The Bird and Barrel.

Progress on the new housing development on the site of the old Erith Riverside Swimming Baths has stopped for the Christmas break; the whole project is running somewhat behind schedule through no fault of the developers. The company that was contracted to demolish the old swimming baths and to clear the site of all of the resultant rubble and waste materials took a short cut. Instead of using trucks to remove all of the spoils, thee bulldozed most of the material into the hole that was the empty swimming pool itself. They then paid a thin layer of topsoil over the top and planted grass seeds; the finished site looked fine, and it was only when the building firm hired by the developers moved onto the site and started to dig the foundations for the new flats and houses that the short cut by the demolition company was then discovered. This obviously slowed down construction work on the site. The Riverside Baths site is only one of several new developments in what is being called the Greater Erith Project. This project is a collaborative venture between Bexley Council, The Greater London Authority, Transport for London and The London Enterprise Panel. According to what I have read, The Council’s vision for Erith is to encourage housing and employment growth, allied with the provision of additional services, facilities and infrastructure, including an enhanced educational and leisure offer, to ensure the creation of a sustainable and healthier community. Key elements of this approach are the encouragement of mixed use developments within and around the town centre of high design quality which respect the areas built and natural heritage, improve accessibility, enhance environmental quality and maximise the recreational, ecological and flood management potential of the River Thames. The regeneration of Erith Town Centre will create new coherent predominantly residential riverside communities, which will provide a mix of housing, new and improved business premises, community uses, and public transport improvements within a framework of new residential streets with an improved public realm. The London Regeneration Fund (LRF) will finance major physical improvements to key areas of the town, particularly to the area between the Town Hall and the Post Office. It will also pay for activities designed to re-energise the area and to improve training and job opportunities for local residents. How much of this will actually be delivered remains to be seen, but I am cautiously optimistic. What does concern me is that whilst some improvements will be made in and around Erith Station, the fundamental problem related to the station looks like it is not going to be addressed; that is, the lack of step free access to the London bound platform. Nearby stations such as Bexleyheath have a passenger lift, even though it does not really need one - as both platforms can be easily accessed by a buggy or wheelchair user from the road and pedestrian bridges at each end of the platform. At Erith Station however, there is no such option - the only way to get to the London bound platform is to climb the Victorian footbridge, which is about as unfriendly to those with mobility challenges as you can get. The only alternative is to stay on the Kent bound platform and get the train to Dartford, change there using the passenger lifts at that station, and then come back the other way, towards London. This is time consuming and impractical for many wheelchair and buggy users, and besides that, why should they be treated differently from other rail users? Local MP Teresa Pearce has long campaigned for step free access to the London bound platform at Erith Station, but thus far her efforts have met with little success. I am hopeful that as the profile of the town increases as the development money is spent locally, that her efforts to improve the station for all users will get better recognition. Work also starts in the next couple of weeks on the refurbishment and repurposing of the old Carnegie Library in Walnut Tree Road. It will become a centre for ‘innovation, creativity, learning and production’ once The Exchange become new occupiers of the landmark. The local company will take on the building under a lease and partnership agreement with the London Borough of Bexley. Councillor Linda Bailey, Cabinet member for Regeneration and Growth, said in a recent interview:- “We are very pleased to have found three experienced local entrepreneurs who have established The Exchange Ltd to work with us to prepare the building for the next exciting phase in its history. “We have agreed to co-finance the refurbishment of the building together with the Mayor of London and the new operator, and we believe it will be a powerful demonstration of the ways in which regeneration can benefit the town and its people.” The Exchange plan to offer cultural, artistic and designer studios. and workshop space for creative businesses to make and sell products. I was fortunate enough to attend the former library open day a while back, and I was absolutely astounded as to just how big the place is; back in the day when it was still open and operating as a library, only around a third of the building space was actually open to the public. On the open day the entire structure was open for investigation, and I have to say that The Exchange have got a huge job in front of them - the library building has been neglected for the best part of a decade, and whilst it is not exactly falling down, the building is not secure from the weather; when it rains, water pours down the inside of several of the windows, and in places, trees are growing inside the structure. All of this can be rectified with sufficient money and construction resources.

A report recently published by The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) shows the startling change in recycling rates in the boroughs that make up South East London. The report shows that Bexley is recycling less than it did in 2012, despite the data being more positive than Lewisham and Dartford. Between March 2016 and March 2017 - 53 per cent of all rubbish from households was recycled, which is one per cent less than the same period from 2011 to 2012. In the 12 months to the end of March this year Bexley cleared away 121,304 tonnes of rubbish, with 81 per cent of that household waste. I have discovered that the real reason that Bexley have stopped providing plastic and drinks container collection facilities at their recycling points is less to do with contamination of the materials previously deposited at the sites as they claim, and rather more to do with cold, hard cash. It has come to my attention that certain countries such as China are stopping the importation of plastic waste due to environmental concerns. This has meant that the charges imposed by plastic sorting and grading plants are now increasing because of their now increased overheads. Bexley Council don't want to spend the extra money - it would seem (no great surprise) that Bexley would rather that the local environment would suffer rather than paying for the additional recycling costs. As previously mentioned, Bexley Council is not alone in allowing plastic recycling to slip down their agenda; in fact central government is aware, and it is becoming increasingly likely that new rules enforcing minimum rates for plastic recycling may be forced onto local councils. I for one would like to see the plastic and drinks container hoppers restored to the various recycling facilities around Bexley, and I know I am not alone in this.

I am aware that humour is a very personal thing, and what appeals to one person may not appeal to another. Nevertheless, I have been astonished at the success of one programme in particular, which I just cannot understand the appeal of, as it seems to hark back to early 1970’s sit coms like “Bless this House” and “On the Buses” whilst to my mind lacking the wit or charm of those shows. On top of all this, the show managed to rack up the highest viewing ratings of the Christmas period – so a lot of people must like it. What show am I talking about? “Mrs Brown's Boys”. It really seems to be a Marmite show for a lot of viewers – you either love or loathe it, and I am firmly in the latter group. It does seem to be a “guilty pleasure” programme, as when I have mentioned it to people, all I have asked have said that they detest it, but some at least must be lying, as the viewing figures have been so high. I won't bother a critique of “Mrs Browns Boys” as others have done far better than I, and I know my personal views are extremely unlikely to sway the opinion of someone who actually likes the show. I am mystified. If you have any thoughts on this, then please feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Talking of TV shows, I am reminded that not very long ago I wrote about the fate of so called "Smart" TV's purchased only three or four years ago. Apps written for these not quite brand new models simply cease working as the app producers only write the latest version of their software for the most recent TV models. Samsung smart TV's from 2012 - 2013 have suffered this fate, and the same is happening with sets from other manufacturers. I have had a couple of readers contact me, asking what they should look for when buying a new TV set. In the past I have advised against purchasing a 4K TV, as so little 4K content was available. This is now changing. I know many potential purchasers are somewhat discouraged, as they have seen so many "must have" technologies incorporated into TV's fall by the wayside - 3D anyone? None of the mainstream TV manufacturers still makes a TV with 3D capability nowadays. It was all of the rage four years ago, but now it is almost completely forgotten - in my opinion 3D was always a solution looking for a problem. The new technologies that are now becoming commonplace in contemporary televisions are far less gimmicky than 3D. After the 3D debacle, and the less than stellar performance of apps used on Smart TV's compared to the average laptop, it could be argued that 4K and HDR are the next big forgettable fad. The difference here is that both technologies simply improve an existing experience. You don’t have to fight with an uncooperative system, wear special glasses or buy yet another version of the same movie you already own on DVD or Blu-Ray. Good 4K Ultra HD TVs are available for well under £1,000, with even really great, big sets costing under £1,500 – such as Sony’s fantastic 55in Bravia XE9005. While more pixels benefits large screens, it is HDR that has film and TV makers excited, as not only can it be made with four times the number of pixels, those pixels can be better. HDR allows content creators to better display their vision on your small screen as they have done on the big screen, as well as do things that have not been possible with SDR formats. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range video is that recorded and displayed with a wider range of colours than so called standard dynamic range (SDR). HDR video therefore has a greater range of both contrast and colour  than SDR, resulting in a more true-to-life picture and producing scenes with more "pop" or depth. HDR is usually combined with the increased resolution of 4K video producing greater detail and immersion. HDR video is different to HDR photography, where the latter is a technique that combines multiple exposures of a scene to create a single image with a greater dynamic range of luminosity, mimicking what is seen by the human eye. There are a number of different HDR standards, and different manufacturers don't always stick to the same standards. As of now, almost all but the very bottom end 4K televisions will have at least the basic level of HDR implementation, so buyers don't need to worry over much. The difference that has happened in 2017 has been the increase in native 4K content available for these new ultra high definition televisions. Both Netflix and Amazon Video are producing original content in 4K HDR, with Sky TV and BT TV playing catch up. Because of the extremely large quantity of data a 4K HDR picture requires, you will not be seeing ultra high definition programmes broadcast on Freeview or FreeSat any time soon. It has to be said that the future of all television is now in the arena of streaming. I predict that Sky TV will be entirely satellite free within the next five years - as fibre broadband gets faster and more ubiquitous, the need for expensive and potentially unreliable broadcasting satellites will simply cease to exist.

