/Tuesday this week in Newbery Road. A small child's bike was stolen. No forced entry. A male offered to cut the victims grass last weekend and was taken up on the offer. There is no evidence linking this male to any involvement in this theft but please be vigilant when using any cash in hand services offered by random passers by. Street lighting/Scaffold poles with around an £8000 value were stolen and damaged from the new Egerton Place development (the old Linpac site, Slade Green Road) last weekend. Unfortunately the area is not covered by cctv but patrols will be made past the site in the coming days. We have been leafleting the Frobisher Road estate with our “Rat a Rat” campaign, reminding residents that calls about drug dealers living or dealing nearby can be reported anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800555111. We will hopefully do a few more leaflet drops and get some posters up across the ward in the coming weeks. All the information reported to Crimestoppers does make it’s way to us so it is a good way to report crime/drug dealing etc if you are unsure about speaking directly to the police. We have a Community Contact Session this Sunday (27th May) from 11am at our office in Pier Road, then another this coming Tuesday (29th May) from 1030am at the café in Forest Road. Please come and say hi if you are nearby". Thamesmead East Ward:- "On Wednesday 16/05/18 between the hours of1:00pm and 4:00pm a pedal cycle was stolen from the Thames innovation Centre, Yarnton Way. Over the night of Friday 18/05/18 and Saturday 19/05/19, the side window of a vehicle parked in Glimpsing Green was smashed and items were taken from the glove box; A vehicle which was locked and secure parked in an underground car park in Eastgate Close was stolen overnight of Saturday 19/05/18 and Sunday 20/05/18. Criminal damage was caused to a vehicle parked in Hartslock Drive between the hours of 11:00pm on Sunday 20/05/18 and 06:00am on Monday 21/05/18 .The tyres of the vehicle were slashed; A vehicle which was under repair following a Road Traffic Accident was stolen from Hartslock Drive between the hours of 06:00 pm Tuesday 22/05/18 and 06:00am Wednesday 23/05/18. Have a Say event: Tuesday 29/05/18 between the hours of 2:00pm and 3:00pm the team will be attending The Thamesmead Library, Bazalgette Way. An opportunity for members of the community who prefer face- to – face contact, to speak with a Dedicated Ward Officer.  Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Information: Take it with you - Mobile phone, coins, sunglasses can earn quick cash are irresistible to the opportunist thief. Remember the cost of replacing a window is often much more than of what’s been stolen. Wallets, handbags purses and credit cards should never be left un an unattended vehicle".

One of the down sides of the Maggot Sandwich only publishing once a week on a Sunday, is that occasionally it can become overtaken by events. The end video below was found on YouTube by me on Monday, and I embedded it in the draft of this issue. Unbeknownst to me, some bright spark at the News Shopper also came across it, and republished it under the News Shopper banner during the week. I had actually found it first. I digress; the video shows the testing of the brand new British Rail Class 345 trains on the Crossrail / Elizabeth Line from Abbey Wood Station. Give the video a watch, and please feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

Clean for the Queen.

It is nice to begin on some good news this week; the photo above shows part of the main concourse in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. An announcement this week by Barry Owen, the manager of the shopping centre said that sales were up markedly on the same period last year. A greater footfall through the centre had also been recorded - more visitors will encourage more retailers to open outlets in the centre - as previously mentioned, I have it on good authority that Subway will soon be opening a branch, and the much loved Mambocino coffee shop / cafe will be expanding into a second unit so that it will be able to open for "sit down" meals in the evening - something currently sadly lacking in Erith. All in all things are looking good; hopefully the remaining unlet units will soon be occupied. 

