The Internet of Things.

The photo above was taken by me during the recent "Our Erith" art exhibition in Christ Church Erith. It shows the choir and altar area of the church, along with two landscape paintings done by local professional artist Patrick Hearne. I have now uploaded the first batch of photos taken at the exhibition onto my Flickr site. You can click here to see the photos.

There has been much press coverage over the last week about the lack of public toilets in the UK nowadays. The London Borough of Bexley does especially poorly in this respect. 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. Four out of five councils have cut spending on public toilets since 2011. Overall expenditure has declined by almost a third in four years, with £21m less spent last year than in 2011, and 43 councils have slashed their budgets by more than seventy percent. 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".

Following the account from Maggot Sandwich reader and occasional contributor Alan Magin last week, where he shared his recollections of his part in the construction of Thamesmead, and a photo of him from back in June 1969 where he was helping install a stressed steel beam onto what was to become East Bridge on Yarnton Way. This week I have been sent an Email from local resident Tom Burnham, also with a historic photo of Thamesmead. Tom writes:- "Incidentally, in 1969 I had a holiday job working for Bexley Council at Sidcup Place, where the Borough Engineer's Dept was located in those days, and was set to constructing a scale model of the Harrow Manor Way flyover at Abbey Wood station.  The model showed the then proposed station entrance directly off the flyover, adjacent to the bus lay-bys) so it's interesting to see that idea now coming into effect, 47 years later. It had also been expected that there would be a third platform so that trains could terminate there - I think a Victoria-Abbey Wood service was envisaged". Interesting stuff. It just goes to show that pretty much every plan has been thought of in some form before. The Abbey Wood Crossrail terminus design is obviously a lot less groundbreaking than many had considered. 

It seems that the vision of the “Smart Home” is more than a few years away. A survey has recently been carried out by accountancy giant PwC shows that British homeowners are more concerned with practical applications and financial advantages rather than the need to be “tech-tastic” when it comes to smart technology at home. The majority of participants (72 per cent) were uninterested in making their homes smarter, and were not looking to buy smart appliances, renewable energy devices or automated cleaning appliances over the next two to five years. Research shows that they could be convinced if there were financial incentives such as reduced energy bills or free installation of smart energy meters or lights. Less than ten per cent of consumers were not bothered by pressure to keep up with tech-savvy friends and family with smart homes and were unimpressed with the ability to control devices through an app, possibly preferring to stride over and flip the switch themselves. Concerns were expressed over the security of certain smart devices, after the revelations last year that smart TV’s could be used by hackers to spy on individuals, by remotely activating the TV’s camera and speech recognition microphone. People seem to want simplicity and reliability over additional functionality, according to the report. One of the problems very few people have considered when discussing “The Internet of Things” as digitally connected domestic devices are often called is that of durability and lifecycle. Whilst, for example, a central heating system may last for twenty or so years (with a boiler swap – out halfway through), a smart phone with an associated app to remotely control the heating system has an average life of not much more than a couple of years. There is no guarantee that the app will continue to be supported on later version of the phone or tablets’ operating system, or that the app itself will still be available. As some of you may know, my “day job” is as a technology analyst in a multinational consulting company. I did some research a little while back into the possibility of replacing some very expensive, proprietary interactive touch screen screens outside of office meeting rooms which showed who was using the rooms, and who would be in there next with much cheaper Android tablets fixed to the outside of the meeting room. The Android tablet hardware worked out at less than one third of the cost of a proprietary screens, but the problem was that the company that provided the meeting room screen software could not guarantee that their code would carry on working for at least five years, and after multiple Android updates. The project ended up dead in the water because of this. I think that many similar situations may well arise in domestic environments, where a device such as a heating or lighting system with a relatively long lifecycle is to be controlled by a tablet or mobile phone with a far shorter lifecycle, and with software with a shorter lifecycle still. I feel that much of the “internet of things” is actually a solution looking for a problem. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

You may recall that a while ago, back in December I featured a story which debunked the myth that the Homeleigh Care Home in Avenue Road, Erith was to be converted into a centre for fifty Syrian refugee families. The malicious hoax story had been created and spread via social media by extreme right wing hate group, the English Defence League. "Bexley is Bonkers" author Malcolm Knight had also investigated the story, and came to the same conclusion as I. In fact, the former care home has been converted into a refuge for homeless people, including women seeking shelter from domestic violence. i am not going to debate the bones of the story, as to whether the building is actually fit for purpose - others are already doing that, and I see no benefit in duplicating that discussion. What does concern me is that several of the residents of the former care home are photographed and named in the News Shopper piece. The location of Homeleigh House is very well known both locally and beyond. It strikes me as irresponsible for the News Shopper to run the story in the form that it has. Any disgruntled former partner could easily trace the women from the information published in the story - the possibilities are potentially dreadful. Bear in mind that it is only a few months since the appalling murder of Sian Blake and her two children in Pembroke Road, Erith. I would have expected the News Shopper to have been more responsible under the circumstances. 

Did you know that the words “Internet” and “Web” are no longer considered to be proper nouns? As of last week the bible of English speaking journalists, the Associated Press Stylebook , which offers a comprehensive guide to the usage of words, style, spelling and punctuation. "The argument for lowercasing Internet is that is has become wholly generic, like electricity and the telephone. It never was trademarked and is not based on any proper noun," writes Tom Kent, Associated Press Standards Editor, in an interview with technology news website, Slashdot:-  "The best reason for capitalising it in the past may have been that the term was new. At one point, we understand, 'Phonograph' was capitalised." The two names will join the likes of website (formerly Web site) and email (formerly e-mail). Thankfully, for capital letter enthusiasts, there's one prominent holdout: PDF, short for Portable Document Format, will remain capitalised. I don’t make the rules, I just report them.

