The end of the Tunnel of Doom.

The foot tunnel which runs under the Fish Roundabout and connects Erith town centre with Erith Station, better known to locals as the "Tunnel of Doom" due to its dreary and threatening appearance, regular graffiti and groups of dodgy looking youths hanging around is to be no more. Bexley Council has announced that as part of the multi million pound plan to improve central Erith, they are to remove the foot tunnel and replace it with a ground level crossing as part of the improvements promised for the area around the station; I just hope that they give priority to installing a lift at Erith Station - local MP Teresa Pearce has been campaigning for years to enable step free access to the London bound platform, which currently can only be accessed via the Victorian foot bridge - which is no good if you are a parent with a child in a buggy, of if you are in a wheelchair or mobility scooter. If you are thus encumbered, you have to get the Kent bound service to Dartford station, change there (where they do have a lift) and then come back the other way, which adds considerable time and expense to your journey. Southeastern and Network Rail can take the blame for this intolerable state of affairs. It would seem that the council have big redevelopment plans for the area, and one of the first targets will be the much loved, and for many years, criminally underused Andrew Carnegie gifted former Erith Library in Walnut Tree Road, as you can see below.

As readers may already be aware, I have been in contact with the group known as The Exchange, who will be moving into the Carnegie Library and having it refurbished over the next couple of years. I have been aware of their plans for quite some time, but have not said anything on certain subjects at their request - there is a level of commercial confidence in any such undertaking, and one of the reasons I get so many local scoops is because I am sensitive to such things, and will not publish if I feel that it would be long term counter productive, or not in local interests. The Exchange have published the following statement about their plans for the local area:- "The iconic Carnegie Building in Erith is set to reopen as a £1.6m renovation project has been agreed between the council and a local company, The Exchange Ltd. The Carnegie Building, in Walnut Tree Road, will become a centre for ‘innovation, creativity, learning and production’ once The Exchange Ltd 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: “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 Ltd plans to offer cultural, artistic and designer studios and workshop space for creative businesses to make and sell products. Deputy mayor for planning, regeneration and skills, Jules Pipe, said: “The redevelopment of the historic Carnegie Building will give it a new lease of life as a community arts hub and events space.“This milestone is part of wider plans to deliver much-needed new homes, jobs and public space thanks to funding from the Mayor of London and the London Enterprise Action Partnership, in partnership with the London Borough of Bexley.”The Carnegie is a Grade II listed building. Council officers will work closely with The Exchange Ltd and Historic England to ensure that the refurbishment work is carried out in a way that is sympathetic to the character of the building".

It is a very long time since I reported any kind of incident during my travels on public transport, I was quite surprised to have an encounter worth reporting on Tuesday evening. I got on a B12 bus in Avenue Road in Bexleyheath at about 6pm; as I got onto the single decker bus I noticed a sixty something bloke sat on one of the side facing seats directly behind the drivers compartment. The man looked well dressed and was wearing a Rolex watch. Nevertheless he looked dishevelled and somewhat agitated. I found a seat and expected a quiet journey home. Within a few moments the man started shouting racial abuse at a number of black and Asian people on the bus – it became apparent that the man was very drunk, and with that came abusive behaviour. I challenged him and suggested that he shut up and keep his offensive opinions to himself. He responded with “I am sixty five – how old are you?” I responded with “The stuff coming out of your mouth sounds more like what you would expect from a badly behaved eight year old – act your age!” A young family of South Asian origin with two toddlers then got on board, and unwittingly sat adjacent to the foul mouthed bigot, who then launched into a further racist and threatening rant. I then got up and spoke to the driver, who then shouted at the man and told him to shut up, or he would be removed from the bus. This seemed to have the desired effect, and the drunk stayed quiet for the next few minutes, until he got off the bus in Carlton Road, ironically at the bus stop adjacent to the monastery attached to the Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church, when he suddenly turned around and raised his right arm in a Hitler salute and shouted “Seig Heil”) a couple of times. An old chap in front of me muttered “he wants his head examined!” I could not have agreed more.

I don't normally comment on stories that make the national or international press; I generally feel that if a story has been extensively written about by "proper" journalists, I am unlikely to have anything original to add. In the last week the dreadful news of the Grenfell Tower inferno have prompted a couple of Maggot Sandwich readers to contact me about the much smaller, and thankfully non fatal fire which destroyed the roof and much of the upper storey of the Moat apartment development in James Watt Way in Erith, back on the 8th August last year. The residents of that low rise block are still not back in their homes, and the building is still covered in scaffolding. More on the Moat repairs in a future issue of the Blog; in the meantime I have heard comments that the Grenfell Tower tragedy was in many ways similar in the emotional impact that it had on many people as that which happened after the New Cross fire, when 13 young people were killed in a fire which started during a party they were holding in a house at 439 New Cross Road on the 18th January 1981. Much has been written about the fire and how it started. The similarity to recent events made me think back to a conversation I had less than a week after the New Cross incident occurred. I was sitting in my English class, and the teacher was late arriving. I was sitting next to a chap called Adrian, whose cousin had been one of the victims of the fire. We talked at length, and he told me a story I have never been able to forget. I cannot verify the accuracy of his account, but I have since spoken to a couple of other people who lived in New Cross at the time, and it would appear to be consistent with their own experiences. Adrian told me that the party had been high spirited but not too rowdy; at some point an older man in his mid twenties turned up and successfully managed to gate crash the party. Eventually the man's boorish and drunken behaviour got him chucked out of the house - apparently there was an argument on the doorstep and he eventually went on his way. Adrian alleged that the man later returned with a jerry can of petrol and set fire to the house, killing 13 party goers in the process. Popular rumour at the time was that members of the National Front had been behind the killings, and that they were racially motivated. Many in the Afro - Caribbean community had long felt ignored or even targetted by the police, who were able to hide behind the sus law to disproportionately target young black males. It suited local feelings at the time to be able to pin the blame on an external group of high profile racists, and gave the community a bugbear against which to unite. It has since been posited that the event was a cornerstone to the creation of an identity for young black Britons. You can read an essay on the subject by clicking here. The story continues; what I was also told was that the arsonist was actually caught and interrogated by the Metropolitan Police within a few days of the fire. He was then released and disappeared. Adrian said the reason for this was the man was a member of the Yardies, and also a high level police informer. The police were so frightened of losing control of the Yardie gangs in London, that they were prepared to overlook the murder of thirteen teenagers in order to protect their secret intelligence source at the time. I related this story to a friend who lived in New Cross at the time of the fire; he said "You know what? I heard exactly the same thing". Again, I have no way of knowing the truth of the account, but it certainly seems to be consistent with the situation at that point in history. It would seem that as many rumours, half truths and speculation will circulate over the recent Grenfell Tower fire. A public enquiry is the ideal way to come to the truth of the matter.

The photo above was taken at around 9pm on Wednesday evening from Crescent Road in Erith, looking down into Morrison’s car park; it shows the arrival of approximately thirty caravans and assorted other vehicles belonging to a traveller group. It does seem that the car park is picked for an encampment on a pretty regular basis, though Morrison’s usually manage to get them to leave within 24 – 48 hours, usually after a court order is served. I recall that last time the car park was occupied in a similar manner, when the travellers left, it took three Morrison’s employees most of the afternoon to clear the fly tipped rubbish the travellers left behind, despite the recycling centre being only a few metres from where the caravans had been parked. It is understood that this group of travellers were the same ones that had just been evicted from the giant Ocado warehouse car park in Church Manor Way, Lower Belvedere. The Ocado facility employs around 3,600 local people and operates around the clock. Reports state that several shifts were seriously disrupted as the travellers not only illegally occupied the site, but they also changed the locks. After the Police were called, and the travellers left the industrial site, the Police left a patrol in the area to discourage the return of any caravans. It would seem that Morrison’s car park would appear to be the travellers “Plan B” whenever they are evicted for illegally occupying other local sites. Only around a day after the travellers were evicted from Morrison's car park, than they were back again in even greater numbers. The Police were called, and two traveller youths were arrested for burglary from parked vehicles. The travellers who had occupied the site of the old Bexley Council offices in Bexleyheath Broadway have now vacated the land, after a removal order was served on them by the Facilities and Property department of Sports Direct, who now own the site. It is understood that a considerable amount of rubbish was fly tipped on the location which Sports Direct are arranging for collection and disposal. The travellers are reported to have moved onto a location in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Whilst I have no time for travellers illegally trespassing on private land and dumping rubbish when they depart, I am not exactly keen on Sports Direct either; whilst their employment conditions and poor staff pay are well documented, what is less well known is the way that they treat their customers, especially when it comes to faulty goods, and their returns policy, which in some instances would appear to contravene British consumer laws. Sports Direct are exceedingly averse to giving refunds, instead trying to fob off customers with credit notes, or offering to exchange goods even when a refund is completely justified.  Its returns policy on their website is very poor and misleading. It says that you have to “pay for postage but this does not affect your statutory rights”, and of course we know most people don’t know what their statutory rights are, and even fewer use them. If you click on the “Faulty goods” link they also suggest that you pay for postage and registered post at that. They say they will refund or exchange. However under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 if the item does not match the description, is not of satisfactory quality or does not last a reasonable length of time then it is in breach of these regulations. Therefore one does not have to pay return postage, or this should be refunded. Sports Direct does not make the customer rights clear, it sounds like they might give you an exchange even if you want a refund. I suspect that many people would not know that they could insist on a refund. The news that Sports Direct treats their customers with a degree of what at least to an outsider appears to be institutionalised contempt is starting to spread, and hopefully customers will vote with their feet and shop elsewhere in future.