Belvedere Splash Park was one of the largest free wet play parks in the country, with a lagoon surrounding a desert island and a mini-‘beach’, equipped with water sprinklers, showers, bubble jets and sprays. Parents brought their children from a very wide area to the park during the summer months; it was incredibly popular and very well used. The Splash Park was one recreational feature which brought many people to Upper Belvedere who might otherwise not visit the village. The Splash Park has been under threat for a couple of years now, and it would seem that even though a concerted and well organised campaign to preserve the park has been for nothing. Many observers, myself included were of the opinion that Bexley Council do everything possible to do exactly what they always intended to do despite so – called “consultation” – the Bexley Council motto of “Listening to you, Working for you” is laughably ironic. It is pretty certain that the Splash Park will not be refurbished – the final decision will be taken at a council meeting on Monday evening, well after the Maggot Sandwich for this week has “gone to press” on Sunday afternoon. One local rumour has been directly denied by the council – that is, that the larger recreation park on the other side of Woolwich Road would be moved onto the former Splash Park site, then the entire recreation park site, along with the adjacent Belvedere Library would be sold off to allow a high concentration flat development, thus making a pile of short term cash for the rapacious council, and a longer term cash cow in the form of annual council tax revenue from the residential development. Councillors flatly deny this is the case – but in my experience (with a few very notable exceptions) I find that you can always tell when a politician is lying – their lips are moving. In an interview with the Bexley Times, Councillor Daniel Francis (one of the notable exceptions in my experience) said “While I welcome the news that the council plans to retain inclusive play facilities on the site, it is deeply disappointing that over 100 years of a water facility on this site will be brought to an end. This decision would have been taken over a year ago, if it were not for the tireless work of local campaigners. I would like to place on record my thanks to all those campaigners and in particular to Ian Doherty for setting up the campaign, Rachael Thompson, Nicola Taylor and Alex Taylor for their work and in particular Faye Ockleford for her tireless work co-ordinating the campaign and the Save our Splash Park FaceBook page. I therefore welcome the assurances we have received that the council do not propose selling either of the Woolwich Road recreation grounds, and we will be holding them to account to ensure they keep their promise on this issue. While the council may claim this decision has been caused by lack of interest from companies to run a water facility, this is of course not the case. This decision is a purely ideological one taken by a Conservative council as a result of the reduction in funding from a Conservative Government.” A pity that he had to put the party political boot in at the end; I know that some Conservative councillors secretly backed the plan to save the Splash Park, but were too afraid to say so publicly for fear of retribution.

The “Clean for the Queen” event aims to recruit one million people to help tidy up the UK’s dirtiest areas in time for the Queen’s 90th birthday on the weekend on 4, 5 and 6 March. Prior to this weekend, it is rather unfortunate that the PR company promoting the positive event have chosen a negative way of publicising it. They have highlighted what they consider to be the twelve dirtiest places in Britain,  and they list Erith as one of those towns.  A photo of rubbish dumped on South Road in Erith was submitted and chosen as one of the dirtiest. Campaign director Adrian Evans said in an interview with the News Shopper: “The dirty dozen all share a common theme – they are local eyesores.  Rubbish has been dumped by people who can’t be bothered to dispose of it responsibly – bottles, cans, wrappers and bags.  We have chosen these grotspots to highlight just how bad the litter problem is and also to emphasise that everyone can make a difference to their local area by not littering. To show that these places would be so much more beautiful if the litter was cleared, the Clean for The Queen team and friends are undertaking to clean up three of the grotspots in advance of the Clean for the Queen weekend on 4, 5 and 6 March.” Other towns listed as being exceptionally dirty and rubbish – filled were Thurrock, Derbyshire (not a town, I know!), Stamford, Tooting, Birmingham, Chippenham, Cardiff, Ipswich, Brighton, Newcastle and Hammersmith. 