I took the photo above recently; it shows an empty mini canister of Nitrous Oxide gas (commonly known as "laughing gas"). The canister was dumped on the road by the pedestrian crossing on Manor Road, Erith. "Legal Highs" are no longer legal;  Synthetic drugs such as "Spice" and substances such as Nitrous Oxide are now illegal to sell. The Psychoactive Substances Act  2016 came into force on the 6th April 2016. The Act will make it an offence to produce, supply or offer to supply any psychoactive substance if the substance is likely to be used for its psychoactive effects and regardless of its potential for harm. The only exemption from the Act are those substances already controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine and medicinal products. The main intention of the Act is to shut down shops and websites that currently trade in ‘legal highs’. Put simply any substance will be illegal to produce or supply if it is likely to be used to get high. Possession of a psychoactive substance will not be an offence, except in a ‘custodial institution’ (prison, young offender centre, removal centre etc.). Possession with intent to supply, importing or exporting a psychoactive substance are now all offences. I have never understood the attraction of such substances, but after undertaking some online research, I came across the respected academic journal "Addiction". In an article aimed at UK lawmakers, The opening statement, by Prof Peter Reuter and Bryce Pardo of the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, outlines three problems with the Psychoactive Substances Act's total ban of new psychoactive substances (NPS): 1. The Act's definition of psychoactivity is too broad: it applies to substances of potential and known minimal to moderate harm. 2. The Act does not provide a way to establish psychoactivity. On this topic, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has warned that "There is currently no way to define psychoactivity through a biochemical test, therefore there is no guarantee of proving psychoactivity in a court of law." 3. The Act's penalties for violations of a total ban are not proportional to the harm of the substance involved. Under the Act, judges cannot impose a common sense approach in sentencing since they will have little if any evidence on the harms of the specific drug involved in the case. On the other hand, Reuter and Pardo point out that total prohibition of NPS has two major potential advantages: 1. The Act will likely reduce the number of different NPS introduced in a given period. 2. The Act should reduce the cost of managing the NPS problem by eliminating the need to study and classify each newly emerging NPS. Professor Reuter says: "Given the prominence of the United Kingdom in drug policy affairs internationally, the choice made by the UK is likely to reverberate throughout the world. The Expert Panel that developed the Psychoactive Substances Bill identified several alternative approaches but did not have sufficient time to study them fully. So little is known about the subsequent Act's feasibility and consequences that it would have been better to delay until more effort was made to assess all the alternatives." Thought provoking stuff, indeed.  Do you have an opinion on the new act? Leave a comment below, or send me an Email to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The following announcement was made this week by Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association:- "Two youths have been arrested and charged in relation to 28 offences over the theft of motorbikes across Plumstead, Erith, Abbey Wood and Dartford. One aged 19, and officers from Metropolitan Police arrested the other 18, who are both from Erith, on Wednesday March 16th. The 19 year old is charged with 12 offences - four counts of theft of motorbikes, one count of burglary, one count of attempted burglary, two counts of driving without a licence, two counts of driving without insurance, and two counts of riding a bike without protective headgear. The 18 year old is charged with 16 offences - five counts of theft of a motorbike, one count of burglary, one count of attempted burglary, two counts of driving without a licence, two counts of driving without insurance, two counts of riding a bike without protective headgear and three counts of breaching a criminal behaviour order. This is merely the tip of an iceberg and where it is hoped our BikeWatch scheme will, in future, help to reduce offences".  Excellent news - illegal bike riding is a major problem in the local area, something I know is a major source of annoyance to the majority of law abiding local bikers. 