A story that I have been asked to keep quiet about for some time has now broken publicly; it was a bit of an open secret to be honest, but now the time has come where I can announce that The Bexley Brewery are opening a Micro Pub at 100, Barnehurst Road, Barnehurst, close to Barnehurst Station. The Micro Pub is going to be called The Bird and Barrel - after the green Parakeet bird that the brewery use as their logo. The Micro Pub was originally stared on the site a couple of years ago, but the chap who was behind it ended up puling out before it was ready to open. Cliff, Jane and Cameron Murphy have taken over the former Aquacadabra tropical fish shop (see the photo above - click on it for a larger view) and finished the conversion into the borough's latest Micro Pub. I have been promised the first photos and a preview visit before The Bird and Barrel opens to the general public - more on this story very soon.

I have long known that the Maggot Sandwich gets read by people far outside of its target area; I have previously had messages of support from places as far afield as Brazil, Melbourne in Australia, Tokyo in Japan, and most recently a very nice message from a chap called Patrick, who lives for several months of the year in the city of Perm in the Russian Federation, very close to the border with Siberia. He mentioned that winter temperatures are usually around minus 25 degrees Celsius. He did also comment that the local people were amazingly hospitable. When not in Russia, Patrick lives in the slightly less exotic surroundings of Dartford.

A report was published in August 2016, the findings of which surprised me not in the slightest. The report from The Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester suggested that supermarket self-checkout technology encourages even normally honest shoppers to commit theft. 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. But the report  stated 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. One retailer admitted they almost never prosecute people. For that reason supermarkets are now introducing tagging systems so un-scanned items trigger alarms. Supermarkets such as Morrison’s in Erith have now expanded the number of self – service checkouts so that now half of all tills are of this type. Finding an open, traditionally staffed checkouts are becoming a challenge to find. This week, to cement the academic findings of last year, a new report was published by The Office of National Statistics which said that £3.2 billion worth of goods is stolen through the self-scanning tills every year. The Office of National Statistics has previously revealed that shoplifting has increased by more than ten per cent in the last year. I have been told that the cost savings in checkout staff wage reductions is more than offset by both the increase in stock theft and the requirement to hire more security guards – who in any case are usually on a higher hourly rate than the checkout staff that they replace. I have always wondered why you have to pay the same price for an item when it is purchased via a self – service till when compared to a traditional one – after all, you are doing work on behalf of the supermarket, and surely this should be reflected in a cheaper cost? Personally I refuse to ever use self-service tills – why have a dog and bark yourself? I would not be at all surprised if the losses incurred via self-service till thefts cause the big supermarkets to re-think their strategy – which at no point is aimed at helping the customer – it is purely about making it as easy for the supermarket to collect money as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Now for the weekly local safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association:- Firstly from Barnehurst ward:- "Barnehurst has just one burglary to report. This took place in Lea Vale on Wednesday 20th December 2017 between the early hours of 02.50 and 03.10. The resident was woken by a loud bang in the early hours. The suspect was seen running down the stairs holding a torch light. When the resident went to the window the suspect was seen getting into a dark coloured Honda Civic. There were at least two occupants in the vehicle, this vehicle sped off with the headlights off in unknown direction. There has been no reports of anti-social behaviour and the team are continuing to patrol all relevant areas. There have been no further reports of golf balls being thrown at property’s in Taunton Close. Concentrated patrols are being carried out to Martens Avenue in particular the garaged area of Braeside Crescent and to the alleys leading to Martens Avenue'. Belvedere ward:- "PC’s Green and Holmes have been busy continuing mobile patrols in the north of the borough, assisted by officers from neighboring wards. The team have been made aware of damage to garages in Lumley Close. We would like to ask that if anyone has any information in relation to this, please contact us on 0208 721 2050. We are currently making enquiries with the garage owners as the garages remain unsecured. PCSO Worrall also assisted officers from Northumberland Heath SNT recently with visits to residents of Hythe Avenue and Shinglewell Road after two burglaries took place in those streets. Home security and crime prevention advice was offered to residents. With help from a concerned resident of Picardy Road, PCSO Worrall was able to reunite a lost dog with her owner recently. The family pet had been able to find her way from her new home back to where the family previously lived in Belvedere". Brampton ward:- "On 22nd December 2017 overnight in Belvedere Road a resident reported criminal damage to property whereby three large spherical concrete balls were knocked off the brick wall at the venue. In Birchington Close overnight on 21st December 2017 a car tyre was punctured. This type of Incident has become an ongoing issue in Birchington Close. Due to the number of reported incidents here CCTV has now been installed to monitor and hopefully establish what’s going on in this area". Christchurch ward:- "Over night on 20th/21st December there was an attempted burglary in Rochester Drive. The Ring doorbell was removed in an attempt to stop CCTV footage of the burglars being recorded. Fortunately entry was not gained to the property. Over night on 21st/22nd December there was a burglary in Standard Road whilst the home owners slept. It is thought that the burglars were disturbed as only a handbag was stolen". Crayford ward:- "Good news - there has been no reports of any burglaries on Crayford ward. On 26th December 2017 a black BMW coupe 318i, vehicle registration number is T213 JVH was found taken from Barnes Cray Road. Local residents saw a white truck taking the vehicle away at midnight a couple of days prior. On 20th December 2017 between 09.00pm and 02.00pm on 21st December 2017 victim found their vehicle had been criminally damaged in Crayford way. The vehicle had been parked in the road locked and secure but was later found with a broken passenger side window and the ignition had been removed from the steering column with peripheral damage". North End ward:- "Not a nice way to start the festive email but we had a burglary in Slade Green Road during the afternoon of Christmas Eve, money and an expensive camera were stolen. Entry was gained through the front door by removing a small window of the door. Please call police if you see anyone tampering at any doorway. Erith Food and Wine Store in The Nursery had a robbery last Saturday with £160 stolen from the till. This occurred shortly after the same suspect tried the same thing at Northend Road Superstore a few minutes earlier. Fortunately nobody was hurt in either incident but CCTV has not given us a clear image of the suspect. A short update this week due to minimal staff and a few days not worked but we would like to wish you all a safe and Happy New Year. Thamesmead East ward:- "No Burglaries to report, however a vehicle was broken into during the early hours of Friday 22nd December 2017, Holstein Way. Nothing believed to have been taken. While on routine foot patrol, PC Nana identified a male who was wanted for a Domestic Assault, and quickly detained him, despite patrolling alone, and the male being known to Police for violence in the past (Great work). PC Pruden has interviewed a male in relation to Anti-Social Behaviour- riding Mopeds. Enquiries and further interviews to follow. The team have also been over the busy Christmas period, working into the early hours of the morning, and this will continue into the New Year. We are always interested in recruiting new Neighbourhood watch co-ordinators for the ward. Please ask your family and friends if they would like to set up a Neighbourhood watch in their road. Please spread the word to any family and friends in the Borough - they can contact us on 020 8721 2049 or Thamesmead.SNT@met.police.uk for more information. For the latest news updates and information from Bexley Police, please visit our twitter pages - @MPSBexley and @MPSThamesmeadE".