I have had several readers ask me about buying a new computer, and what they should look for. A couple of years ago many IT industry insiders were predicting the imminent demise of the desktop PC, to be replaced with tablet devices and mobiles. The only people who were expected to continue using tower PC’s were gamers who endlessly upgrade and tweak their computer hardware to get the best performance possible. In the end, the death of the desktop PC seems not to have happened after all. There is still a demand for desktop machines. I have some predictions for the next year and the personal computer. The switch to Windows 10 will really start to have an impact, as Windows 7 goes out of mainstream support – and very few migrated to the disastrous and buggy Windows 8 / 8.1. It is expected that plenty of organisations will look therefore decide 2016's as good a time as any to take the plunge on a new PC fleet, powered by Windows 10. The top three PC-makers – Dell, Lenovo and HP have released details of the products they think will appeal to their customers.  One thing all three companies think customers will want this year is size. Or more specifically, a lack thereof. Towers and mini-towers are now for workstation-wranglers only. The corporate desktop is now a margarine-tub-sized affair. That shrinkage has been made possible by three things, the first of which is the demise of optical drives. Nobody needs to load software from CD or Blu – Ray disc anymore, and USB sticks are now the dominant portable data medium. So out go optical drives and the space they occupy. Disk density helps, too, as a 500GB 2.5-inch drive is now easy to find at decent prices and solid-state disks are also cheap. Whatever storage device you choose, it needs less space than its predecessor, meaning smaller PCs become possible. Intel's Skylake processors are the third and biggest space-saver, as they run cooler and also boast built-in graphics. By requiring less cooling and removing the need for a graphics card, Skylake means PCs can shrink in size. Nowadays only hard-core gamers looking for ultra high resolution and very high frame refresh rates still feel the need for a separate, dedicated 3D graphics card, unlike the days of yore. Smaller PCs also have manufacturers thinking about what they can do with a shrunken system. Bolting the client to the back of a monitor is now a common trick. Lenovo's taken the idea further with the “TinyOne 23”, a small form factor PC designed to mate with a slot in a matching monitor. Personally it reminds me of a “Happy Shopper” Apple iMac, but without the slick design. 2016's new laptops will do what laptops have done since day one: get smaller, lighter and thriftier in the demands placed on batteries. Under the hood, the M.2 interface will make plenty more appearances, as a connector for all manner of devices but especially SSDs. The three manufacturers who were consulted expected to see 256GB SSDs as 2016's sweet spot, with demand for 512GB rising, but cost keeping demand muted. Solid state storage will continue to take over from hard disk drives, as SSD capacity increases, costs come down and their life is extended. The two biggest improvements SSD drives bring to the party are increased speed and decreased power consumption – no need to spin a physical disk around saves a lot of battery power. The newly introduced USB-C connectivity standard won't appear in all business laptops: consensus is it's too soon for business users to want it, but it's tipped for bigger things next year once its potential to replace desktop docks is realised. Users are tired of proprietary docks, the big three tell us, and USB-C is expected to clean up in coming years. One other advantage USB – C has will be welcomed by everyone who has ever needed to connect a USB lead to a PC. For the first time ever, the USB standard, version C will allow plugs to be inserted either way round – no more scrabbling around the back of a computer or TV, trying to work out which way the USB plug goes in (and it is always the wrong way first time – I think this is a universal law). Another new connectivity standard has also been launched with 2016’s new PC hardware in mind;  WiGig is a short-range wireless protocol that can transmit audio and video or data. It's felt that the standard will let a laptop drive a monitor and connect to peripherals. The standard will find its way into some laptops this year, with Lenovo planning it as standard and intending to release a WiGig dock. Dell and HP see later adoption of the technology, which should prove popular with business users. The ability to wirelessly connect to external monitors or 4K televisions will be something many users will wonder how they coped beforehand.  Laptops capable of doing duty as tablets are very much in demand, so touch screens are increasingly common across all three vendors' ranges, bringing with them the ability to contort devices into different working positions. Whatever you buy, in whatever form factor, expect it to come with at least 4GB of DDR 4 RAM – better still 8GB. Anything less is seen as cutting corners. On a slightly different note, There's a new Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the works - this time it's a handheld dedicated games console.The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ passed its £100,000 crowdfunding target on IndieGoGo in less than three days. At the time of publication £160,000 had been pledged by 1500 backers. The handheld, which follows last year's Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega, comes with 1000 licensed games built-in and costs £100. A bit of background: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ is marketed by the Luton-based Retro Computers (Sir Clive's Sinclair Research Ltd is a shareholder). The development and marketing of the Vega+ is under license from Sky In-Home Service Ltd, who inherited the intellectual property rights to the Spectrum computers from Amstrad. Retro said development of the Vega+ is complete and a fully-functioning prototype is ready to go into production. It has a colour LCD and can be connected to a television. As already mentioned, it comes with 1000 licensed games, but you can download additional games free of charge. The design concept of the Vega+ is the work of Rick Dickinson, who was responsible for the design of all of Sinclair's ZX computers in the 1980s. A short explanatory video is below.