As many readers will know, whilst being very interested in science and technology, I do have issues with privacy, security and the way in which seemingly benign and everyday information is mined by large corporations and governments to enable them to profile us in ways that many could not even imagine. One such method was published earlier this week on IT news website The Register, and has just been picked up by the BBC, though they miss a few key points in their coverage. It turns out that popular social media behemoth Facebook is monitoring its users in ways that few could have ever previously considered. Professor Kelli Burns of The University of South Florida, with the help of several television journalists, has verified the fact that Facebook's mobile app grants itself access to your mobile phone's microphone by talking about a holiday she wanted to take. "I'm really interested in going on an African safari. I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps," she said out loud with her phone in hand. According to the report, under a minute later, the first story in her Facebook feed was about a safari. And a car advert soon appeared on her page. Of course, the "evidence" is purely anecdotal, and as soon as the report spread, Burns has walked back her claim, saying that she may have been searching online for the same things she said out loud – in which case Facebook may be reacting to other data it has picked up on her habits. It may also be worth noting that before Professor Burns became an academic, she spent seven years in corporate marketing and the course she teaches is the "principles of public relations." Facebook's app access to a phone's microphone is fact, and, critically, it now appears to be turned on by default, meaning you have to dig into your phone's innards to disable it. This is not the first time Facebook has faced this charge: last year it was also accused of listening to people and selling ads in response. It said at the time that users had to turn the microphone on. But that may have changed subsequently, since most users find their microphones are on as a default for the Facebook app. Facebook says this about its use of the microphone: "We use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching, based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify." It also points out that it doesn't record conversations – although it doesn't need to actually record conversations, of course, to act on them and relay "relevant ads." And last year it claimed that listening was limited only to when you are writing a Facebook update. In response to Burns' report and other similar anecdotes reported online, the company has denied using what you say to place ads or impact your news feed. It said: "Facebook does not use microphone audio to inform advertising or News Feed stories in any way. Businesses are able to serve relevant ads based on people's interests and other demographic information, but not through audio collection." Of course, it is possible to parse that official response and question what Facebook's definitions of "inform" and "collection" are. Unlike other better-known voice services such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Echo, Facebook has given itself far greater control over what it can do with your microphone. Its explanations also follow a familiar trend of Facebook responses: vague policies, followed by clear denials, followed by a new set of policies. Apple's Siri assistant can listen to you any time, but there are three significant differences between it and Facebook. First, it waits for its "wake word" – in this case "Hey, Siri." Second, it is turned off by default. You have to activate it and then carry out four voice tests before it turns on. And third, it only works when plugged in (although Apple has reportedly considered turning off the plugged-in restriction). Likewise, Amazon's Echo technology listens for a wake word before carrying out any analysis – in its case, "Alexa." Amazon is also upfront about its collection of audio and allows you to delete recordings plus play around with settings. Facebook, on the other hand, gives itself access to your phone's microphone – seemingly by default despite earlier claims – and is capable of always listening and does not tell you what it does with the information it receives. None of this should comes as a surprise to people: Facebook has repeatedly given itself access to people's personal data and then begged forgiveness afterwards. It continually tweaks its privacy settings, requiring people to keep making changes to prevent the company from sharing the information you provide. And whenever there is an uproar, it announces small changes that require people to actively change their settings again. Most don't. Facebook claims the feature is good for users because it makes it easier and faster for you to post about what's going on around you. If that's a persuasive argument for you, continue on, but for everyone else the answer is to go into your phone's settings and manually prevent your Facebook app from accessing your microphone. How to turn your mobile phone microphone off:- iOS: Settings > Facebook > Settings > Microphone. Android: Settings > Privacy and emergency > App permissions. Find Facebook and turn off mic access. Better still, ditch the phone altogether. I know some people thought that I was mad for not having a mobile phone - perhaps they can see that my concerns were not "tin foil hat paranoia" after all. On top of all this, another story broke with a very similar message. If you are using a mobile device (phone or tablet), then you will almost certainly rely on encryption, whether you actually know about it or not. If you use services such as Gmail, or buy anything from an online retailer, or use online banking where the website URL beings with "HTTPS" - this indicates the connection between your device and the website is encrypted. It has generally been understood that this connection is practically uncrackable in normal situations, however a research paper has now put this into doubt. It has been known for some time that tiny fluctuations in electrical current during encryption routines, or even the sounds made by the system, can be picked up wirelessly to ascertain the encryption keys used – but it usually requires hooking up expensive analysis equipment and takes long periods of time to gather all the bits needed. The NSA's TEMPEST programme was set up to do just that. Now, in a paper published by the Association for Computing Machinery, researchers from Tel Aviv University have detailed how inexpensive kit can be used to harvest 4,096-bit RSA encryption keys in just a few seconds and from distances of around 10 metres (33 feet). This is the same security research group who hid a loop of wire and a USB radio dongle in a piece of pita bread last year and used it to steal encryption keys over the air. In their latest research, the team managed to pick up encryption keys using acoustics. As a computer's processor churns through the encryption calculations, the machine emits a high-frequency "coil whine" from the changing electrical current flowing through its components. By using a parabolic microphone, the team was able to pick up the coil whine from 10 meters (38 feet) away. Trouble is, that mic is a little obvious if you're trying to be sneaky, so they managed to get the same result from a mobile phone's microphone placed 30 centimetres (12 inches) away from the spied-on PC. In both cases it took an hour of listening to get the 4,096-bit RSA key. To combat this security hole, you need tweak your software, the team wrote. It's possible to use acoustic dampening inside a PC against sound attacks, Faraday cages to block electromagnetic emissions, and insulation of the enclosures of laptops. This is not practical in the real world. Instead, the team recommends encryption software writers build in "blinding" routines that insert dummy calculations into cryptographic operations. Software developers and website operators such as Amazon and Google are already working on this. Whilst this type of security exploit is (as far as I am aware) only being deployed in research labs at present, it will not be very long before criminals are using it "in the wild". You have  been warned. 

There have been rumours that the forthcoming Crossrail (Elizabeth Line) could be extended, with an additional station at London City Airport. The Wharf newspaper has reported that London City Airport has questioned why Transport for London is rebuffing its proposals to fund and build a Crossrail station at the Docklands hub. The newly-named Elizabeth Line has stops at Custom House, to the north of Victoria Dock, and at Woolwich and it is carried in tunnels underneath the airport but the airport itself is not on the initial roster of stations. A spokesman for the airport said that the station would generate the £3 million a year operational costs and another station would add just under three minutes to overall journey times according to the airport’s calculations. The airport is currently awaiting the outcome of its planning appeal against the decision to block its £300 million expansion plans with the new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, more receptive to the idea than his predecessor. It will be interesting to see what happens now that we have a new mayor in charge. 