News from local Police Safer Neighbourhood Teams; The Belvedere team report:- "After reports of youths causing a vehicle nuisance in the Lumley Close area, patrols have identified a male known to the team who was riding a moped in an anti-social manner (witnessed by officers). He will be being spoken to in the very near future. Further to this, we have received reports of youths (both male and female) that have taken to gathering in the park at Albert Road during unsociable hours, causing a noise nuisance to residents. We will be making efforts to patrol this area as much as possible in the coming weeks in order to speak to any groups found to be involved in this behaviour". The Thamesmead East team report;- "12Th June, Chadwick Way, Motorbike was stolen from front drive after being left unlocked. Over the past week, two vehicles have had their number plates stolen, on the 15th June, Kale Road, and on the 18th June, Maran Way. Both offences happened overnight.--- Attempted Burglary occurred at Troon Close, where the beading from a window had been taken out, however the suspect did not gain entry, and nothing was stolen. During the afternoon of the 19th June, a mobile phone was stolen from a vehicle parked up in Middle Way, after the driver left the window open.--- Early hours of the 21st June, a male was discovered to be in possession of cannabis. Formal warning given". The Christ Church team in Bexleyheath report:- "On the 14th June 2017 the Salvation Army premises located In Lion Road has been broken into where by copper piping has been cut off – The premises is in the process of being demolished for a new building to be built in its place. 14th June 2017 - Broadway by the bus stop hub – a male has sat down on the benches near to school children and has exposed himself to police earlier in the day he had exposed himself to an adult female – male was arrested for indecent exposure. A robbery occurred on the 15th June 2017 outside the Ten pin bowling alley on Albion Road – a young school female was assaulted by several females who beat her up and stole her phone and money. 16th June 2017 in Russell Close 3 cars belonging to the same family have been damaged – this was due to a parking issue – Russell Close does have parking issue as not many of the premises in the road have drive ways so are having to park on the road which is permits only and many of the houses that do have driveways are shared". The North End team report:- "There is a steady increase in the borough relating to tools being stolen from works vehicles. If you have a van or work vehicle, please ensure any valuable tools are removed from inside be it over night or even daytime while working. Please pass this on to any family and friends who may have work tools kept in vehicles. All valuable items should always be removed from ANY vehicle while it is not in use".

Here is something I have not done for a while - a "then and now" photo comparison. The upper of the two photos above shows the (then) Mayer Newman weigh bridge and weigh bridge office in Manor Road, back in 1975, complete with a Mark 2 Ford Capri parked outside - thanks to Martin Barnes for supplying this. The lower photo was taken by me on Thursday afternoon, showing what the site looks like now. It is just as well that I got the photograph when I did, as it looks like the building is shortly to be demolished. It was still working as a weigh bridge and associated administrative office until relatively recently. If you have any old photos of the local area that you would like a "then and now" comparison done, then drop me a line with a copy of your photo to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

You may recall that last week I wrote about the seeming disappearance of the Bexley Growth Roadshow local feedback survey team from Erith Riverside Shopping Centre last Saturday afternoon. I have been in contact with a number of senior people in the council, and I am now able to clarify what actually happened. As you may recall it was very windy last Saturday, and the Growth Roadshow team found that their banners and placards kept blowing over, and were proving to be a bit of a health and safety risk to both themselves and to their visitors, so they were forced to take them down. Thus they became much harder to spot, as was found by several local readers. So the team were where they said they were, but many people missed them. The appearance the team made on Tuesday evening outside of Morrison’s was more successful, and I had a very nice chat with a lady staffing the stall. The team seemed to generate a lot of interest, and hopefully some productive feedback. I have also had official confirmation that the return of Erith Market after the disastrous pilot run last year has not been shelved as I feared. I have it in writing that the market is to return, and it will definitely be held in a Saturday as per the feedback from a number of readers and others; details are still to be agreed, and I would not personally expect to see any major action until next Spring, but we can live in hope. One of the major areas in which I feel that the proposed Bexley Growth Programme is weak, and something that I have already fed back to the team members is that the current plan in my opinion puts too much reliance on the mooted extension of the Crossrail line from Abbey Wood through Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green on its way to join up with other rail services at Ebbsfleet, linking up with the Paramount London theme park. Whilst this is something that many local people would greet with enthusiasm, it does not mean to say that it is going to happen; indeed news reaches us this week that the business alliance between Paramount Entertainment and the London Resort Company Holdings Ltd has now fallen through, and as such the whole planned 872 acre theme park which had hoped to attract up to 40,000 people a day is now in some doubt. London Resort officials have promised there will now be a “number of recognisable brands” at the promised North Kent theme park following the surprise departure of Paramount from the project, but the whole high level branding plan has now been ditched due to the departure of their main content provider. Whilst another partner may be found, I have some concerns that any other partner would not have the required high profile franchises that would be needed to attract enough visitors to make a large park financially viable. Paramount would have brought James Bond, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Toy Story and other very well-known movie and multimedia franchises to the park; I don’t know if another large film studio would be able or willing to take the risk of allowing their big name movies to be used as themes for rides in the park. It is also worrying from the perspective of many of the people in the region who were looking to work at the park; several figures have been published as to the number of jobs the park would create – around 24,000 would have seemed to have been a reasonable number. Understandably the London Resort Company Holdings Ltd are being cagey at this point; it may be that the reason that have cut their ties with Paramount Entertainment is that they have already secured a better deal elsewhere. Anything at this point is little more than speculation. What I feel would not work would be a generic, non – themed giant amusement park – a sort of “Dreamland on Steroids”. Any development needs to have a strong brand identity in order to attract sufficient numbers of visitors. The location of the park was also selected to allow a two hour travel time by train from Paris; the forthcoming Brexit may discourage some travellers from continental Europe from making the journey, and may indeed stop the figures from adding up for the entire project. As far as public information is concerned, there is too little currently available to make an informed judgement, so at present all analysts can do is guess. If you have any information regarding this issue, please drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

A new crime wave has been underway in parts of North Kent and it shows signs of spreading into South East London. Criminals have been stealing the backup batteries from mobile phone transceiver masts, presumably to sell as scrap. Now that scrap dealers can legally only accept scrap from registered traders, and no cash deals are permitted by law, it is going to be far more difficult for the crooks to get away with their thefts, and I gather that the mobile phone companies have their own security investigators on the case, as well as the Police. More on this in the future.

The end video this week is a promotional one for a YouTube channel that I follow daily. The channel is called "All the Stations" and it follows presenters Geoff and Vicki as they try to set a record as being the first people to visit every single railway station in the United Kingdom. They, along with a small team of volunteers film, edit and upload daily videos of their journey, and the people and places that they encounter on the way. Geoff already holds the Guinness World Record for the quickest transit through every station on the London Underground. The video below was recorded a while ago, when they were still trying to raise funds via Kickstarter to finance the "All the Stations" attempt; since then they easily exceeded the total they were looking for. You can see their daily postings as they make their way to every railway station in the UK by clicking here. Geoff and Vicki are now roughly half of their way through visiting all of the stations; once they have finished they intend releasing a film of edited highlights of their record breaking journey. This all might sound a little frivolous, but there is actually a serious side to the whole enterprise. They are trying to highlight how important the rail system is the the UK, and the more people that use it, the more money will be invested in it for the future. Do give the video a watch and leave feedback below, or alternatively Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The suits.