Now here is some interesting information about a newly formed local crime fighting initiative:- "Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association has set up a BikeWatch scheme in Bexley to try and help reduce the amount of nuisance and crime from Biker gangs in the Borough of Bexley. The main problems are in and around Thamesmead and Erith (although not confined to these two areas) at the very least these gangs can cause a nuisance with the noise they make late at night with their bikes, but there has also been other instances where bike gangs have attacked individuals and where their behaviour on their bikes has endangered members of the public.As the numbers of bikers increase the police are struggling to cope, as often they are unable to chase the bikers as they drive off-road while being pursued by the police, additionally often by the time the police are able to respond to a call the bikers have gone, although the disturbance has already happened and residents have been woken from their sleep. Our BikeWatch scheme like many of our other non-residential schemes such as ShopWatch and HoundWatch offer membership to residents who are then able to report instances and give information on the bikers for example time the incident happened, the number of bikes, what they were doing, registration numbers and description of riders etc etc, which we would pass onto the relevant ward police team according to area/ward of the incident, and this enables them to build up information for possible prosecution. What this scheme also offers differently from our other schemes is that residents don't have to join, they can fill in a BikeWatch incident report card and send it to us without giving their details if they fear they could suffer from reprisals from these youths. We feel also that parents should also be brought to bear when bikers are caught as they often enable their children, by purchasing them a bike and by allowing them to be out on them sometimes to the early hours of the morning. The police have powers to confiscate the bikes and have them crushed and we hope that with this scheme and residents support more of the constant offenders will be caught and that dealt with in this way. More serious instances have included a lady with a buggy nearly being hit when a biker who was riding on one wheel slipped off nearly hitting her and her buggy / child in Erith, another where one of our members who was filming their illegal activity near a shopping centre was attacked and punched also in Erith, and a person being beaten to a pulp by a gang of bikers in Abbey Wood, plus gangs on bikes riding around at night stealing motor bikes from residents. THIS HAS TO STOP NOW, BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE JOIN BIKEWATCH TODAY. For copies of our BikeWatch Cards please either ring 0208 284 5537 or email bexwatch-office@btconnect.com BEXLEY BOROUGH NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH ASSOCIATION-we now have over 1,000 volunteers working to help to keep the Borough Safe why not join us NOW?" You can find out more about Bexley Neighbourhood Watch Association by clicking here. 

Fellow local Blogger Malcolm Knight, of the excellent “Bexley is Bonkers” blog has been making adverse comments on the changes made to the roadways and pavements in and around Bexley, principally in Sidcup High Street and Bexleyheath Broadway. His poor view of the changes in the street layout, removing the delineation between pedestrian and traffic areas into what some now called “shared space” matches my own. The town planners and architects seem to like this uncertainty of what is road and what is pavement, but the council tax paying public seem to not. It appears that our antipathy is mirrored by Councillor Stef Borella, Labour shadow cabinet member for traffic and transport, who views the works as a council vanity project. He said in an interview in the Bexley Times that “The works are costing £5.5million, that’s money that could have been spread elsewhere. You can put that money in places like Sidcup High Street, Forest Road in Slade Green, or in developing Belvedere. It’s such a vanity project to focus on developing Bexleyheath. When I was knocking on doors during the general election, I’d say around 85 per cent were opposed to the idea of these roadworks.” In my opinion the reason the money gets spent in Bexleyheath and the Southern part of the London Borough of Bexley is because that is where the governing councillors live; the poorer North of the Borough gets repeatedly ignored, as the residents of the North did not elect the councillors that are now in power. Danson Splash Park in Welling was not even considered for closure, but the much more popular and widely used Belvedere Splash Park was - you work it out.