The end video this week is a short film about how The Peabody Trust intends to rebuild and improve Thamesmead. It is not all a one - sided commercial for the redevelopment - there are some very interesting objections made by long - time Thamesmead residents. Give it a watch and see what you think. 

The Osprey.

As I scooped back in March, Bexley College have now signed up to a "merger" with Bromley College, which should put the Erith based Bexley College in a better financial position. This will happen on the 1st of August. Several heads have rolled in the process, most notably that of Bexley College Principal Danny Ridgeway. I predicted he would be sacrificed when I first wrote about the situation back on the 20th March. I copped quite a lot of flak back then for what I wrote. I had been contacted by two Bexley College insiders with the "smoking gun" regarding the effective takeover of the institution by Bromley College, and I then carried out due dilligence by referring the story to someone with impeccable insight who shall remain anonymous. Suffice to say everything I wrote back then is about to, or has already come to pass. It is a sad situation for Bexley College to find itself in, only a scarce two years from opening its shiny new campus on Walnut Tree Road. I just hope that the college can come out of this stronger than before. On Wednesday the Bexley Times published details of the "merger" and announced that Danny Ridgeway would be retiring as Principal of Bexley College. Make of this what you will. Comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

News broke this week that the Peabody Trust is set to spend £1.5 billion in renovating and expanding the housing in and around Thamesmead. They intend extensively refurbishing many of the existing tower blocks, as well as building  a total of twenty five thousand new homes. This will make Thamesmead the same size as the city of Winchester. By the year 2024 more than £20 billion will have been invested in the area. The existing brutalist concrete tower blocks will be maintained, although they will be extensively refurbished inside and out, as well as being re – clad with a modern finish. The existing low level housing will be demolished and replaced with new housing. All of this investment and redevelopment is down to the imminent arrival of Crossrail at Abbey Wood. The travel times into central London will be drastically cut when the service opens – Abbey Wood to Canary Wharf will take eleven minutes, and to Tottenham Court Road will take around twenty minutes. The Peabody Trust owns eighty percent of the land in Thamesmead, and is understood to be lobbying Sadiq Khan, the new Mayor of London to extend the Docklands Light Railway to Thamesmead, and to get a river crossing between Thamesmead and Dagenham. It will be a tough task to rebuild and re – image Thamesmead – whilst it was conceived and constructed as a modern “city in the air”, due to poor design the town soon gained a reputation for crime and anti – social behaviour. The high level walkways were designed to avoid flooding, and the underground car parks which were designed to optimise the use of space actually acted as dark and unseen areas where drug dealing and vandalism could take place. As the town went downhill, it became a dumping ground for problem families from around Greater London, and the situation became a vicious circle.  In an interview with the Times on Monday this week, spokesperson for Peabody, Pauline Ford said “This is a great opportunity to release the potential of this sleeping beauty; the perceptions formed by A Clockwork Orange are just wrong, but we know that we need to spend a great deal of money on good design. This is a place on the cusp of something special”. In the same article, long time Thamesmead resident Douglas Rove said “We were promised the earth to move here; I hate living here now, all of the people have come in are riff – raff”. He also worries that Peabody will “gentrify” Thamesmead by building bistros and wine bars “Plans like that are not for people who live here now are they? They are hoping that the locals will move out, and the yuppies will move in”. The good news is that in addition to the refurbishment of the existing tower blocks, and the construction of new low level housing, there will be a new library, cinema, shops and public squares. The Times reports that between five and eight thousand new local jobs will be created to serve the new development, though the increase in property prices may well prevent locals from affording the new houses and apartments. Peabody admit that they are part funding the development by counting on the new property prices rising, and that they will be selling off some of the development in order to finance the rest. This may become a self – fulfilling prophesy if recent events can be taken into consideration; house prices in Abbey Wood have shot up by thirty five percent in the last year, and Thamesmead will surely follow suit. What do you think? Are you affected by the forthcoming redevelopment work? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Online shopping is hitting a major problem. The keen prices many online retailers can offer when compared to a high street shop may soon be at an end. The reason is straightforward – the huge number of items ordered on the web which are subsequently returned to the vendor – usually at the vendor’s expense. A quarter of handbags and a fifth of shoes are returned as unsuitable. There is a discernible pattern of returns; women are far more likely to return an item bought online compared with men, who seem to only return items when they are actually faulty. A study by Barclaycard found that one in four women admitted to ordering more goods online than they intended to keep. In comparison only one man in ten did the same thing. The practice is driving up the cost of internet shopping as websites struggle the sheer volume of items  coming back. The study also discovered that one in six items of clothing bought online is returned, with twenty percent of women admitting to ordering the same garment in several sizes to see one fits best. Man apparently are far less likely to do this. “The speed and convenience of online shopping, and the speed and convenience of returning has led to the emergence of the serial returner, and women are far more likely to fall into this category. Shoppers are deliberately over purchasing safe in the knowledge that they can choose from the ever growing number of ways to quickly and easily send items back, such as hourly courier services and local drop – off points. With six in ten consumers saying that a website’s returns policy impacts their purchasing decision, online retailers are caught between trying to attract customers and remaining competitive whilst also ensuring that they protect their bottom line”. The study pointed out that online businesses did not always lose out, as more than a quarter of shoppers saying that they had intended to return an unwanted or faulty item bought online, but they had never go round to it.