If you dropped into Morrison's supermarket in Erith on Wednesday or Thursday last week, you would probably have seen something quite interesting. Thirty or so directors and senior managers from Morrison's headquarters in Bradford, West Yorkshire descended on the Erith store to meet with the local management team. Word from a couple of my inside sources is that Morrison's have been concentrating new developments and services in their Northern stores, and the ones in the South have been missing out. Morrison's started out, and for many years was a regional store chain only operating in the North of England. It would seem that mentality is still present in the board of Directors. A downturn in sales has been especially noted in the Southern stores, and they have finally realised that they have a country - wide operation that needs to be treated as such. The "suits" were on site at the Erith store on a fact finding mission. I understand that a partial refit and upgrade may well be on the cards in the not - too distant future.  More details will hopefully be soon to come. 

As regular Maggot Sandwich readers will be aware, I have been banging on about the forthcoming London Paramount Theme Park for the last couple of years. Until recently the local press have been noticeably quiet on the subject. This week the News Shopper finally featured the subject in a fairly lengthy article. The theme park will be the third largest in the World, covering an area in excess of 100 acres. Unlike the Disney theme parks, which concentrate on Disney only franchises, the Paramount park will feature franchises from outside the Paramount field, including but not limited to the BBC, Aardman Animations and the British Film Institute’s back catalogue.  Franchises including the likes of Mission Impossible, Sherlock, The Italian Job, Star Trek, Spooks, Dr Who, Wallace and Gromit, The Godfather, Shaun the Sheep and huge amount more. I understand that over seventy five percent of the rides will be indoors, as the operators know how unreliable British weather can be – this was a mistake made by Disney when they opened Disneyland Paris – they merely built a copy of their Florida theme park in mainland France, and most of the rides were in the open, which meant empty rides when it rained.  The Paramount park will have 1,500 seat theatre for ‘West End quality shows’, exhibition, conference and gig space, 5,000 hotel rooms, a cinema and nightclubs, restaurants and bars and a giant water park. As I have previously featured, the park will have a massive economic and social impact on the entire South East region.  The developers confidently expect that the park would attract around 10 million visitors in the first year and around 15 million a year by the fifth, when there’s more on offer. By way of comparison, Thorpe Park pulls in about 2.5million visitors a year.  Paramount will also be open 365 days a year. The park will also offer a lot of well-paying permanent jobs – several sets of figures have been bandied about over the last couple of years, but at least twenty thousand full time permanent roles will be created. It won’t just be people wearing furry animal suits either – the park will need electricians, cleaners, maintenance people, accountants and administrators. It will in essence be a new town in itself, and it is anticipated that many of the park workers will live in the forthcoming Ebbsfleet Garden City. Whilst the plans for the Paramount London theme park have not yet been signed off, my sources tell me that it is going to be a formality – the level of unemployment in Kent is above the national average in many areas, and a prime wealth and job creating enterprise of this nature will get the nod from the Government. Time will no doubt tell.

I had quite an unexpected response to my article about curry houses that I published last week; I must admit that I did not think the piece would provoke the level of interest that it has. Several regular readers were curious as to how I acquired my knowledge of Indian restaurants. Well that is actually very simple. For several years I was a reviewer for The Good Curry Guide, and regularly wrote articles for the (now discontinued) Curry Club magazine. You can see a reproduction of a couple of reviews above that I had published almost exactly twenty years ago – a fact that becomes clear when you see the price of the dishes I reviewed! £2.95 for Chicken Vindaloo is something you won’t see nowadays. I would anonymously visit curry houses and review them as a normal customer – the only restaurant that ever found out that I was a curry house critic was Sweet and Spicy in Brick Lane, where I was a regular. They saw my glowing review, photocopied and enlarged it, and posted it in their front window, next to their “Time Out” best cheap eats award. The owner Omar Bhutt, came over to my table one day and asked me outright if the review had been written by me. I could not lie, and I admitted it. From that day onwards, I always got free extras like a couple of samosas or a gratis cup of tea, which was very welcome, as my visits were at lunchtime. The restaurant was a victim to the bout of gentrification that hit Brick Lane a couple of years ago, and it is now a fried chicken outlet; a sad end to one of the earliest Indian restaurants in Brick Lane – it opened in 1969, and was the only place in London that served curry for breakfast – it was an East End legend. You can read more about the place by clicking here. The Curry Club magazine ceased publication some years ago, and I very rarely eat out nowadays, so my hobby of curry critic is now no more. One of the few times I will visit a curry house is after the annual visit to the Bexley Beer Festival in Old Bexley, which coincidentally is scheduled for next weekend:-

Readers should be worried about their personal information that is being stored and accessed by the National Health Service; a recent independent report states that healthcare providers, including the NHS are likely to still be using Windows XP – an operating system that has been unsupported since the middle of 2014. Researchers from security consultancy Duo found that healthcare devices were significantly more out of date and less secure than ones from finance, after comparing its healthcare customers' devices to its finance customers' equipment. Healthcare has a four times greater density of Windows XP computers compared to finance. Windows XP has been unsupported by Microsoft since 2014 and unsupported OSes do not receive any software patches or updates, making them an easy target for attackers. The risk is far from theoretical. For example, earlier this year Melbourne Health’s networks were infected with malware after an attack compromised the Royal Melbourne Hospital’s pathology department, which was running Windows XP. The Qbot malware linked to the infection is capable of stealing passwords and logging keystrokes. A significant minority (three per cent) of Duo’s installed base is stuck on Windows XP, which compares to one per cent of users across Duo’s entire client base. Across that customer base, finance has 50 per cent more instances of computers running on the Windows 10 operating system than healthcare. Twice as many healthcare endpoints have Flash installed and three times as many healthcare customers have Java installed on their devices, again putting them at greater risk of vulnerabilities and exploitation, as both Java and Flash are relatively easy to find security vulnerabilities in – and are often the first point a hacker will try and exploit. A separate study from IBM last week warned that crooks were increasingly targeting healthcare concerns rather than banks partly because systems were more weakly defended. Stolen healthcare info contains personal data that is readily marketed through underground forums because it offers the collateral to carry out identity fraud and other scams – a classic case of “low hanging fruit”. In a similar vein, the susceptibility of bank cash machines to malicious exploitation of ATMs in particular is due to the widespread use of outdated and insecure software, mistakes in network configuration, and a lack of physical security for critical components of ATMs. For many years, the biggest threat to the customers and owners of ATMs were skimmers – special devices attached to an ATM in order to steal PINs and data on bank card magnetic stripes. However, as malicious techniques have evolved, ATMs have been exposed to a greater range of dangers. In 2014, IT security specialist Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered Tyupkin – one of the first widely known examples of malware for ATMs – and in 2015, they uncovered the Carbanak gang, which among other things was capable of jackpotting (completely emptying of cash) ATMs through compromised banking infrastructures. Both examples of attack were possible due to the exploitation of several common weaknesses in ATM technology and in the infrastructure that supports them. In an effort to put together a more complete picture, Kaspersky Lab security penetration testing specialists looked at software and physical security weaknesses that leave cash machines open to looting. Malware attacks against ATMs are possible due to two main security shortcomings: 1) ATMs are essentially PCs running very old versions of operating systems, such as Windows XP. 2) In the vast majority of cases, the special software that allows the ATM's PC to interact with banking infrastructure and hardware units, processing cash and credit cards, is based on the XFS standard. This is a rather old and insecure technology specification, originally created in order to standardize ATM software so that it can work on any equipment, regardless of manufacturer. The XFS specification requires no authorisation for the commands it processes, meaning that any app installed or launched on the ATM can issue commands to any other ATM hardware unit, including the card reader and cash dispenser. That means if malware successfully infects an ATM, it inherits almost unlimited control capabilities. It can turn the PIN pad and card reader into a 'native' skimmer or just give away all the money stored in the ATM, upon a command from a hacker," the Kaspersky Lab research team warns. Physical security is, if anything, even weaker. The lack of physical security for the ATMs themselves makes criminal hacking possible without any recourse to malware needed. ATMs are often constructed and installed in a way that means a third party can easily gain access to the PC inside the cash machine, or to the network cable connecting the machine to the internet. By gaining even partial physical access to an ATM, criminals can potentially install a specially programmed microcomputer (a so-called black box), which will give attackers remote access to the ATM. Reconnecting the ATM to a rogue processing centre is also possible. Criminals are able to exploit insecurities in the network communication between the ATM and the banking infrastructure thanks in part to a lack of secondary controls, such as VPNs and authentication. The results of the security research show that even though vendors are now trying to develop ATMs with strong security features, many banks are still using old insecure models.  This makes them unprepared for criminals actively challenging the security of these devices. This is today's reality that causes banks and their customers huge financial losses. It would seem that cyber-criminals are not just interested in cyber-attacks against internet banking – they are increasingly turning their hands toward direct attacks. They see the value in exploiting ATM vulnerabilities because a direct attack against such devices significantly shortens their route to real money. You can be certain that any losses experienced by the banks will trickle down to customers in the form of higher interest rates and increased service charges, so it is most timely to find this to be of serious concern.