I know that many local people have been extremely unhappy about the disruption to the train services into London via both the Bexleyheath and Greenwich rail lines over the Christmas period. Public transport expert and TV presenter Geoff Marshall (he of All the Stations fame) was invited to see what has been going on in and around London Bridge Station during the Christmas holdays by Network Rail. The visit was somewhat unusual - it was undertaken by helicopter. Watch the video below, and please feel free to leave a comment, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

YouTube - you fool.

The photo above was taken by me recently; it shows the traveller pony that lives on the parcel of land between Morrison's car park and the Thames side walk. Various ponies have been kept on the land for the last few years. They seem generally well looked after, and many parents with small children take them to visit, usually taking a couple of carrots or an apple for the pony. The area is adjacent to the recycling centre that has been the root of so many problems. When I have mentioned the recycling centre behind Morrison’s and next to the terminus of James Watt Way, it has usually been to bemoan the problem of commercial fly – tippers, who habitually dump materials which should really be taken to a proper tip like the one in Thames Road, Crayford. This time things are different; the Morrison’s recycling centre has been a victim of its own success over the Christmas period. It would seem that local people have been taking their Christmas wrapping materials, cardboard and plastic and disposing of them responsibly at the site. The problem has been that the dedicated waste hoppers in the recycling centre have not been emptied over the holiday period, and the place has become overloaded with waste material. This has been especially noticeable with regard to the bottle banks on the site – Christmas is always a time when more glass bottles get used than during the rest of the year, and it is easy to understand how the bottle banks could get overwhelmed. This situation got me thinking – recycling glass bottles is far better than making brand new ones from raw materials, but it is still a very energy intensive process – a hell of a lot of electricity gets used to melt down the glass and reform them into new bottles or other glass objects. Would it not be far preferable to return the bottles to the manufacturer to be stripped of labels, steam cleaned and then re – used? This was the old way of doing things, and I wonder why the practice was ever stopped? My feeling is that we should look to reintroduce a deposit charge on glass bottles to encourage them to be returned to the original supplier for sterilisation and re – use. I reckon  a 10 – 15p deposit charge would do the trick, and it might even encourage the old children’s trick of scouring the streets for old bottles to return to collect the deposit as a way of generating extra pocket money. This would have the secondary effect of partially clearing the streets of rubbish. It might be a long shot, but potentially I can see it working. What do you think? Is this too ambitious, misdirected, or is it the way to go? Do leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

I am aware that humour is a very personal thing, and what appeals to one person may not appeal to another. Nevertheless, I have been astonished at the success of one programme in particular, which I just cannot understand the appeal of, as it seems to hark back to early 1970’s sit coms like “Bless this House” and “On the Buses” whilst to my mind lacking the wit or charm of those shows. On top of all this, the show managed to rack up the highest viewing ratings of the Christmas period – so a lot of people must like it. What show am I talking about? “Mrs Browns Boys”. It really seems to be a Marmite show for a lot of viewers – you either love or loathe it, and I am firmly in the latter group. It does seem to be a “guilty pleasure” programme, as when I have mentioned it to people, all I have asked have said that they detest it, but some at least must be lying, as the viewing figures have been so high. I won't bother a critique of “Mrs Browns Boys” as others have done far better than I, and I know my personal views are extremely unlikely to sway the opinion of someone who actually likes the show. I am mystified.

You may recall that last week I had an article comparing Pier Road today with what it looked like back in 1972, just before the old Victorian row of shops were demolished on what is now the site of Farm Foods and the Erith Police Office. Local Historian Ken Chamberlain has kindly supplied the following two photographs; the upper one shows the Victorian shops in Pier Road when they had been stripped and were awaiting demolition. The shops, from left to right were:- Randall Press, Collins Dry Cleaners, H.M.L. Miles. Shoe shop, Penton and Deans Gents outfitters, Turntable Record shop, George Gilbert Photographers, A (name unknown) Dry Cleaners, Barclays Bank, then an alleyway. Two semi-detached Villas, Solicitors and Doctors Surgery, Then the two semis that faced towards Bexley Road.

The second photo (click on it for a larger view) may look exceedingly unfamiliar to anyone who only knows the modern Erith – it was taken from the opposite end of Pier Road, where it met with Bexley Road, adjacent to Christ Church – which is just to the right of the scene, but out of the photograph. The building in the picture was the Wheatley Hotel – a popular pub that had overnight accommodation for travellers from the nearby Erith Station. The pub was located roughly where the hideous fish roundabout now resides. I can tell that the second photograph was taken at some point between 1964 and 1972, as the car at the turning of the road is a Morris 1800 mark one, better known colloquially as a “Land Crab” – a very popular model at the time. Since the premises in Pier Road were demolished in 1972 / 73, and the car only went on sale in 1964, hence the approximate ago of the image. Nevertheless it is quite difficult to visualise the location bearing in mind how much the basic geography of central Erith has changed since the horrendous 1970’s Brutalist Concrete shopping centre was built – the roads in and around the town centre were re – sited, renamed and in some cases totally ceased to exist. I have a couple of maps from the late 1940s’ that bear little resemblance to the town we see today. I suspect that much of the changes to the roads were quite necessary – the main aim of the work seems to be to permit far higher levels of motor traffic to pass through the town without causing a traffic jam – though the Bexley Road Bridge has historically always been a local choke point for traffic – an issue the Council have talked about addressing by widening the bridge to allow two lanes in each direction, instead of the current one lane. Whether it actually comes to pass is now debatable, as Bexley Council are cutting back their expenditure yet further. The only way I see the work now being done is if a body like Transport for London takes up the task.