The photo above was taken by me last Sunday, as I returned home from the “Our Erith” art exhibition held at Christ Church, Erith. I was walking over the railway bridge at Bexley Road when I noticed some workers on the railway line. I surmised that as the line was shut for further engineering work on the Crossrail development between Abbey Wood and Plumstead, it would appear that the local maintenance teams are taking the opportunity of the closed line to carry out some repairs. The photo shows the workers a couple of hundred metres outside of Erith station, on the Slade Green and Dartford bound line. The freight trains one sees on a fairly regular basis travelling on the North Kent line almost exclusively transport sand and gravel to various sites in the region. They load up at Angerstein Wharf, which is located on the banks of the River Thames between Charlton and Greenwich. There is a branch line which connects to the main line just outside of Charlton station on the London bound side. This branch line is believed to be the oldest privately owned standard gauge siding in the world. Angerstein Wharf was built and opened by Russian born Charlton landowner John Angerstein in 1852 in order to get rail access to the to Angerstein Wharf on the River Thames; it also ran deep into the old East Greenwich gas works. Nowadays it is purely used for freight. Many of the ballast and gravel trains one sees passing along the North Kent line divert onto the Angerstein Wharf branch line. Gravel and sand that has been dredged from the sea is collected by the freight trains for use in the construction industry. No passenger trains run on the branch line, with the notable exception of the very rare special trains run by railway enthusiasts, which as far as I can tell, last travelled along the Angerstein Wharf branch line back on the 8th of November 2014. You can see a video of this unusual journey by clicking here. 

One of the problems associated with increased density of housing in any area is the requirement for improved infrastructure to cope – better water, electricity gas and drainage are needed whenever new properties are built. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Once again the residents of Sandcliff Road have got raw sewage flowing down their road. They are intensely annoyed - and with good reason. They are blighted by the incompetence of Thames Water. Ever since 1998 the road has had drainage problems – a giant chemical effluent leak caused several thousand gallons of industrial liquid waste to seep up through the drains and flood a number of houses in the road; I recall at the time that several houses were evacuated for months on end – and one was condemned as unfit for human habitation. Thames Water were subsequently fined £250,000 by the Department of the Environment for the spillage, and their apparent inability to properly organise the subsequent clean up. There have been a number of sewage floods in the road since, to the point where locals re – named the road “Poo Mews”. It strikes me that the local residents are blighted not just by the actual floods, but by the damage to the reputation of the road. I would be surprised if house prices are badly affected by the situation – after all, who would want to live in an area where you had a strong chance of ending up knee deep in other people’s number twos when you ventured outside your front door? From Thames Water’s perspective, it is a PR disaster; I think the main reason that they don’t take a more proactive approach to the problem is that Sandcliff Road is a little travelled side lane, with a predominantly working class population. If a flood of dung was to happen in somewhere rather more affluent (rather than effluent) like Bexley Village, I reckon that the “sharp elbowed middle classes” would have got a rather better reaction from the powers that be. I have walked down Sandcliff Road several times recently, and I can confirm the aroma of multiple bowel movements is hard to ignore; it is just as well I am a non-smoker, as the volume of methane in the air could well be close to a combustible level. I feel sorry for the residents, and hope that the problem can eventually be resolved. The existing drains are not up to the job(by), and really need to be completely replaced. The problem will only get worse when the nearby Erith Quarry site becomes operational.