Since I covered the story of the huge fire at the Europa Industrial Estate in the early 1980’s, I have had some fascinating feedback from readers. Local Historian Ken Chamberlain sent me the aerial photograph that you can see above – click on it for a larger view. It shows the devastation left once the fire burned itself out. I am guessing that the photo may well have been commissioned on behalf of the loss adjusters working for the insurance company that insured the warehouses. The site is so large that an aerial photo would be the only way to really assess the extent of the damage. Nowadays it could be done far more quickly and cheaply by an aerial drone, but back in the day it would have had to be done by a light plane. Maggot Sandwich reader and retired firefighter Alan Magin was one of the team who tackled the blaze. He recalls:- "My recollection was that we made up the attendance from Greenwich, as we had the 100' turntable ladders. It was impossible trying to put it out, as the corrugated metal roof covered the combustible materials. I remember a plastics factory was also involved, melting its produce into the drains, so they needed replacing in the rebuild. What was handy though was the floating pontoon at the Erith Deep Water site. It was a case of relay pumping, from an appliance on the pontoon, as in effect we always had water! A senior officers decision no doubt, a good one if you ask me. Rather than use fresh water from the hydrants. I think the damping down operation lasted a week. It was interesting to hear you say the fire started in a paper warehouse with perhaps reeled paper? for newsprint maybe? If these reels got anywhere near damp they started to expand/unwind creating heat, hence the spontaneous combustion.  I attended a slightly larger fire at one of Mr Murdoch's warehouses in Grove St, Deptford, that one was started deliberately. I think he might have upset a few people!  Incidentally, I was shot up again on our 100' turntable ladder, (I must have been a glutton for punishment) only to be told by the operator to come down immediately. After my descent (walking down) the operator in his excitement had forgotten to put out the manual jacks to stabilise the appliance!!! I still think what might have happened if he had tried to manoeuvre the ladder? I might not have been here writing to you!"

It is that time of year again; the Friends of Riverside Gardens Erith (FORGE) are working in partnership with the environmental charity Thames 21 and volunteer groups including the Army Cadets to carry out their annual river cleanup on Sunday the 8th May. Volunteers are invited to join the work - protective clothing will be provided, and you get a free lunch. I will be going along to provide encouragement and to take some photos for future publication. Do come along to help clear the shopping trollies and other detritus out of the river.

At work, I, like many unfortunate people get quite a large number of unsolicited sales calls. The company switchboard are pretty good at filtering them out, but nevertheless a fair number do manage to get through. My normal technique is just to slam the phone down immediately. I was looking around online for a possible better solution when I came across this:- "I get 20 sales calls a day at least, as our organization is relatively large. All of them are unsolicited, and they use shady tactics to make it past the receptionist. So yesterday, in the middle of a team meeting, an emergency call came through the IT support hotline, interrupting our meeting. One of our help desk guys picks up and it's a sales guy claiming that he had just been chatting with me, the IT Director, and wanted to be transferred through so he could "finish the conversation." This was obviously untrue, as I had just arrived in the office, and I don't take sales calls. The help desk guy asked if I wanted him passed through to my voicemail, and I said: "I'd prefer that you transfer them straight to hell instead. In fact, we should have a special queue called Hell, playing the most obnoxious music over and over again." The guys start joking: "It could be playing Barney." "It could be playing 'The Song that Never Ends'." "It could be playing a detuned or desynchronized version of a Smash Mouth song." Our seasoned help desk veteran says: "I have just the thing!" and plays the most awful song I've heard in my life. Everything in the department stops, and then everyone busts out laughing. We are actually a well-oiled IT team – we've worked together for years. My background is in film soundtracks and audio production, and my senior network admin's is in broadcast radio audio engineering. We edited and snipped the audio, pitched shifted a few things, and generally set out to make the worst recording ever. Once finished, we uploaded it to the phone server and created the queue to repeat eternally. We assigned it extension number 666. Once in the queue, any button you press once in this queue restarts the recording. Our new department policy is: when sales people call they are to be transferred straight to hell". You can hear the wait music and message from hell by clicking here. Make sure you have your headphone / speaker volume turned down! You have been warned. 

You may in the past recall me bemoaning the audio quality of DAB radio broadcasts in the UK - due mainly to the fact that they DAB transmission standard employed in the UK is for the most part archaic. A DAB audio signal is encoded in MP2 (the ancestor to today’s MP3 format). The newer and more efficient DAB+ audio signal is encoded in aacPlus (strictly, aacPlus HE v2). Your iPod / iPhone uses AAC as standard; aacPlus uses a number of clever techniques to make it more efficient, so audio sounds better at lower bitrates. Roughly, 48kbps DAB+ sounds the same as a 128kbps DAB signal. A DAB+ audio signal also includes slightly better error correction, which might mean a reduction in 'bubbling mud' distortion when the signal drops, or other problems in poor reception areas. Apart from that, there are no differences. DAB+ and DAB use the same transmitters, same multiplexing equipment, and so on, and DAB and DAB+ signals can happily live on the same DAB multiplex. A DAB+ radio will also happily decode DAB signals as well (although a DAB radio won’t decode DAB+). Many DAB radios on sale today will cope with DAB+ automatically, or will prompt you with instructions on how to upgrade (which could be as easy as typing a code in, or downloading some new firmware). Any radio with a Digital Radio tickmark will cope with DAB+. DAB+ is now the standard way to launch new DAB services, and is in use in, among other places, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, and many more. The main benefit is that you can get many more channels onto a typical DAB multiplex. The UK has no plans to move from DAB to DAB+. While DAB+ services are now appearing in the UK, there are no plans to switch the majority of radio broadcasting over to DAB+: not yet, anyway. There have been a lot of DAB sets sold in the UK. DAB sets are in over half of all households here, and generally we don’t replace radios as fast as any other entertainment equipment (like a TV, a set-top box, or a mobile phone). Given this, it is unlikely that the UK will be switching to DAB+ any time soon, and there are no plans to make that change. DAB+ doesn’t automatically mean better audio in comparison to DAB Some of the main proponents of DAB+ in this country want it because they think it’ll result in better-sounding audio. It probably will not; The main benefits to radio listeners from DAB+ will be additional choice, not enhanced sound quality. (That said, DAB+ normally means stereo is available at bitrates formerly only used for mono, so there is that.) Because the UK was an early adopter of DAB, we have been stuck with what is now a mostly out of date transmission infrastructure. No wonder take - up of DAB is far below the expectations of OFCOM. 

As you may have read in the London Evening Standard and elsewhere, there are plans to open a new terminal for cruise liners at Enderby's Wharf in Greenwich. Up to fifty passenger liners will sail past Erith on their way up the River Thames to Greenwich every year once the new terminal is opened. It will be a real treat for the ship spotters that you see on Erith Pier from time to time. What it will not be a treat for is the residents of the area surrounding Enderby Wharf. The cruise liners will need to run their auxiliary generators to generate power whilst docked, as the development plans don't include clean shoreside mains power in their scope. This week A powerful committee of MPs stepped into a row over plans to let cruise ships spew diesel fumes day and night in the heart of London. The cross-party group of MPs ruled: “Planning permissions for new shipping facilities must require appropriate mitigation measures from developers. This should include, where practicable, a requirement to provide infrastructure to supply electricity to ships at berth.” Whether this will in any way influence the developers is currently uncertain. Providing clean, shoreside power would be an expensive option, but to my mind is the only way forward. Air pollution on the Greenwich peninsula is already running at unacceptable levels, and cruise liners running on auxiliary generators would only make things far worse.  You can watch a BBC London news report on the situation below. Feel free to leave a comment, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The "Funky Clock" scam.