This week is the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the Sinclair C5 electric vehicle. As some may know, I had a very minor part in the history of the C5, as I used to know Adam Harper, Belvedere based inventor, engineer and businessman - the photo above (click for a larger view) shows him with his record breaking customised C5 at Silverstone race circuit in the summer of 1995, where he was able to open it up on the main circuit as part of a series of public demonstrations of the Guinness world record breaking machine. You can read more about Adam Harper in an interview here. More on him later. Sir Clive Sinclair dominated the home computer market in the UK and much of Europe in the early 1980’s. His ZX80 and subsequent ZX 81 barebones computers introduced many people into the world of computer programming, and the subsequent colour Sinclair ZX Spectrum became the computer of choice for untold millions of people – it was a simple computer with adequate, if not particularly outstanding specifications for the time. It was easy to program, and had very bright, colourful graphics. This, along with the relatively cheap retail price meant it was extremely popular, and there was a huge amount of software available for the ZX Spectrum, including thousands of games. Many of today’s programmers learned their first code on a ZX Spectrum. Emboldened by huge commercial success, Sir Clive Sinclair turned his attention to another of his areas of interest, personal transportation. In a project that illustrates how wild success in one realm can build over-confidence that leads to utter failure in another, the Sinclair C5 was to forever tarnish the Sinclair name. The C5 was a battery-assisted tricycle (not an electric car, as elements of the press kept saying) that was intended to revolutionise personal transportation. On paper it was able to drive up to twenty miles on a single battery charge for just a few pence,  the C5 was supposed to be the solution to urban congestion and the high cost of owning a car. Unfortunately the design fell short of the market requirements and the machine was savaged by the press following its launch. Among the issues:- The open concept and exposed driver position meant the C5 was only really practical in dry weather, although a wet weather kit including a fitted poncho for the driver was soon available. It had no reverse gear and was difficult to turn around in confined spaces. Even modest hills were too much for the C5’s battery to handle and the design meant that using the pedals to assist was hard to do effectively. There were quality control problems at the factory, and early reports of components failing further dented the machine’s reputation. Perhaps most importantly, the public did not feel safe driving such a small and open vehicle in real traffic. In the end 17,000 were sold, but this was far short of projections. To many, the C5 was seen as a novelty item rather than a serious mode of transportation and just eleven months after the failed launch, Sinclair Vehicles went bankrupt. As long term readers of the Maggot Sandwich will be aware, I had some involvement with the story of the C5; when Sinclair Vehicles went bust, the entire remaining stock of unsold C5’s, along with component parts and tooling was bought by a company based in Upper Belvedere called Harper Cycles, which was run by Adam Harper. He correctly realised that the C5 had been given a mauling by the press, which had effectively ended its chances of success, but nevertheless seventeen thousand of the vehicles had been sold. The owners would require spares, servicing and repairs. Harper also correctly surmised that the C5 would become a cult vehicle, and mint, unused vehicles would appreciate considerably in price. Adam Harper made a steady income supporting C5’s for many years, and supplied new vehicles to Princes William and Harry at Kensington Palace, and created a one – off solar powered model for science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke for use on his estate in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Many of the press “facts” about the Sinclair C5 were made up, and in many cases just plain wrong. It became an urban myth that the C5 used a washing machine motor – in reality the motor was built in a Hotpoint factory, but it was a specially designed, high efficiency unit that was even studied by NASA as it had such an impressive power to weight ratio. It was also said that the rider sat too low to the ground, making the machine dangerous – in fact one sat at the same height as if you were sitting in a Ford Capri MK III. The separate aluminium alloy chassis the C5 used was designed and built by Lotus Cars at their Hethel factory, and was capable of far more performance than the C5 had. The poor road speed of the C5 was not down to any technical limitation – it was restricted to fifteen miles an hour in order to comply with UK traffic law – any powered vehicle capable of more than this speed required a licence to use, which would have essentially killed the project before birth. This is not to say the C5 did not have problems – the short battery life being one of the biggest challenges – a rider would not get anything like the claimed twenty mile range, even when pedaling to assist the electric motor. Adam Harper invented an improved battery and power management system which cured this weakness, which was available as a retrofit to existing machines. Adam also sold considerable numbers of the powerful and efficient C5 motor to competitors in BBC 2’s series “Robot Wars”, and many of the winning robots were powered by his products. Because of this connection, Adam Harper ended up as one of the “Robot Wars” competition judges; I used to regularly accompany him to filming, which took place in an old warehouse next door to the Excel Centre in East London. As I have previously written in some detail, Adam Harper also set a Guinness World Record for the fastest electric three wheeled vehicle in a hugely modified Sinclair C5 that could hit 0-60 in under four seconds, and exceed 150 mph. The main reason for the creation of the C5 racing machine was to scotch the incorrect stories about the normal C5 and give the much maligned machine a bit of a publicity boost, though nowadays the C5 has a reputation as a gigantic white elephant. It was certainly not perfect, but it was  way ahead of its time, and nowhere near as bad as the press would have you believe. 

Not too long before Christmas I was walking through Soho on my way to a meeting at an office just off Berwick Street. It had been some time since I had passed that way, and I was pleasantly surprised at how the area has been cleaned up and made a lot more visitor friendly. I had cut through St. Anne’s Court – once a very seedy and run down area, but now a pleasant and very up market office and residential location I really did not need to walk the route that I did, but there were personal reasons, as the area holds some memories for me. Back in the mid 1980’s St. Anne’s Court was the home to Shades Record Shop. This was a basement shop over which was built a structure that somewhat resembled a large garden shed that was plastered in posters advertising bands and films. Alice’s Restaurant was a pirate radio station operating out of East London, which played an esoteric mix of mainly rock based music – the record shop was allegedly nothing to do with the radio station, but pretty much everyone knew the opposite. To enter the shop you had to go through a slightly forbidding (at least to a thirteen year old) doorway and down a flight of stairs to the shop itself. The first thing one noticed about the shop was the huge number of rock and heavy metal albums the place contained – albums from bands I had never heard of, and exotic imports from Japan and elsewhere; the second thing was the fact the ceiling of the shop was covered in black bin liners held in place with drawing pins. Initially I thought this was some kind of post punk arty design, but I soon found out that they were there for a far more prosaic reason; they stopped the rain from leaking through from the upstairs. It was that kind of place – initially it appeared quite intimidating, but the staff were knowledgeable and friendly, and every so often a rock star would pay a visit – Lemmy from Motorhead was a regular, and many rock and heavy metal bands would hold album signings in the shop. When I was working for Radio Caroline I did not have time to visit, and by the time I turned up in St. Anne's Court a couple of years later, I was only to find it boarded up and empty. Their lease had run out and the landlord had decided to sell the site to a property developer; shortly thereafter the shed was demolished and a new office building constructed on the site.  To be honest the area needed improvement, but nevertheless it was a shame to see the shop  disappear. Not long afterwards the radio station closed down, with some of the staff going on to form the excellent and ground breaking RFM Rock Radio, a station that nearly got a commercial licence, but ended up losing out to KISS FM. Shades record shop was a one - off place. You can read more about it here.

In 2014 medical institutions and healthcare providers made up nearly a third of all hacking attacks and other data breaches, according to records from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse campaign group. While attacks on financial services are slightly more prevalent, consumers should be much more concerned with getting their medical insurance or NHS health records ripped off. In the first place, banks tend to cover consumers in instances of fraud. If someone steals your Visa card number and uses it to buy a round-trip ticket to Kazakhstan, and you will easily get those charges reversed — plus the bank will issue you a new card. But even in the worst case scenario, your personal well being isn't threatened. Not so with medical fraud. As the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance points out in its report on medical fraud, the patient often doesn’t find out their identity has been stolen until they notice a discrepancy in their own records. For instance, a man goes into to a hospital to get treated for a back injury. Upon being X-rayed the doctor also notices that the man has a swollen lymph node, for which he prescribes penicillin. The man says he is allergic to penicillin. The doctor asks, then why did you come into this hospital a week ago for penicillin? The man says, I didn't come into the hospital a week ago for penicillin. Now imagine that same scenario except the patient is unconscious and his/her record has been altered to remove the reference to his penicillin allergy. Now we are talking about a scenario where the patient’s life is potentially in danger. In addition, it can be really hard to prove that you didn't receive the medical services indicated on your record, which can cause all sort of confusion to GP’s and their practice administrators. Medical identities can sell for as little as $50 U.S, according to a report issued earlier this year by the FBI. With more and more hospitals moving to electronic health records and healthcare breaches on the rise, it is hard to see how this problem won’t become more widespread in the coming year. When I received a notification from my G.P that they were moving to electronic records, I completed and returned the denial of request form; whilst my medical records are very boring, I really don't want to see them being bandied about for sale online by some Bulgarian hacker collective. The threat is not just to your records from a medical perspective, but that they also may be used in identity theft, or even for blackmail purposes.