Commercially viable (rather than just experimental) magnetic tape recording had its seventieth birthday last week - an event which has not been covered in the press.  Thanks to the good fortune of suffering from insomnia, a curious observation by John T. "Jack" Mullin led to the introduction of tape recording and, by extension, the entire home media business. Mullin, a slight and surprisingly humble man, considering his future status in the recording business, graduated from the University of Santa Clara with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1937, then worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in San Francisco until the war started. By 1944, he had attained the rank of major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and was attached to the RAF's radar research labs in Farnborough, England. While working late that spring night, Mullin was happy to find something pleasing playing on the radio — the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on Radio Berlin. But Mullin was mystified: The performance's fidelity was far too fine to be a 16-inch wax disc recording, the prevailing radio recording technology at the time. And since there were no breaks every 15 minutes to change discs, Mullin figured it had to be a live broadcast. But it couldn't be — if it was 2 am in London, it was 3 am in Berlin. Mullin was right — the orchestra wasn’t up late, and it was a recording. Just not the usual kind, which is why Mullin was confused. After the war, Mullin was assigned to the Technical Liaison Division of the Signal Corp in Paris. "Our task, amongst other things, was to discover what the Germans had been working on in communications stuff — radio, radar, wireless, telegraph, teletype," explained Mullin. Mullin ended up in Frankfurt on one such expedition. There he encountered a British officer, who told him a rumour about a new type of recorder at a Radio Frankfurt station in Bad Nauheim. Mullin didn't exactly believe the report — he had encountered dozens of low-fi magnetic recorders all over Germany. He pondered his decision of pursuing the rumour, literally, at a fork in the road. To his right lay Paris, to the left, Radio Frankfurt. Fortuitously for the future of the home media business, Mullin turned left. He found four hi-fi Magnetophons and some 50 reels of red oxide BASF tape. He tinkered with them a bit back in Paris and made a report to the Army. "We now had a number of these lying around. I packed up two of them and sent them home (to San Francisco). Souvenirs of war. "(You could take) almost anything you could find that was not of great value. (And) anything Germany had done was public domain — it was not patentable." He also sent himself the 50 reels of the red-oxide coated tape. When Mullin returned home, he started tinkering to improve the Magnetophons. On May 16, 1946, exactly 70 years ago last week, Mullin stunned attendees at the annual Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) conference in San Francisco by switching between a live jazz combo and a recording, literally asking the question "Is it live or...?" None of the golden ears in the audience could tell. It was the world's first public demonstration of audio tape recording. Bing Crosby hated doing live radio. And he hated recording his shows on wax records because the fidelity sounded terrible to the noted aural perfectionist performer. When Crosby's engineers heard about Mullin and his Magnetophons, they quickly hired him and his machine. In August 1947, Crosby became the first performer to record a radio programme on tape; the show was broadcast on October 1st. Bing Crosby wasn't the only one interested in Mullin's Magnetophons. Up in Redwood City, California, a small company called Ampex was looking for something to replace the radar gear they'd been producing for the government. Ampex hooked up with Mullin and, in April 1948, perfected and started selling the first commercially available audio tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200. Crosby, Mullin, Ampex and American electronics giant RCA all sort of formulated the same follow-up thought at around the same time: If you could record audio on tape, why not video? Crosby and Mullin teamed up. Ampex formed a team that included a high school student named Ray Dolby. And David Sarnoff gave his engineers their marching orders. A highly-public race began to see who could invent the video tape recorder. Ampex had a leg up on its more well-heeled competition. It had a deal with a Chicago research consortium called Armour Research Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology. Working for Armour was none other than wire recording maven Marvin Camras, who solved the most vexing problem facing all the video tape inventor wannabees: Tape speed. Audio recording is accomplished by pulling tape past a stationary recording head. Video, however, is a far fatter signal, which meant tape had to be pulled past the recording heads at ridiculous speeds. A two-foot wide reel of tape could hold, tops, 15 minutes of video — not exactly practical. So instead of spinning the tape, Camras, who got the idea from watching vacuum cleaner brushes, he calculated that he would spin the recording heads instead. Once Ampex got ahold of this key, its engineers shot past Crosby/Mullin and RCA. Even with the spinning head secret, it took five years for Ampex's sometimes part-time six-member team to get things right. On April 14, 1956 — 60 years ago last month — Ampex introduced the desk-sized Mark IV, the first commercial video tape recorder, to a stunned group of TV execs and engineers at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Chicago. To say that this machine changed the world is an obvious understatement. It would take almost another 10 years before Philips reduced audio tape to a cassette and ignited the home audio recording craze, and another nearly 10 years before Sony introduced the Betamax and won a U.S Supreme Court case to allow users to legally record TV shows at home and create the home video business. The U.K had few such concerns - one of the reasons why Britain had the largest number of video recorders per head of population back in the 80's / 90's. Ultimately it was the introduction of Jack Mullin's rebuilt Magnetophons that were the first shots fired in the home media revolution, 70 years ago last week - and nothing got mentioned in the popular press, more is the pity.

If you were around the Northumberland Heath / Erith / Slade Green area on Wednesday afternoon, you might well have seen something extremely unusual flying overhead at around 4.45pm. A rather strange machine called a Bell – Boeing V-22 Osprey. The Osprey is  an American multi-mission, tiltrotor military aircraft with both vertical take - off and landing (VTOL), and short take - off and landing (STOL) capabilities. It is designed to combine the functionality of a conventional helicopter with the long-range, high-speed cruise performance of a turboprop aircraft. I have found out that several of these unusual aircraft are being leased by the Ministry of Defence from the Americans, and British pilots are currently undergoing training from U.S Marine and Army flying instructors here in the U.K. The Ospreys are going to be used to transport special forces troops in the event of a Paris – type terrorist attack in the U.K. The Osprey is almost twice as fast as the SAS’s current fleet of transport helicopters and can carry at least 24 fully equipped personnel. With a top speed of 360 mph it can deploy soldiers from Hereford to London in 30 minutes to bolster the SAS’s anti-terror squad which is permanently based in the capital, and to Manchester in about the same time. The Osprey has machine guns installed in the nose and on the rear ramp. Its range is also much greater than transport helicopters currently in service. It can fly for up to 1,000 miles or eight hours without refuelling, meaning that if terrorists launch strikes across the UK, the same aircraft could fly troops to several locations. I am guessing that the Osprey seen over Erith on Wednesday afternoon was travelling from London down to Chatham, where The Royal Engineers have a large base. The Chinook helicopters currently used for anti – terrorist operations also travel down to Chatham for weekly maintenance and repair sessions. I would expect that we will see more of the Ospreys flying over the local area from now on. At least now you know why.

One of Britain's oldest people died this week - and he lived in Erith. 105 year old Frederick ‘Fred’ Salter died in the Queen Elizabeth hospital on Sunday, May 8. In 2010 he was presented with his Pride of Britain award by Strictly Come Dancing host Bruce Forsyth, with Prince Charles and prime minister David Cameron present at the ceremony. The reason for this was that he took up competitive ballroom dancing at the age of 90, after his family encouraged him to get out of the house more often. Although he suffered a minor stroke in 2010, which caused him to lose the power of speech for about a month, he recovered and returned to the dancefloor. He was also a keen football fan; he was made a patron of Charlton Athletic - he had a great love of the club. Mr Salter is survived by four of his five children and more than 35 great grandchildren.