The photo above shows the former Odeon, Erith when it was being used as a Mecca bingo hall back in 1985; it was a sad end for a glorious Art Deco building, constructed in 1937, and opened in 1938, it seated 1,240 people. You can see more period photos of the building by clicking here. Sadly, even though it was a Grade II* listed building, it was demolished in 1999, and now a block of flats and offices stands on the site. Wetherspoons had hoped to conserve the original cinema building and convert it into a pub / restaurant, but the close proximity of the Sherwood House sheltered housing scheme directly opposite meant that this was never going to happen - the levels of noise and disturbance at night would never have been permitted by the licensing authorities. 

MP for Erith and Thamesmead, Teresa Pearce has been getting rightly annoyed in my opinion in cuts being made to the Magistrate's Court system locally. Dartford Magistrates' Court has been axed in moves to "modernise" the justice system, the government has announced. Meanwhile, two justice buildings will be lost in the Greenwich borough - where both Greenwich Magistrates' Court and Woolwich County Court are to close. They were three of 91 buildings, 57 magistrates and 19 county courts, at threat of closure by the HM Courts and Tribunal Service.  According to the HM Courts and Tribunal Service, the 86 courts they are closing are used for just over a third of their available hearing time, the equivalent of less than two days a week. In Dartford, the proposal was to transfer all cases seventeen miles away to Medway Magistrates' Court - but 97 per cent of residents nationwide should still be able to reach their court within an hour by car. The workloads and hearings of Greenwich and Woolwich will be moved to Bromley County Court. In an interview with the News Shopper, Teresa Pearce said “The government has already slashed legal aid and increased court fees. Many are representing themselves because they cannot afford a lawyer. And now victims and witnesses will have to travel much further than before, further threatening their right to local access to justice. Many of the cases looked into at these courts are for family matters or less serious offences. The Ministry of Justice say it will only take 20 minutes from Greenwich to Bromley – well that’s just not my experience. It will take longer for police to transport prisoners and longer for witnesses or victims to travel to court at greater personal expense. I urge the government to reconsider these proposals. You cannot put a price on fair access to justice for all." To balance this, it has to be said that some of the court buildings that are being closed have been chronically underused in recent years. I understand that currently the inefficiency in the court system and the underuse of buildings is estimated to cost the UK taxpayer half a billion pounds a year. What is the answer? Leave a comment below, or Email hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Look out for increased levels of Police, emergency service and military activity in and around the local area in the next couple of weeks; Exercise Unified Response will simulate a tower block collapsing into Waterloo Underground station packed with passengers. The four-day exercise, starting on February 29th, aims to test the contingency planning of more than seventy organisations, from mortuaries to the Government’s Cobra committee. It will be staged at the decommissioned Littlebrook power station, near Dartford Crossing, and include two thousand volunteers playing casualties amid upturned Tube trains and thousands of tons of rubble. It is understood that the techniques being tested could also be used in a terror incident. Following the Paris suicide bombings and gun attacks in November, which killed 130, London firefighters wearing bulletproof vests have been trained to work alongside police while gunmen are still at large. The €1 million (£770,000) drill is funded by the European Union and will include specialists from Hungary, Italy and Cyprus. Part of the exercise is to test if they could get to trapped survivors faster than the July 7 terror attacks in 2005, and help reduce their trauma. It will be interesting to see what happens. If you have been contacted as a volunteer for the four day exercise, please let me know - Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The end video this week examines the future for the currently empty and derelict Spillers Millennium Flour Mill in Silvertown, Docklands. The iconic building has been used as a TV and film location, most notably in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket". It is now about to be refurbished and put back into use. The short video explains how the listed building is going to be restored and internally transformed; it makes for interesting and informative viewing.