Just as the Maggot Sandwich was about to go to press, one of my occasional contributors, Brian, dropped me the following story concerning Erith and Belvedere Football Club, which local football fans may well find of interest. "The Deres are at home to Yaxley FC on Sunday 18 January in the fourth round of the FA Vase.  Both teams are thus four wins from Wembley! - where the Vase final will be played on 9 May.  The game kicks off at 3pm at Park View Road, where the Deres groundshare with Welling United. The FA Vase is for teams below step 4 of the non-league Pyramid, and Erith & Belvedere's league (Southern Counties East) is the best represented at this stage, with 5 teams in the last 32.  Near neighbours Phoenix Sports, based in Crayford, have a long trip to Bodmin Town, and have decided to make a weekend of it with an overnight stay in Newquay.  Another Kent-Cornwall clash sees Greenwich Borough host St Austell, while further down into Kent Ashford United host Norwich United and Tunbridge Wells (Vase finalists in 2013) visit Highworth Town."

You may recall that I have mentioned the fight against illegal bike riders in and around the local area; some months ago Erith Watch announced a success against one such rider who was photographed carrying out an offence, and subsequently identified and dealt with by the Police. This has not stopped a gang of illegal riders who regularly terrorise pedestrians and motorists around Northumberland Heath, Erith and Belvedere. The gang have made a major tactical error however - they have posted a video to YouTube which clearly identifies one of the ringleaders of the group that you can see in the screen capture above. One would think that a balding thirty - something would have better things to do than pull wheelies on an asthmatic 50cc scooter with a puny engine that sounds like an angry wasp in a biscuit tin, but it would appear not. Below you can see the entire video of the gang illegally riding their bikes in what would appear to be the Northern end of Norman Road / Mulberry Way in Lower Belvedere. If any of the gang are reading this - don't bother taking the video down from YouTube. It has already been downloaded and sent to the Police as evidence - oh, and by the way, I know you knew what you were doing was illegal - as you have digitally obscured the number plates on the bikes in the clip. You did not do a very good job however - and the owner of one bike in particular will be having his fat and sweaty collar felt before very long. How anyone can be so stupid as to film themselves carrying out illegal acts, and then publish them to the world on YouTube amazes me. See for yourself, and leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The curse of the Bot.

The photo above shows the block of flats which replaced the old Erith Odeon cinema; the old cinema was a grade II listed Art Deco building which was illegally demolished by the property developers of the current residential block. Having said that, I have visited one of the top floor flats in the block, and I have to say that it was extremely nice indeed, with a view across Morrison's car park towards the River Thames. It is a pity that the original building was not sympathetically restored and converted internally, rather than having a faux Art Deco block put up in its place.

I, along with many other people, was unsuccessful in my efforts to secure tickets for the forthcoming residency of Kate Bush at the Eventim Hammersmith Apollo (don’t worry, come the revolution, it will return to its proper name – the Hammersmith Odeon). Even friends who were fan club members with preferred ticket access were unable to get any. This seems to ring true for many fans who tried repeatedly to book tickets, only to discover that they had all gone within fifteen minutes. Many took this to be an indication of the huge popularity of the acclaimed local singer / songwriter, but unfortunately the situation runs far deeper than that. A problem exists now when anyone wishes to book a popular cultural event such as a concert or play or even tries to book a table in a popular restaurant – the venue will be booked out for the entire period however assiduous the booker has been. The reason for this situation is that certain unscrupulous people – often ticket agencies and others who wish to resell tickets or restaurant bookings at a profit, hire programmers to create what is known in the trade as a Bot. A Bot is a piece of software code that automates the process of making a ticket reservation or restaurant booking. It scans the relevant booking website and sends regular requests for page updates, looking for openings such as cancellations and filling in the web page request form far more rapidly than any human could ever hope to do. The Bot can run for days – never getting tired, never making a typo or missing an online field, and just grinding on until the required bookings have been made. It is almost certain that the Kate Bush concerts were mainly booked by software Bots. Although the promoters have put pretty strict conditions on concert attendees (booker has to turn up with photo ID and their companions have to be with the booker at the time of entering the venue). This has already been shown to be ineffective. Tickets with a face value of £139 are available via a number of outlets at prices varying between £1,000 and £1,500 each. What the Americans call “scalpers” and we call “ticket touts” are behind this behaviour. I recently read about “Bot Wars” where organisations such as Ticketmaster are trying to analyse online booking behaviour in order to exclude orders submitted by Bots; recently they rejected just over 120,000 orders made for a number of events after they had been detected as Bot generated. The Bot writers get more sophisticated and there is a war waging between the two sides which shows no signs of abating. I can suggest that the only way to be sure that an event is not booked out by software Bots is to remove online ordering completely – go back to ordering via telephone or turning up at the venue in person to book tickets. Something that is unlikely to happen in many cases due to the high costs of employing staff to carry out the bookings. It may well mean that confidence in all forms of event booking are irretrievably damaged unless some drastic actions are taken – such as making the use of Bots a criminal offence with a suitably hefty penalty. People will swiftly cease booking events online once they lose faith in the system, and this would be a real shame – it would be like taking one step forwards, followed by two back. You can read more about software Bots by clicking here.

Bexley Council seem to be a pretty powerless and ineffectual lot in general; okay they keep the street lights lit and the bins emptied (after a fashion, though personally I take my rubbish to the recycling point in Morrison's car park myself each day, and don't trouble the bin men, who tend to leave a trail of destruction in their wake). They did not do too badly in respect of the KFC application to open 24/7 that recently got dropped, I will give them that I suppose. I wonder if we would be better off returning to a localised monarchy. Did you know that Erith used to be ruled by King Eadbald of Kent? No, I thought not - it was a few years ago, I suppose. It is amazing what you can find online if you look hard enough.