The end video this week is a piece of local history; it shows Abbey Wood and Thamesmead back in 1968, just as the first phases of Thamesmead opened to residents. I have to say that the amateur footage does make the newly completed apartment towers look very fresh and inviting. Much of the brutalist architecture has now already been demolished, or shortly will be as part of the Peabody funded regeneration, as discussed earlier. If you have any memories of Thamesmead's early days that you would like to share, then drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The haunted pint.

I had an old school friend come and stay at Pewty Acres last weekend; whilst he was here, he was keen to see around Erith, as he had not visited the town in some years - he now lives down in the West Country. I was keen to see what his opinion of the town nowadays was, as we seem to get so many negative opinions on local websites such as the News Shopper (not that the journalists say anything negative, but the comments left on the talkback pages tend to be negative, if not sometimes downright insulting). I am pleased to say that my friend Steve was impressed at how Erith had improved since his last visit in 2008, although he did note the number of still vacant and unlet shop units in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. Overall he could see that the town is improving in many ways - not least since the construction and opening of the new Bexley College campus adjacent to Erith Station and the fish roundabout. He also observed how lucky local residents are to have access to the River Thames via the excellent Riverside Gardens and Erith Pier. I took the photo of the tugs moored on Erith Pier a little while ago - click on the photo to see a larger version; it would be great to see more people going for a walk, or just sitting on one of the park benches and enjoying the view once the weather improves. As I have said before, Erith is almost unique in being the only place in the area where you can see an unobstructed view from horizon to horizon. I call it "the Erith big sky". Whilst Steve was visiting, I organised a small get together of fellow school friends; we met for a quiet drink and a chat at the Royal Standard pub in Nuxley Road, Upper Belvedere. The pub has an excellent conservatory at the back, and the group sat at a table there. One of my friends bought me a pint of Young's bitter (one of my favourite "bog standard" real ales) and placed it on the table. As we chatted, seemingly all on its own, the full pint glass started sliding across the table and dropped to the floor, spilling beer down my trousers and into my shoes. Fortunately the glass itself did not break. A replacement pint was sourced - and the landlady gave it free, saying that the pub was well known to be haunted by a ghost, and that the ghost must take the blame. Since I got a free replacement drink, I was not going to argue. What I did note was that the wooden table top we sat at was recently varnished and had also been polished, possibly earlier that evening, and that the pint glass had a flat and smooth bottom that was wet with a little spilt beer. The actions of the "ghost" was actually physics. The table top was inclined at a very slight angle, and the spilled beer formed a thin, frictionless layer between the underside of the glass and the waxed table. The glass actually aquaplaned over the table and onto the floor. Science works whether you believe in it or not. 

For such a significant part that the local area had in recent history, it is quite surprising how little seems to have been recorded; why I don’t know, but the pivotal role that Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green paid in World War 2 seems to have been largely overlooked by anyone outside of the area. Respected historians like Ken Chamberlain are full of knowledge from that period, but when compared to the level of recognition other outer London boroughs get, we seem to draw the short straw. As I have written in the past, Erith and Crayford were the home of Vickers Limited, who had factories in both locations which made a whole range of armaments and ammunition, principally the Vickers Machine Gun – which was an easier to produce, lighter and cheaper version of the original Maxim Gun, invented by Sir Hiram Maxim. The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The machine gun typically required a six to eight-man team to operate: one fired, one fed the ammunition, the rest helped to carry the weapon, its ammunition and spare parts. It was in service from before the First World War until the 1960s, with air-cooled versions of it on many Allied World War I fighter aircraft. The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons and War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without a failure. "It was this absolute fool proof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one.” The Vickers machine gun was based on the successful Maxim gun of the late 19th century. After purchasing the Maxim company outright in 1896, Vickers took the design of the Maxim gun and improved it, reducing its weight by lightening and simplifying the action and substituting components made with high strength alloys. A muzzle booster was also added. The British Army formally adopted the Vickers gun as its standard machine gun on 26 November 1912, using it alongside their existing Maxims. There were still great shortages when the First World War began, and the British Expeditionary Force was still equipped with Maxims when sent to France in 1914. Vickers was, in fact, threatened with prosecution for war profiteering, due to the exorbitant price it was demanding for each gun. As a result, the price was slashed. As the war progressed, and numbers increased, it became the British Army's primary machine gun, and served on all fronts during the conflict. When the Lewis Gun was adopted as a light machine gun and issued to infantry units, the Vickers guns were redefined as heavy machine guns, withdrawn from infantry units, and grouped in the hands of the new Machine Gun Corps (when heavier 0.5 in/12.7 mm calibre machine guns appeared, the tripod-mounted, rifle-calibre machine guns like the Vickers became medium machine guns). After the First World War, the Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was disbanded and the Vickers returned to infantry units. Before the Second World War, there were plans to replace the Vickers gun.  However, the Vickers remained in service with the British Army until 30 March 1968. Hundreds of thousands of these guns were manufactured in Erith and Crayford over several decades, and during both World Wars, this meant that the towns were legitimate wartime bombing targets. Bombing in World War two was especially bad; a letter sent from a lady in Berkhampstead Road, Upper Belvedere during 1941 has been published on several websites in the past. The letter, written by a lady called Phylis to an unknown relative called Harry reads:- "I was unable to finish off your letter on Saturday owing to a very heavy raid. I cannot stop now to write much but this will let you know we are alright. We had several landmines in Belvedere, one in Albert Road or rather a little turning off there behind the dairy, four persons were killed in the Busy Bee. I expect there are more deaths but we have not heard yet. One on Calendars no one was killed, and one in Lessness Park, Just the other side of Maycocks garden wall. This did considerable amount of damage to all the houses around. That is why I have been unable to write and get the parcel off before this. I have been cleaning up the mess. I'll let you know more details later. I have to write this letter as the typewriter was more or less bombed. I hope to be able to repair it later. We are the only inhabitants left in Berkhampstead Road. The other houses being more damaged than ours. We have been cleaning ceilings up since 5.30am Sunday. This afternoon we are going over to have a cup of tea with Gladys and a bath. A bath is quite out of the question at Tower House as the bath is full up with ceiling. All day yesterday and today we have been hearing noises like bombs. They are pulling down houses. Burndepts is burnt right down. Belvedere Station is to be pulled down. Dr Barr had a fire in his place. Dad & I have been getting some of the stones off the lawn. Dad had only just cut and rolled the lawn on Saturday. The cars are alright although there is a nasty dent in the back of the roof of ours. The garage looks a mess. 14 ceilings are down, all windows out and all doors from the back of the house. Several inside doors are off and just splintered to nothing. Fortunately I had packed all the china and we had packed almost all the ornaments too. The silver and pewter I have packed away too and your lady. We didn't know where to start cleaning up, but are gradually getting down to it.  I'll write again soon as I can. We are quite alright and there is no need to worry. We sleep in the cellar and have our meals in the kitchen. We are hoping they will come and do the roof soon. Tower House stood up to it very well on Saturday night. Dad sends his love and says we are still holding the Fort (what's left of it). I must close here as I have lots to do before we go out this afternoon. I hope you are quite alright".