The photo above shows the Cross Keys Centre as it looked on Friday lunchtime. The new sign lettering was being fixed to the frontage of the magnificent, sympathetically restored Victorian building. When I took the shot, the final "S" had yet to be fixed in place on the fascia - the worker installing the lettering had gone off for his lunch; now the sign is totally complete, and looking good. Parts of the building are already in use as office and meeting room space, both for the owners, Anglo - American management consultancy The Aleff Group, and for small local companies that need a certain amount of office and touch - down space. As previously mentioned, I have been an advisor to The Aleff Group for a couple of years now, and it is really gratifying to see the former run - down and very scruffy pub take on a new lease of life as a business, social and community centre for the area. I was there for a meeting with some business associates who are creating a new start - up company. Suffice to say that's all I can say on the subject for now, but in the months that come there will be some very interesting, creative and involving news to report. Watch this space. Whilst I was in the Cross Keys Centre, I was called out of the meeting room I was in, with a cryptic message "There's someone you might like to meet". Who should the person be than the power behind food delivery service Got Breakfast, local businesswoman Bukky Alabi. Although we have corresponded at some length, it was the first time that we had actually met face to face! The Cross Keys Centre is already fulfilling its objectives of becoming a hub where local small businesses and social groups can meet to exchange ideas, network and socialise. 

At this time of year, so many people seem to carry around a bottle of water; when the weather is hot, this seems like a sensible move. What I find very hard to understand is that rather than carrying an individual bottle containing up to half a litre, I see many people carrying 1.5 or even two litre bottles of water. Are they really planning on drinking that much? What will happen when they need to use the loo, and as we know, the number of public toilets in the UK has been cut back to almost nothing. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to do more to save Britain's dwindling number of public lavatories. The Prime Minister said he would examine the case for lifting thousands of pounds of taxes from them every year to try to save them from closure. The search for public toilets in towns and cities has become more and more desperate in recent years because the number of lavatories has fallen markedly. Campaigners say that many have had to be closed because of councils have to pay onerous business rates on them. The British Toilet Association has estimated that 40 per cent of local authority run public conveniences have disappeared in the last decade, taking the number down from 12,000 to 6,000, in part because councils have to pay business rates on them. The Daily Telegraph reported earlier in the week that Public toilets have traditionally been liable for business rates in the same way as non-domestic premises such as shops and offices, while churches and premises used to care for disabled people are exempt. Raymond Martin, managing director of The British Toilet Association, said: “This is a public facility. People have to go to the toilet. We have to do five things in life – we have to eat, sleep, breathe, drink and we have to go to the toilet. Failure to go to the toilet we get sick, we get disorientated, we have high blood pressure, we can have strokes – this is a health and wellbeing issue. It is about equality, social inclusion and bringing more older people into town. The reason that toilets are closing is councils do not get any financial support from government to do it, so they have to sit down and look at costs. I have calls coming into me from councils saying ‘how do we close down all our toilets’. Councils really want to provide these facilities, they really want to have them but commercially and economically they can't afford to do it. The fall in numbers of public lavatories meant more and more shop owners are complaining about people urinating in the street, and worse".

Once again this week, the News Shopper report on yet another incident involving Gravesend RNLI being called to an emergency on the River Thames at Erith. This time a person was found trying to enter the river at 2.30pm on the 31st July - I must admit that I was working from home on Friday, and i saw the Police helicopter flying along the river from the window of my home office. I did not immediately realise that it was a person in trouble. A person was found on the shore and taken into custody. We are now getting an average of one river related incident a week; I seriously think that we need a permanent RNLI presence in Erith - as I have written before, the former Port of London Authority hut directly adjacent to the Erith Jetty (as seen in the photo above - click for a larger view) would be an absolutely ideal base for the sub station - what do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. incidentally, if you check the photo of Erith Pier in the News Shopper piece, you will see that it is an ancient shot from back in around 1978, when the pier formed an integral part of Erith Deep Water Wharf. How they managed to dig up such an historic relic, I really don't know. I could have easily supplied them with an up to date shot of the excellent refurbished and very popular pier as it stands nowadays. 

Following on from my piece a couple of weeks ago, where I discussed the relatively low average house price in the London Borough of Bexley, I have come to the conclusion that averaging prices over the whole borough actually gives a very distorted picture. Houses in Bexleyheath and Sidcup (the “posh” Southern part of the borough) are pretty much in line with other parts of outer London – with the exception of certain parts of West London. The reason the average is brought down overall is that in the less wealthy Northern part of Bexley - Thamesmead East, Abbey Wood, Lower Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green - is very much cheaper that the rest of the borough. The News Shopper have been reporting that more than three quarters of London boroughs, 78.1 per cent, showed an increase in new properties with Bexley the highest at 30.6 per cent. As we know, the Northern part of the London Borough of Bexley has a high proportion of first time buyers – mainly as it is one of the very few areas where first – timers have a chance of getting a mortgage. Sadly, this is already changing, as greedy property developers are hoovering up places as they come onto the market; they are acutely aware that there is about to be a house – price boom, fed by the arrival of Crossrail to Abbey Wood, and the almost inevitability that it will be further extended to link up with the forthcoming Paramount London Theme Park on the Swanscombe Peninsular, which will feature Europe’s largest indoor water park, theatres, live music venues, attractions, cinemas, restaurants, event space and hotels. Allied to the project will be a training academy for the entertainment and hospitality sectors, a new country park, a large science and education visitor complex and the biggest performing arts centre in Europe.  The plans for the park received considerable backing from the British government when Paramount London became the first commercial venture to be awarded Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project status allowing the developers to bypass local planning requirements. The Secretary of State may make a decision on the park's planning application in autumn 2016 – though I seriously doubt any politician would contemplate putting a stop to the project, as it will involve at least 25,000 permanent full and part time jobs in an area which has exceptionally high regional unemployment. An area estimated to stretch between Dover and Greenwich will benefit from the jobs and money that the theme park will generate, and this is inevitably going to push up the local house prices, and the areas such as the North of the London Borough of Bexley are almost certain to be disproportionately affected. If you are contemplating purchasing a property in Erith or the surrounding towns, I would strongly advise you to do it as soon as possible, as prices are set to go through the roof.

The News Shopper is reporting an incident where a motorcyclist with a helmet – mounted camera caught a woman driving a car whilst not only sending a text from her mobile phone, but also eating a bowl of cereal! Personally I don't find this at all surprising; when walking around Erith on a daily basis I see drivers using mobile phones whilst on the move. Only on Tuesday afternoon did I see a man driving a seven and a half tonne box van around the roundabout at the end of James Watt Way, as he headed into Manor Road, and past the KFC drive through; he had his left hand on the wheel, and his right hand holding his mobile phone to his left ear. As he went round the roundabout, he momentarily lost control of the van as his grip in the steering wheel slipped. Fortunately he recovered quickly, but the incident could have easily escalated into something more serious – especially as there are two pedestrian crossings very nearby. What was even more disturbing was that the van was owned and operated by a very high profile local company, who almost certainly have policies in place to prohibit the use of mobile phones whilst driving – in accordance with the law. I will be keeping a lookout for such illegal activity in the future –  the law on the subject is widely flouted, yet it is also one of the most dangerous behaviour a driver can exhibit whilst behind the wheel. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The DAB debate which started a decade ago, and which I have covered in the past has been brought back to life by BBC Radio 4, with the results appearing to be somewhat familiar. Ten years ago listeners complained of poor reception on DAB, with either no audio, or audio sounding like it was being broadcast from under bubbling water, and BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme has sparked a debate resulting in listeners complaining of exactly the same thing today. On Monday morning, James Cridland and Laurence Harrison appeared on the Today Programme to defend DAB, and talk about the possible ‘end of FM’. Both provided facts and figures about DAB listening and a multi-platform world, but listeners reacted by complaining of the lack of reception which still blights many areas in the UK. The problem is down to a number of factors; the DAB standard used in the UK is the oldest and most basic type, which has been superseded; newer DAB+ which is currently either being rolled out, or already in use in much of mainland Europe uses a far newer and more sophisticated codec, which enables better sound quality at lower bitrates – meaning even if the signal is poor, you have a better chance of actually hearing something intelligible. The other side of the coin is that the FM broadcast band in the UK has been incredibly successful, and stations such as BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 3 have extremely high sound quality when listened to with a decent receiver – and the signal coverage is generally far more complete than DAB. To be honest, DAB has several advantages, but in my opinion these are outweighed by the disadvantages. DAB coverage is not the only issue; sound quality is poorer (don’t let the “Digital” tag fool you – a low bit rate DAB signal sounds far worse than an equivalent analogue FM signal). As I have mentioned before – analogue radio signals exhibit a phenomenon known as “Graceful Degradation” - a form of fault tolerance – as the signal strength at the receiver reduces, on AM the audio from the speaker gets quieter, and on FM the amount of hiss increases. Eventually the signal will get so poor that no audio is intelligible at all, but for quite a long time the listener can “get by” even though the sound is less than perfect. With DAB and other methods of digital sound transmission the degradation is somewhat different. As the signal level drops, the receiver will start to “burble” as if the audio is being under water; there will be sudden silences, a few farts and blips, then nothing. There is no period where the listener is able to make out the audio as the signal drops – it is “all or nothing”.