Last week I wrote about my personal thoughts in respect of a new crossing on the lower River Thames. I have had several messages agreeing that the place would make a good choice, and yet others asking for more details, and for me to more fully explain what I meant. You will see a map above which graphically indicates the route of the tunnel I propose – click for a larger view. The tunnel I propose is purely my own thought, and is not intended to reflect on any of the other “official” transport solutions which are currently being proposed. 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. 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. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

When I first heard the following announcement, I had to check the date, as I was sure that the story was an April fool joke. It was not to be – the story was first published last Monday, a full day before April the first. I then had to check the year, just in case I had been caught inside some kind of temporal vortex and shunted back in time to 1972. The reason for my consternation? The announcement that a movie version of the TV sitcom “Mrs Brown’s Boys” is due to be released in UK cinemas at the end of June. I fully understand that humour is probably the most subjective of human interactions, based as it is on shared culture and experiences, but Mrs Brown’s Boys seems to have come into existence as though the last forty years of British situation comedies had never evolved. To me, it makes the likes of “On the Buses” and “Love thy Neighbour” look sophisticated and knowing. The way the show treats characters such as the gay son are a relic of the 1970’s, and I am astonished that such a large number of the British public love the programme. I am genuinely amazed at how many people watch Mrs Brown’s Boys and greatly enjoy it. Personally I find it excruciating, embarrassing and downright bad. The script, performances, characters and direction are all very lazy, uninventive and old fashioned in a bad way; Les Dawson in a dress was funny - Brendan O’Carroll is merely foul mouthed and excruciating . I concede that the show has a huge and loyal following (otherwise I doubt that the Producers would have green – lit a film version). I just fail to understand why.  I am sure that the movie version of the TV show will be a big hit – after all the programme gets the kind of viewing figures shows of its ilk used to get back in the 1970’s – a figure of fifteen million viewers was quoted by the Guardian in a recent article on the subject. It also seems to be a “Marmite” show – I am not the only person to express a strong opinion – others find it the funniest thing they have seen for ages. I suppose that my main gripe is in the way the show treats the main characters as caricatures – something frequently done in popular sit-coms, but usually so much better – if you look at a recent classic like Father Ted, the main players were indeed caricatures, but they were also sympathetic and in many cases, likeable. This is not something that I can find in Mrs Browns Boys. Still, I have in the past found cinema outings by British institutions to be less execrable than anticipated – the one that comes most readily to mind is Bula Quo – the comedy adventure film made by Status Quo, which I reviewed on my February 16^th update where I wrote of it “ Bula Quo is cheesy, cheerful and fully aware of exactly how ridiculous it all is”. I somehow doubt that I will be able to say the same thing about Mrs Brown on the big screen.

Welling based micro pub The Door Hinge has been voted as Bexley CAMRA Pub of the Year only a year after it first opened to the public. That is a really shining endorsement of the place. Thus far I have only visited it once, as it is a bit of a pain to get to using public transport from Erith, situated as it is in Welling High Street – which involves some bus juggling. I found it far easier to get a cab door to door. It is certainly worth a visit if you like real ale and good conversation. If you did not see my previous posting in respect of micro pubs, a micro pub is a pub that does not serve spirits or much in the way of food. It tends to concentrate on real ale and cider, with usually one or two wines on offer. Micro Pubs tend to be established in former shop units, or other relatively inexpensive commercial property. They don’t have TV or piped music, and encourage visitors to talk to each other as was the norm in pubs of years gone by.  The other unifying feature of micro pubs is that they don’t serve gassy, mass produced lager. The Door Hinge fits this profile exactly. It is located in a former shop at the Bexleyheath end of Welling High Street, not very far from Crook Log. I can highly recommend the place.

The photo above was sent to me midweek by local historian Ken Chamberlain. It shows the old Erith Central School, which was located in West Street, just opposite St. John the Baptist - the oldest Church in the area at around a thousand years old. The photo below was sent to me by Garry "Tadge" Taylor, and shows another view of the same school from the other side. I understand that the field next to the school was subject to frequent flooding, as the only drainage at the time consisted of a couple of culverts, which frequently became blocked. Both photos of the Central School were taken in approximately 1910. I must admit that the area has changed substantially over the last century. The site of the school currently is occupied by housing, and is adjacent to an abandoned tyre warehouse, which I understand is shortly to be redeveloped as offices and a new church hall for St. John the Baptist. Click on either photo for a larger view.

The News Shopper has been reporting on a new spate of fly tipping that has been occurring in the area; in this time the worst incidents appear to be happening in and around Dartford. The fly tipping problems experienced around Dartford are really nothing new. The problem has been affecting most of the country for a while now. For once, fly tipping in Erith seems to be slightly on the wane. Certainly the problems I have documented over the months may be less common than of late. The reason for this is straightforward. The recycling centre behind the large Morrison’s supermarket in Erith is operated by Bexley Council. The recycling centre is easily accessible by road – James Watt Way leads directly to it; on top of this it is out of the way and concealed from view, as it is shielded on one side by the wall of the supermarket on one side, and the Thames riverside walkway on another. This means it is an ideal place for illegal fly tippers to dump their rubbish. Fly tipping is free, if illegal  – until the offender gets themselves caught. Fines can be eye wateringly severe. The Erith recycling centre is within a fly tipping exclusion zone which also includes James Watt Way and Appold Street, where fines upon a successful prosecution can go as high as £50,000. I have been reliably informed that even though the Erith recycling facility is one of the smaller ones operating in the borough, it suffers the worst from fly tipping. I think the ease of access and lack of visibility factors play heavily on this . Fortunately Bexley Council Environmental Crimes Unit have been busy. The Erith site now has closed circuit TV coverage for twenty four hours a day. Several fly tippers have already been caught red handed by the cameras, and action against those so caught is being taken. Hopefully a few examples can be made which will discourage others from fly tipping in future.

Did you know that GMail is ten years old this week? Google announced the (then) revolutionary browser based Email client on April 1^st 2004. Many industry pundits at the time thought the whole thing was an elaborate April Fool’s Day hoax – who would ever offer each and every user an online message storage capacity of 1 Gigabyte – five hundred times the capacity of the then market leader, Microsoft’s Hotmail? As history shows, it was anything but a trick – it was the single most important release Google had made to date since it launched its search engine in 1998. GMail was revolutionary for a number of important reasons: It has vast storage, a very zippy and responsive user interface that was well thought out, user friendly and intuitive. It also had a very powerful message search function, which other browser based Email solutions were not able to replicate. On top of this, it was the first major cloud based application that was feature complete and capable of replacing conventional PC software, rather than complimenting it. GMail was started by a chap called Paul Buchheit – a (then) young software engineer, who was Google’s 23^rd employee. He wanted a tool that would search through his archived Email messages, and realising nothing suitable was available, decided to write a search function himself. Initially the Email search engine was running on an old PC on his desk; then other Google engineers asked if they could use Buchheit’s search engine to search their own emails. At the time, the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail had little or no inbuilt search functionality – but then, it was not really a priority when users were limited to twenty megabytes of storage, and were having to continually delete messages in order to keep under their storage limit. Messages were hard to lose when the limits were so small.  GMail gave users a Gigabyte of storage – all for free. Initially the web based GMail was a product only used within Google itself. The company managed much of its business via Email, and having an in – house solution made a lot of sense to them. A decision was made to offer the web application (a first – previous web based Email clients from other vendors had been clunky and dog – slow efforts written in HTML – every time something changed on screen, the whole page needed to be reloaded, which was slow and flickery and gave a very poor user experience – something Google were keen to avoid). Instead Google wanted GMail to feel like an installed application that one merely happened to be accessing via a web browser – something revolutionary at the time, and not that common nowadays. With GMail, Buchheit worked around HTML’s limitations by using highly interactive JavaScript code. That made it feel more like software than a sequence of web pages. Before long, the approach would get the moniker AJAX, which stood for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML; today, it is how all web applications like FaceBook and Google Docs are built. But when GMail was pioneering the technique, it wasn’t clear that it was going to work. The fundamental issue was that back in 2002/3, when GMail was being developed, web browsers were far less sophisticated than nowadays. The problem with using large chunks of JavaScript programming code to make a slick, quick web experience was that Internet Explorer 6 (by far the most widely used web browser at the time) was pretty crap at handling JavaScript, (actually IE6 was pretty crap at everything, but that is another story). Google were worried that by making a sophisticated, cutting edge product, they would end up crashing Internet Explorer 6 every so often, which would annoy and alienate their key user base. Eventually the quirks and shortcomings of Internet Explorer were tamed, and GMail was ready for release. Initially it was going to be offered to a limited number of public Beta testers (I was one of these people – I have one of the first 1,500 Gmail user accounts ever created). Google were so unsure of how GMail would be received that they initially hosted the entire service on three hundred old Pentium III computers that nobody else at Google wanted, and were otherwise going into the recycling skip. The initial limited run of accounts was soon boosted, as a GMail address became the new, fashionable thing to have – the scarcity made it cool. Not everything was going Google’s way though. The GMail business model, which was (and still is) based on scanning the message text, and serving up discreet, context sensitive adverts was not universally well received. A U.S politician, California State Senator Liz Figueroa  sent Google a letter of her own, calling GMail a “disaster of enormous proportions, for yourself, and for all of your customers.” She went on to draft a bill requiring, among other things, that any company that wanted to scan an email message for advertising purposes get the consent of the person who sent it. (By the time the California Senate passed the law, cooler heads prevailed and that obligation had been eliminated.) Nevertheless, if ultimate privacy is a concern of yours, GMail is not for you. Despite this, the last time Google released usage figures was back in 2012; at that time GMail had 425 million active and frequently used accounts, which suggests to me that discomfort with Google’s approach to online advertising is a minority concern (either that, or many people know no better, which is a possibility). Compared with Hotmail (now Outlook.com) the look and feel of GMail has changed little – any updates and changes are incremental and subtly performed; Google realise that a substantial portion of their customers value the familiarity of the application, and don’t want change for change’s sake. Whatever your views, GMail has come a hell of a long way in a decade, and it is a cornerstone of many people’s lives. Happy Birthday GMail.

The News Shopper are reporting as to how the Nemesis Gym in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre has launched a health and nutrition bar, which is specialising in the currently fashionable "Caveman Diet". This is all well and good, and normally I am always keen to promote independent local businesses. The problem with the Nemesis Gym is that they had a visit from Bexley Council health inspectors not long ago, and their kitchen only scored a 1 out of 5 stars on the "Scores on the Doors" food hygiene rating system. It was judged to be "Poor" for for food hygiene and safety, "Fair" for structural compliance, and "Little" in confidence in management. I think that before the Nemesis gym start making claims about health and nutrition, they really ought to be sorting their own house out - chances are you would end up with food poisoning if you ate there at present. On a brighter note, the newly opened "King of the Grill" kebab shop in Manor Road was inspected last week, and rated a very respectable four out of five stars for food hygiene, which is very good news. They have their sticker proudly on display in the shop window, but the Council have yet to update the Scores on the Doors website. Let us hope that more local food outlets up their hygiene standards in future.

The end video this week is a full length two hour documentary on the calamitous state of American health care when compared to places such as Canada and the United Kingdom. We may think the NHS is far from perfect, but the situation on the other side of the pond seems to be far worse. Give it a watch and see what you think. Please leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

When Arthur met Reg.

The photo above (click for a larger version) show the mural that used to form part of the side wall of the old Erith Swimming Baths. When the building was demolished, the mural was saved and given a rather over enthusiastic restoration. When it was installed in its' new location adjacent to Blockbuster, the ultra bright, garish colours used by the restorers looked cartoonish and nothing like the mural did before. A couple of years of sunlight, and the strong wind coming straight off the River Thames have now faded it slightly, making it (to my mind at least) more aesthetically pleasing now, and a lot more close to how it looked when situated in its' original location.

I am pleased to say that my week long loss of broadband has now been resolved by British Telecom; it turned out to be caused by a somewhat unusual combination of hardware failures. I am now back up and running, and no longer needing to borrow my Mum's Apple iMac to post updates. talking of iMacs, I have just placed an order for the replacement for "The Beast" - my nearly five year old iMac that died shortly before Christmas. The new machine should be a screamer, as it will be heavily customised and uprated when compared with a standard "off the shelf" iMac. More further down the update. 

The construction workers are still on site at Erith Station – they have been occupying a series of site offices and workshops built from converted shipping containers for what seems like an interminable time. The only obvious results of their labours have been the wooden fencing that backs on to the still unopened extensions to both platforms. The original fencing (which looks just like ordinary wooden garden fence) which was installed shortly before Christmas has been ripped out and replaced – with fencing that looks almost exactly the same. I really have not got a clue as to exactly what is going on at the station – and nobody on site seems to have an idea either. It does seem to be keeping a sizable work crew in employment for what appears to be a disproportionately large amount of time, with little or nothing of substance to show for it.  If anyone has more information, please get in contact  with me. On the subject of the railways and Southeastern Trains, I have noticed that when trains get cancelled or delayed, that the behaviour of commuters seems to be in at least part dictated by the station on which they begin their journey; it would seem that I am not alone in this observation. Inevitably the train carriages become congested. When things are really bad, and there is absolutely no space for additional people to get on, it seems that commuters from Westcombe Park and Maze Hill are the most vocal and demonstrative.  One commenter on the News Shopper website describes a similar situation on the Blackheath and Lewisham line where packed trains pull into Blackheath station and the locals “expect the peasants from zones 4 – 6 to do as you say, and move into spaces where there are no spaces”.  This pretty much sums up the experience at Westcombe Park and Maze Hill. I have no idea if it is something in the water, or if there is some other reason why commuters from the more prosperous areas on the Dartford to London Bridge via Greenwich rail line seem  to be ruder and less considerate to others. What do you think? Please leave a comment below.

I don’t know if I have had an abrupt sense of humour failure, but BBC comedy show “Mrs Brown’s Boys” leaves me utterly cold. I cannot abide it – it is crass, crude, badly written and to my mind makes “On the Buses” look like Samuel Beckett. It cannot hold an LED torch, let alone a candle to that other Irish sitcom “Father Ted” – which was a work of twisted and surreal genius. Obviously a lot of people do like the foul mouthed Mrs Brown and her fictional family, but I for one cannot fathom why. It would have been considered unsophisticated in the early 1970’s, so just why it can have the ratings success it enjoys is a real mystery. There was an interesting article on the subject in the Guardian recently, which you can read by clicking here.

As mentioned near the top of this weeks' update, the Maggot Sandwich is finally out of exile and running under its’ own steam once again. I have to say that BT have been pretty good; their help desk were polite and efficient, and the engineer who came on both cases was cheerful and knew his way around a screwdriver. Nevertheless I was offline for a week because of hardware failure. It turns out that my fibre optic modem had a known issue, and should have been swapped out for a new model around six months ago. BT outsourced the mass swap – out job to a third party company, who made rather a mess of the operation; some BT Infinity customers were not notified of the problem with their modem, and did not get it changed. I was one of those unlucky people. All now back to normal, thankfully.

Earlier in the week, news broke of the untimely death from Lung Cancer of The Troggs front man Reg Presley. I had the pleasure of meeting him, many years ago when I was still working for Radio Caroline. It was during the period when the Radio Caroline ship, the Ross Revenge was moored in the old Dover Commercial Dock after it had been salvaged after running aground on the Goodwin Sands. Refurbishment work on the ship had begun, and a legal 28 day low power broadcasting licence had been granted to Caroline to undertake their first licensed radio broadcast to the town of Dover and the surrounding area. News soon got out, and we had a stream of celebrity visitors coming down to the dock to have a look around the famous ship. Caroline management had made it quite clear to staff that then Capital Gold DJ Tony Blackburn was not to be permitted on board, as apparently he had made some negative remarks about Radio Caroline during his own radio show. I was on deck one morning, organising a group of volunteers into a painting detail when a bright red Austin Montego swept around the dockside, and stopping at the foot of the gangplank;  four blokes got out, and one started climbing the gangplank. Bearing in mind the instructions regarding Blackburn, and our general caution regarding strange visitors, I blocked the top of the gangplank and asked “Who the hell are you then?”. The bloke, understandably taken aback replied “Reg Presley – we’re The Troggs. We are here to be interviewed”. Suitably chastened, I apologised and escorted the party to the ships’ mess room and made them cups of tea. Fortunately Presley was in a good mood, and when I explained the reason for my initial response, he said “good for you – that Blackburn is an utter git" (or words to that effect - his actual comment is unprintable).  Bearing in mind that at the time this encounter took place, the group Wet Wet Wet had been number one in the charts with their cover of the Reg Presley song “Love is in the Air” for fifteen weeks, making Presley millions in song royalties. A nice bloke who will be missed.