Southeastern rail bosses have taken a bit of a slippering recently; A public meeting was recently organised in Sidcup for local commuters and other train users to attend and give feedback to the managers of the rail company; I understand that it was what the armed forces refer to as “a meeting without coffee”. The meeting was chaired by Old Bexley and Sidcup MP James Brokenshire. One of the most common complaints about the Southeastern service is that trains are comprised of too few carriages – especially in busy times of the day. Apparently Southeastern don't have any more carriages to enable them to run longer trains, even though they extended many platforms on the North Kent line before the Olympics, to allow twelve carriage trains to run on the line. The only problem back then was that trains could not stop at Woolwich Dockyard station, as the station platform has tunnels at both ends, which only permit ten carriage trains to stop, meaning that the first and last carriage on the train would be left in the tunnel when the train stopped – a similar situation to the DLR station Cutty Sark for Greenwich, where passengers have to move to the middle of the train to get off. The way the travel planners worked things during the Olympics and Paralympics was they just closed Woolwich Dockyard station for the duration of both competitions – ostensibly to prevent visitors “getting confused and alighting at the wrong station” – this had a side benefit that Olympic visitors were somewhat shielded from seeing what a terrible dump much of the area around Woolwich Dockyard station is. The upside was that they ran twelve car trains for the duration of the sporting festival, but reverted to the shorter trains with a maximum of ten carriages directly thereafter.

I have been contacted by a couple of long – time readers who had some questions and concerns about a couple of websites that they had encountered; knowing my background in I.T, and my special interest in online security, they asked if I could investigate. They had rightly become suspicious of a website which claimed that one could legally purchase a brand new iPhone 6 for the price of £1. The website advertising this has links from the tabloid newspaper website The Daily Star, and several other reputable (!) locations. When one followed the link, you were presented with what appeared at first glance to be a page from the BBC News website. It included a story about how people in the UK could get a brand new iPhone 6 for £1. Upon reading the story, alarm bells started to ring; the writing style was nothing like BBC News standard, and there was a problem with the links on the page – they all led to the same website – this is a common trick carried out by scammers – create a fake “honey trap” site to redirect web traffic to another website. The so called "BBC" site was nothing but a fake. The second site is called “Funky Clock” which runs “special offers” amongst “skill and speed” competitions, where participants purchase credits to use to play games, the winner of which supposedly wins an iPhone 6. When you sign up for the “free” service, you are prompted to enter your bank details “for verification purposes”. What is only displayed in microscopic text is that the “free” period only lasts for three days, and that after that Funky Clock will debit your bank account by £74 a month, from now until the end of time. No cheap iPhones, no deals – the whole thing is a massive scam. It would appear that many Internet Service Providers, notably including Virgin have been duped into forwarding “Genuine offer” messages from Funky Clock to their subscribers, thus giving a veneer of apparent respectability to the confidence trick. This is a classic case of “if it seems too good to be true, it generally is”. Be warned – treat anything that says they are giving away high value items for next to nothing as a con until it can be verifiably proved otherwise (a very fat chance indeed). Unfortunately the criminals will continue such scams for as long as there are vulnerable people to fall prey to them. You have been warned.

I make no secret that I am a big fan of Google; they have turned online search into a verb, they are that good at what they do that to perform a web search has for many become “to Google”. Many of their products such as GMail and Google Docs are excellent and widely used, but they have one product, which many people – myself included, actively dislike and avoid. Google+ was intended to be a direct competitor for social networks like Facebook, but it has never gained the popularity or traction with Google users – and nowadays Facebook is a verb as well. I predicted around a year ago that Google would pull the plug on Google+, and it would seem that this has now begun. Earlier this week, the company announced its most drastic step for breaking up Google+. Google has announced more sweeping changes for Google+ over the next few months as it restructures network into two distinctly separate products: streams and photos. Previously, many tasks within Google products (such as, say, commenting on a YouTube video) required a Google+ profile, but that won't be the case in the future. Forcing Google users to sign up for a Google+ account in order to the use some of the company's other products and services was a clear bid to generate interest in its social network, but it backfired with many users. Google+ claimed 300 million monthly active users in late 2013, although Stone Temple Consulting, a third-party digital marketing agency, pegged that figure at a far lower 111 million this past April. For many users,  the biggest issue with Google's social network is that it just wasn't social enough -- the layout of the site wasn't as inviting or friendly as Facebook's traditional layout has been and we still haven't seen any indication that Google really gets how the social web works – something that Facebook seem to have got right, despite their own illogical and inconsistent user interface – which users don't seem to mind. The move means users will soon be able to use their standard Google account to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel, and so on. Unlike your public Google+ profile, your Google account is not searchable or follow able. If you already created a Google+ profile (read: Google conned you into doing it) but don't plan to use Google+, the company says it will “offer better options for managing and removing” your public profile. The changes are meant to strike a balance between the select few who actually like using Google+ and everyone else whom Google forced to sign up for its social network. I predict that Google will keep Google+ for another year or so, then quietly retire it as an irrelevance. What do you think? Do you like Google+ Let me know – Email hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The controversy over Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond may now have finally been put to bed, now that the announcement that their new car show will be hosted on Amazon Prime. Having said that, as I mentioned a while back, there are a number of excellent car shows broadcast on YouTube. One of them, by a chap called Harry Metcalfe is a real find. Harry is thoughtful and quietly spoken, but really knows what he is talking about; he is the former editor of the car magazine Evo, and a consultant to the Jaguar Range Rover group. In the video below, he drives an immaculate 1980 vintage Jaguar XJS V12 over a thousand miles from the UK to Monaco. Harry is either in possession of an incredible insight into the mechanical reliability of the thirty five year old grand tourer, or he has amazing faith in the build quality of the old Jag, built during their ownership by British Leyland, a company not exactly famous for the reliability, or indeed mechanical build quality of their cars. Watch and enjoy the latest episode of "Harry's Garage".

The Erith Odeon.

The two photos above were taken from exactly the same location, but separated by exactly thirty years of time. The upper photo was taken in May 1985, and shows the old Art Deco Erith Odeon cinema, which by that time had been converted into a Mecca Bingo hall. Built for the Oscar Deutsch chain of Odeon Theatres Ltd. The Odeon Cinema was opened on 26th February 1938 with Barbara Stanwyck in "Stella Dallas". Located on the corner of High Street and James Watt Way, the huge frontage was entirely covered in glazed tiles, broken only by long narrow window, just above the canopy. To the left of the facade was an impressive sweptback 65 feet high fin-tower, which became a landmark in the town centre. Inside the striking Art Deco style auditorium, seating was provided for 826 in the stalls and 420 in the circle. On each side of the proscenium were panels with horizontal bands, that were back-lit. There were a series of decorative plaster bands along the ceiling towards the proscenium, which were broken only by a daylight fitting in the centre of the ceiling. The Odeon was taken over by the Independent Classic Cinemas Ltd. chain on 10th December 1967, and was re-named Classic Cinema. The Classic Cinema was twinned from 16th September 1973, with a 1,000 seat Mecca Bingo Club operating in the former stalls area, and a 400 seat cinema in the former circle, which opened with Glenda Jackson in "A Touch of Class". Classic Cinemas leased the entire building to Mecca Ltd. from 3rd January 1974, and the cinema was re-named Mecca Cinema. The Mecca Cinema was closed on 25th September 1976 with Robin Askwith in "Confessions of a Driving Instructor" and Anthony Sharp in "House of Mortal Sin". The building was de-twinned and the Mecca Bingo Club took over the stalls and circle levels from November 1976. In 1995, it was taken over by the independent Jasmine Bingo Club chain, and was closed on 4th February 1996. The building was boarded-up and lay unused until late 2002, when it was demolished. A block of retail / office units and flats was built on the site in 2005, which you can see in the lower photograph. It was a great pity that the original cinema building could not have been retained; I know that at the time there was much talk of the building having a Grade II* listed status, due to the architectural importance of the design. I understand that matters came to a head when large quantities of blue asbestos were found in the structure. I have to say they the building that replaces it has some very pleasant apartments which overlook the River Thames. If you would like to see more photographs of the old Erith Odeon, both inside and out, then click here for an album of period pictures - the May 1985 image above is used with the permission of the copyright holder. The lower image was taken by me last week.

After a degree of uncertainty, I can now confirm that Erith Fun Day 2015 will be taking place in the Erith Riverside Gardens on Saturday the 18th of July. More details in the coming weeks; for now you can visit the Erith Fun Day Facebook page here.