If you watch the popular BBC TV show “Call the Midwife”, did you know that almost all of the external locations for the programme are filmed in and around Chatham Historic Dockyard? They now even carry out “Call the Midwife” location tours. You can read more about these by clicking here.

You may recall that back in March 2011 I covered the results of a chap who killed himself by jumping off the end of Erith Pier. He drowned in the River Thames. Subsequent to this, his friends and family created a shrine to his memory from the small white boarded structure at the piers’ end. You can see my original entry and thoughts on the matter by clicking here. Nowadays the graffiti has been painted over, the urine filled lager bottles have long gone, and the small building returned to normal. I was walking with my camera on the pier a couple of weeks ago, then I noticed a small metal plaque on one wall of the structure. It was a permanent memorial to the lad who died. I thought it was a tasteful and poignant reminder, but it would have been all the more powerful if it had been worded correctly – click here to see what I mean. The local habit of saying “them” instead of “those”, as in “them people”, and “was” instead  of “were”, as in “we was” is rife. I cannot understand how people continue to mangle English into nonsense.  I appreciate that the English language is in a state of constant flux, but to completely ignore the rules of grammar astonishes me.  The same can be said of punctuation, especially the use of apostrophes; it is glaringly obvious to me that many people have never been taught the rules for the use of apostrophes – a local carpet shop is currently displaying a sign with proudly announces “New range of Carpet’s in stock” – AARGH! Has nobody explained the use of the possessive "s" to the writer? I see this all of the time. The writers don’t have a clue as to whether an apostrophe is required or not, so they bung one in just in case.  It is not difficult – something learned for life at primary school. Rant over – for now.

As you may already be aware, following my piece last week about the possible changes to the structure of Bexley Metropolitan Police, it would seem that there is every possibility that we will lose every physical Police presence in the borough. The Police station in Nuxley Road, Upper Belvedere was downgraded some time ago as a full front line station; the counter service still in operation there is now being removed, and it seems increasingly likely that the building will be sold off for development – no doubt for more unwanted flats. Bexleyheath nick may also be a victim to the proposal to merge the forces of Bexley and Bromley (as I mentioned last week, the forthcoming new boss of Bexley Police is a Superintendent not a Chief Superintendent like his predecessor – which would indicate that he will take order from his boss, the head of Bromley Police).  At this point, this is all conjecture, but I would be surprised if at least some of this does indeed come to pass. *Update* - I have just had word from my most trusted local informant that at a public meeting on Thursday night, current Bexley Police chief Victor Olisa told those in attendance that plans to merge Bromley and Bexley police forces have now been dropped. Good news for once, and thanks to my confidential source. 

On a related matter, Bexley Police are going to be carrying out bicycle marking services in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre between 11am and 4pm on the 22nd February and the 15th of March, Officers with bike marking gear and laptop access to the Police bike database are going to be located outside of Wilkinson’s and opposite the Mambocino Cafe / Coffee shop and will security mark your bike if you take it along; they will also be able to provide security advice on preventing thefts. To be honest, this is a bit late in the day; there have been a number of bike thefts locally from back gardens- especially through shed break – ins. I would not be surprised if a few of the local scumbags took along stolen bikes to get them security marked as belonging to themselves, thus “laundering” the stolen bike and legitimising it as their own property.

I am currently undertaking some research on mobile tablet devices at work, looking into new and unconventional uses for the Android based computers. It got me thinking; it used to be a relatively common thing to see Internet cafes in most high streets. Erith has had a cyber cafe in the former solicitor’s office in Cross Street for several years. It seems that they are becoming an endangered species though. Rather than go to a cyber cafe to log on using one of their computers, most people now will have a laptop or tablet, and will merely look for a local coffee shop or fast food outlet like McDonald’s that offer free wifi access to their customers. It would seem that this “value added” approach will break down the Internet cafes’ business model – mobile computing devices are nowadays so ubiquitous that the provision of bulky fixed desktop PC’s has become outmoded.  I can see exceptions to this though; I note that Internet cafes are still popular in areas with a population that is predominantly composed of low income, transient residents. I can see the attraction – if you don’t have a lot of spare cash, and are not likely to be around the area for very long, you are unlikely to want to invest any money in a computer which may only work on UK voltage – cheaper and more convenient to keep in touch with the folks at home by paying a couple of quid to use someone else’s computer for an hour over a cup of coffee. This seems to hold true both in Erith and Plumstead, despite both towns having large and wifi enabled McDonalds close by the cyber cafe. I would be interested in others’ views on this.

Bexley Council are currently running a poster campaign “where will you dine with your Valentine?” In an effort to promote the national “Scores on the Doors” food hygiene rating scheme. This is all fine and dandy, except for two things; firstly, very few food outlets display their star ratings in their window – this is especially understandable in and around Erith, as so many places have terrible ratings of two out of five stars or less – the notable exceptions being the Mambocino coffee house / cafe, and the excellent T-Bone cafe in Fraser Road, both of which have four stars. The second and somewhat more telling point is that Bexley Council have not visited every food outlet in the borough, so there are numerous gaps where one can have no real idea who hygienic the omitted outlets are. Personally I would like to see the scheme made compulsory, and the rating sticker like a car tax disc that must be displayed. I would also like to see places with a zero, or one star out of five closed down immediately for remedial action. I know that I am not alone in this desire, but it would seem that Bexley Council have neither the resources or the will to follow this path of action. Next week I will be featuring a guest review of a local eaterie, in what I hope will be a semi regular feature. Watch this space.

Because I spend so much time travelling in and around London on public transport, I get to see the travelling public in all their sundry forms. One behaviour that is now so common as to be the norm is to see travellers engrossed in their mobile phones, whilst simultaneously listening to music, usually from the aforementioned phone. This insulation from events around them means that commuters thus ensconced are oblivious to things such as train announcements or platform changes. The Royal Marines call this “a lack of situational awareness”, and whilst it is not likely to get people killed (unlike in the Marines) it still can lead to inconvenience and confusion. Personally I like to be fully aware of what is going on around me, even if that can sometimes in itself be an annoyance. On Wednesday I was travelling from Bank to Woolwich Arsenal on the Docklands Light Railway. A woman sat on the seat opposite me. She was carrying out an animated conversation with someone. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that she was not using a Bluetooth headset or other hands free device, and that she was actually carrying out the conversation with a voice in her head. She seemed happy enough in herself, and got off the train at Pontoon Dock. All part of the rich tapestry of London I suppose.

After my earlier rant about the dreadful mess that is Mrs Brown's Boys, I thought that I ought to redress the balance; here is a documentary about the phenomenon that was Father Ted - in my opinion the best comedy ever to have come out of Ireland, and leagues away from the embarrassment that is Mrs Brown. Give it a watch and leave a comment below.