I get annoyed when I see some of the talkbacks on websites such as the News Shopper. There seems to be a small coterie of individuals who comment on pretty much any and every story, usually with remarks that are overtly derogatory. There have recently been some particularly nasty comments about a couple of people I would rather not identify, and I am surprised that the News Shopper editorial team have not taken the remarks down. Quite often these trolls will become active whenever Erith is mentioned in a story – they seem to take some kind of cheap thrill in bad mouthing the town and those (like me ) who live there. The fact that Erith is an up and coming place that is undergoing dynamic regeneration seems to escape them – all they can see is what they erroneously consider to be a run-down dump full of thieves and chavs. Sure, Erith has a dark side – find a town in the UK that doesn’t? I can certainly vouch that in the years I have lived in Erith, the place has got better and better. What disappointed me earlier this week was a news story which fed directly into the prejudices of the News Shopper talkback trolls. Three men from Erith were jailed for theft and fraud after large scale raids by Met police.  Kevin Lang, 37, of Sun Court was sentenced to 12 months in prison for fraud, after trying to sell his own driving licence, passport and other ID documents including birth certificates.  George Evans, 30, of Bridge Road was sentenced to 8 months in prison for theft, after stealing iPads, sat navs and tools from vehicles. Michael Ozdal, 32, of Slade Green Road was sentenced to 10 months in prison for theft and fraud.  He was accused of stealing sat navs, an iPad, tools, an iPhone, and supplying bank cards and a passport intended to be used to commit fraud. The numpties deserve their custodial sentences.  All three men were arrested on March 24 when police raided 53 homes in Bexley, Lewisham, Greenwich and Bromley. They stole the electronic kit from parked cars and vans, and by breaking into private property, and they fully deserve jail.  It just galls me that these crooks play into the hands of those who would like to tarnish all Erith residents with the same brush. I predict that the town will experience a economic and social boost over the next five years or so that will force the naysayers to eat their words.

If you have taken a 99 bus recently, you may have noticed a subtle difference in the bus itself. Whilst they look very similar to the widely liked Alexander Dennis Enviro 400 models (photo above - click for a larger view) that have been used on the route since 2011, they seem to operate in a somewhat different manner. When the bus comes to a halt, the engine cuts out completely. When the bus subsequently pulls away from the bus stop, it travels for a few seconds in complete silence, before the diesel engine cuts back in. It is fairly obvious that the drivetrain of the bus uses some form of hybrid system. As a regular passenger on the 99 route, and as someone who has an interest in engineering, I did a bit of research. Here is what I found; the new buses are using an energy storage system they call Gyrodrive. I found the details on a bus engineering website “Working with Williams Hybrid Power and GKN on an £18m project to bring Formula 1 technology to buses, ADL has plans to introduce a Gyrodrive parallel hybrid system that uses an electro-mechanical composite flywheel as an energy store. For OEM or retrofit installation, the system has been trialled at Millbrook and in service with savings of 25% predicted from it. Unlike other flywheel systems, there is no direct mechanical link required between the flywheel and the rest of the system, which means it can be mounted wherever best suits, and there is also no complex continuously variable transmission (CVT) required. Costs are expected to be cheaper than a battery in whole life terms with the flywheel unit only requiring bearings every six years or so at a cost of around £1,000. On an Enviro400 the power electronics and flywheel energy store are located in the saloon under a pair of double seats, with the electric machine (a flywheel running at 36,000rpm) and its transfer box mounted on the prop shaft. Ken said that field trials on vehicles retrofitted with the device would be running in the fourth quarter of this year with OEM fit vehicles scheduled for 2015. He confirmed that other applications for Gyrodrive were being looked at. “ The document was dated early 2014, so the prediction of rolling Gyrodrive out in 2015 would appear to have been accurate. I can understand local bus operators opting for a fairly basic form of hybrid power. When you consider the capital outlay to replace part or whole of a bus fleet, the expense would run into many millions. I recall that well over a year ago I saw a prototype fuel cell powered bus, stopped in Bexley Road, at the junction with Cross Street in front of Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. The bus was immobile, and a couple of bus fitters were standing outside. I went across and asked then what the problem was, as the bus was blocking nearly all traffic from the bus halt in front of the shopping centre. One of the blokes looked a bit embarrassed when he told me that the Fuel Cell powered bus had broken down, and at that time they could not get it to move. He explained that the on board computer had crashed, which had locked the drive unit into park, and had locked on all of the brakes. The only thing still working were the emergency flashers. I left the pair as they tried to reboot the bus. This is the kind of scenario that the bus companies cannot afford to see happening in production buses – the incident I saw was very much just a test run. Fuel cell powered buses have been operated on routes in central London for several years  - usually out of the Waterloo garage. They have not been widely taken up, mainly due to the huge capital outlay that such technology costs, and also because very few places are licenced to store the liquid Hydrogen the fuel cells require. The upside of Hydrogen fuel cells is that the only exhaust they release is water vapour – steam. They are totally clean and don't require charging like conventional electric vehicles. I think that in the coming years, legislation will change making fuel – cell powered vehicles of all kinds much more financially attractive to own and operate – especially in the case of public service vehicles. In the meantime it would seem that the pragmatic bus operators are now taking the first steps towards that goal. Next time you go on a bus, listen as it stops – does the engine cut out, only to smoothly cut back in as it draws away? If it does, it almost certainly uses some type of hybrid system – quite possibly the Gyrodrive system described above. On another note, you may recall that I mentioned seeing a Tesla Model S electric car recently in Upper Belvedere; I have since discovered that the owner works in Canada Square, Canary Wharf, and makes good use of the free dedicated Tesla recharging point in the underground car park beneath Waitrose / John Lewis in Canada Square. I used to be deeply sceptical about zero emission vehicles – mainly because of the woeful G-Wiz that one used to see limping around central London for a few years. The G-Wiz may still be in production (from what I have been able to ascertain, they are built in a shed in India) but they are ugly, slow, badly built, short ranged death traps. The G-Wiz is exempt from most European road safety legislation, as it is not legally regarded as being a car – instead it is a “heavy quadricycle” rather than a car. Consequently there have been a number of horrendous accidents involving other vehicles and a G-Wiz, with the pitiful electric cart invariably coming off far worse. In 2010, a fatal accident in London occurred between a G-Wiz and a Škoda Octavia, with the driver of the G-Wiz, a top British scientist named Judit Nadal, being killed. The coroner Andrew Walker was quoted as saying about the G-Wiz at the inquest: “What concerns me is that this vehicle was destroyed in this collision in a way that I have not seen a vehicle destroyed before.” The G-Wiz thankfully discontinued back in 2012, but you can still see the occasional model trundling around the City and West End, doing an impression of an asthmatic milk float with a body like a bad dodgem car. All this, along with Top Gear voting the G-Wiz one of the worst new cars of the last twenty years has not done much for the image and acceptability of vehicles powered by renewable energy. All this is now about to change. The Tesla S is stunning to look at, beautifully built, uses the latest cutting edge engineering technology, has a decent range and a luxurious interior – and on top of that it goes like stink. Once you have seen one in the flesh you will appreciate what I mean – in photos the Tesla S looks a little on the bland side, but when you stand next to one that all changes – it is beautiful, with a hint of Jaguar and BMW from certain angles; I had the opportunity to study one up close on Friday night, courtesy of local businessman Vik, who I bumped into in Morrison's car park with his brand new top of the range 700 horsepower 4 wheel drive Tesla-S P85D. It is manufactured in a dedicated facility in California, but it does not look overtly American – the quality of the interior materials feel more European – like an Audi. They are available in the UK with right hand drive. Check out the road test video below and see what you think. The Tesla S model is certainly not cheap – it is aimed at the same affluent professional who might otherwise buy a Mercedes E – Class or a BMW 5 – Series, but it is the first truly credible electric car that a driver or passenger has to make absolutely no concessions to own – see what you think.

The World Snooker Championship finals took place last weekend, and there was extensive coverage of it on both BBC 2 and Eurosport. I noticed that Steve Davis, former multiple snooker world champion was one of the commentators. Whilst he apparently lives in Brentwood in Essex nowadays, he lived for many years in Danson Road, opposite Danson Park in one of the big white Art Deco mansions. I can recall that at the height of his fame in the 1980’s he could often be seen on a Sunday morning outside of his home, washing and polishing his numerous and rather flashy 1950’s American cars. He had definitely moved up in the world, even if he'd only moved a couple of miles from where he was born and brought up, in Plumstead. I have heard tales (which I have been unable to verify the accuracy) that Steve Davis used to practice relatively anonymously at the Erith Snooker Centre in Pier Road. If anyone has any information about what does sound to me suspiciously like a bit of an urban myth, can they drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Veteran readers may recall that I first talked about the forthcoming Paramount Theme Park back in October 2012. Now the local press seem to finally be picking up on what quite possibly will be the biggest story to hit the region in a couple of decades. The Paramount Theme Park will, if planning permission is granted, be built on the site of the derelict quarry site at Swanscombe, which has got to be excellent news for the entire region, if not the country as a whole. The proposed site features Europe’s largest indoor water park, theatres, hotels, restaurants and all manner of themed rides, all in a site spread over approximately 110 acres in the core resort, with another 600 acres surrounding; allowing for typical British weather, over seventy percent of the attractions will be under cover. The bill (at least now, but it is bound to escalate) is estimated to be in the region of £2 billion, and the park will employ 27,000 people, many of them from the local area. If this plan gets the green light next week (and I seriously doubt it won’t) it will be a massive boost for the economy for the whole of North Kent and South East London. Much of this story is detailed on the News Shopper website here. What amazes me (quite apart from my usual misgivings about the quality of talkbacks and lack of moderation on their website) is the naysayers who are already moaning about the increase in traffic and likely disruption that the construction work will undoubtedly cause. These small minded people seem to completely miss the fact that the park will be a complete economic game changer for an area that will encompass a vast swathe of the South East of England. Once the park is built and running there will be all sorts of permanent jobs needed to keep the place ticking over – electricians, security, engineers, cleaners, administrators – the list is as long as your imagination. The concept is to produce an attraction so large and absorbing that it will take a visitor around three days to see everything. It seems that the planners have been very clever in their thinking; they realise that much of the new economic growth is coming from China and the Far East. They realise that tourists coming a long distance will think “we can go to Disneyland Paris and Paramount London in a one – week holiday”. The planners  chose Northfleet, as the area has excellent road and rail connections, is only forty minutes or so by rail from the coast, and is on the rail route to London. It also helps that the land in and around Northfleet is dirt cheap brown field stuff that would be excellent for a change of use as a theme park. It is also apparent that Paramount are very keen to capitalise on the franchises that they own; as well as American shows such as  Star Trek and Mission Impossible, they also have licenced very typically British franchises such as Sherlock, The Italian Job, Spooks, Dr Who, Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep from the likes of Ardman Animations and the BBC. I note that the Top Gear franchise is not mentioned anywhere – as it has probably been excised from the planning documentation following the recent controversy. The feeling I get from reading the documentation is that Paramount want to present a very British feeling amusement park experience – they are not trying to emulate Disney, rather to make something with a unique and British identity. I would imagine the success of the Harry Potter Experience may well have stimulated this approach, though the Potter park will be miniscule in comparison with the Paramount London site. The Paramount planners conservatively estimate that the park would attract around ten million visitors in the first year, and around fifteen million a year by the fifth, when there are more rides on offer. By way of comparison, Thorpe Park pulls in about two and a half million visitors a year.  On top of the money visitors will bring into the region, there are the aforementioned new jobs that will result both directly and indirectly from the park. It is estimated the beneficial financial impact of the park will stretch from Greenwich to Dover, with thousands of permanent jobs being created both in the park itself, and in industries that service both the park, and the park workers themselves. I think in inconceivable that it will get denied planning permission – what do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The Woolwich Ferry seems to be experiencing regular mechanical failures at present - this week all three vessels have been out of action for much of the time; In many ways this is not unexpected. The three vessels that make up the Woolwich Ferry fleet were all built in a shipyard in Dundee in 1963, and having been in almost continuously in service for over fifty years. They must be very close to wearing out by now, however carefully they are maintained. The ferry provides a vital transport link across the River Thames – it is less important for pedestrians nowadays, since the Docklands Light Railway extension to Woolwich Arsenal opened back in 2009, but for vehicles and especially oversized freight vehicles that cannot get through the Rotherhithe or Blackwall tunnels it is vital, unless they wish a detour via central London (with the associated congestion charge) or out to Dartford and the crossing there, with the toll.  The ferry service provides one of the few available crossings of the River Thames east of London. Although there are seventeen river crossings in the twenty miles west of Tower Bridge, there are only three river crossings  the same distance east. As long as there is a demand for a vehicle ferry it is unlikely to be discontinued, and it would require changing an 1885 Act of Parliament to do so. The spectre of the two proposed new tunnels under the Thames at Gallions Reach and Lower Belvedere loom large over the Woolwich Ferry. Whilst nothing concrete has yet been agreed in respect of new river crossings, the fact remains there is a massive imbalance in the number of crossings between the East and West sides of the city.  The need for additional cross – Thames transport links is nothing new; the issue has been at the forefront of both politicians and civil engineers since Roman times. The first tunnel to be built under the River Thames was actually the first tunnel to be built under a river anywhere. Back in 1843, a 396 metre long tunnel at Rotherhithe was constructed by Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the first to have been successfully built underneath a navigable river. It was the first tunnel to utilise the innovative tunnelling shield technique invented by Marc and Isambard that is still used to build tunnels today, although now huge tunnel boring machines do the hard work instead of hundreds of men. The tunnel was a marvel of engineering, and made underground transportation around the world a possibility, all because of the tunnel shielding method invented by Marc Isambard Brunel. Before his innovation, tunnels had been attempted twice before beneath the Thames, but had failed because of the soft clay, quicksand and flooding that collapsed the efforts, leading to loss of life, and bankruptcy for the tunnelling companies. The tunnelling shield was a sort of cage structure that was pushed to the front of the tunnel. In the original design, men in the cages would dig forward a little, while those behind were shoring up the tunnel by building its walls. The design was later improved by engineers working for the railway companies building the London Underground and still forms the basic idea behind modern tunnel boring machines. Despite the vast improvement in methodology, digging the Thames Tunnel was still a dangerous job; one in which Isambard himself, working as an engineer for his father, nearly died. He was the only survivor of the second major flood of the tunnel in 1828, when six men died. Half-drowned, he was sent to Bristol to convalesce and here he designed his first individual project, the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge. Back then, labourers would spent two hours at a time digging, often while also being gassed and showered with excrement (the Victorian Thames was an open sewer, and vastly more polluted than nowadays). As it was constructed, the tunnel was constantly waterlogged, leading to a build-up of effluent and methane gas. The result was that not only would miners pass out from inhaling the noxious gas – even if they didn’t, men who re-surfaced were left senseless after their two-hour shift – but there were also explosions as the gas was set alight by the miners’ candles. All in all it was an extremely hazardous place in which to work. The hard work paid off; once the tunnel was completed, it opened to some fanfare. Originally intended as a means of getting cargo across what was then a hugely trafficked river, the Thames Tunnel ran out of money before it was able to build the extended entrance necessary to get horses and carts underground. Instead, the tunnel was opened for pedestrian use in 1843. It quickly became a major tourist attraction, with two million people a year paying a penny to walk through. It sounds pretty successful, but Londoners were also paying a penny to use any of the other ways to cross the Thames and the tunnel – tolls were charged whichever way you wished to cross the river back then. The Brunel foot tunnel was new and daring, this was seen as pretty risky way – literally walking underneath the River Thames. To try to scare up some more payback for the massive investment, the tunnel opened up some of the very first tourist souvenir shops, selling Thames Tunnel memorabilia and souvenirs like cups and plates – so you could prove you were brave enough not only to walk through the tunnel, but to stop and browse along the way. As time went on, the seedier side of Victorian London started to reckon a dark, underground tunnel might be the perfect place to conduct some nefarious business, and the numbers of respectable tourists declined. Various projects to make more money out of it were tried, including turning it into what must have a been a fantastical underground fairground to attract even more visitors, before it was sold to the East London Railway Company in 1865. A part of the original tunnel is still visible today if you look  down the line from Wapping station towards Rotherhithe. A fascinating piece of historic construction – and worth remembering the next time you drive through the Dartford Tunnel, which along with nearly all modern tunnels around the world, was built using with engineering techniques developed by Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel in Rotherhithe in the early 1860’s.

After all of the press coverage and hoo - ha about the general election last week, I did some digging about on YouTube; I came across this silent footage of the 1965 Erith and Crayford by - election. What is remarkable in this fifty year old footage is although some places have changed, much of the area is remarkably recognisable today. The footage shows James Wellbeloved, who went on to be a long serving Labour, and later Social Democrat MP for the area. He was highly regarded by many local people - including a number who would class themselves as Conservative voters. Give this slice of local history a watch - it is fascinating stuff; and as mentioned, there is no sound on the clip.