Following my recent article explaining why the government announcement that there were "no safe levels" of alcohol drinking was completely misleading and incorrect, another very extremely reputable organisation have come to refute this statement, which was made mainly at the behest of prohibitionists and anti-alcohol campaigners. The heads of Britain’s statistics society have written to the Health Secretary to point out that the government’s alcohol guidelines don’t accurately reflect the numbers. Two weeks ago the British civil servant at the Department of Health responsible for issuing medical advice (who rejoices in the corporate-inspired title of “Chief Medical Officer”), Dame Sally Davies, declared that there was “no safe level” of alcohol drinking. This followed a report produced for her by an “expert group” which contradicts evidence that teetotallers are at higher risk than moderate drinkers, and drinking after middle age correlates with a substantially lower level of risk of heart disease and strokes. Drinkers live longer. Professors Peter Diggle and Sir David Spiegelhalter – the current and next presidents of the Royal Statistical Society – say the report was unbalanced (a nice way of not saying “biased”) and that the bureaucrat’s claims don’t reflect the evidence available to the government’s working group on safe alcohol levels. The report recommend an upper limit of 14 units per week for both adult men and women, and then included the much-derided “no safe limits” observation.  In their letter to Health Minister Jeremy Hunt, the two statistics professors argue that the derision which greeted Hawkins report will make more pressing public health campaigns less credible. Once the public has ignored Hawkins crying wolf over alcohol they may be inclined to ignore the others, too. They add that Hawkins’ group contradicts the principle that the public deserves an “informed choice”. Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at Cambridge University, had already commented on the relative “dangers” of alcohol. “An hour of TV watching a day, or a bacon sandwich a couple of times a week, is more dangerous to your long-term health,” he noted.

BARC (Bexley Against Road Crossings) have been  extensively featured in the News Shopper this week; regular Maggot Sandwich readers will know that I have featured the group on a couple of occasions in the past. Unlike BARC, I have a fairly neutral view on the proposed new river crossings over or under the River Thames. I can see positive arguments on both sides of the issue. A lively debate on the subject of transport and congestion has been under way on the News Shopper talkback page here. I think both sides miss several important observations. Firstly, the argument that elderly people don’t always have access to the web, and may thus be left out of any representations regarding the choice of river crossing is to my mind spurious. Those aged 70+ now may sadly well not be around in 2025 when development of whatever solution is selected, and if they are, many very elderly people don’t travel much – though their opinions and feedback should most definitely be taken into account. Secondly, the oft – quoted issue of air pollution is also worth examining. By the time any cross river solution is put in place, the numbers of zero emission vehicles in public use will have bloomed – the hydrocarbon internal combustion engine is in its last decade in my opinion. By the time any crossing is open and in use, a majority of cars and lorries will run on batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. Using present day arguments for future developments seems to me like fighting last decade’s war. I think a rational look at the whole Cross Thames  transport system needs to be undertaken – the trouble is, the area is full of people with vested interests and their own agendas, which turns the whole thing into an adversarial contest, which in my opinion does nobody any good. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.



The Barge Pole pub in Coraline Walk in Thamesmead has had its alcohol licence suspended by Bexley Magistrates this week; I understand that the pub was the location of a large drunken fight in the early hours of the 1st January during some News Year celebrations that got well out of hand.  To anyone that knows the pub, it is a revelation that it has taken so long to do something about the place, which on the one occasion many years ago that I took my life in my hands and ventured inside, resembled the Cantina in Mos Eisley – “you will not find a greater hive of scum and villainy”. It really is a dump, full of the kind of people you would cross the road to avoid; one of the main qualifications for entry seems to be the sporting of facial tattoos of varying levels of repulsiveness. The only vaguely positive contribution to culture the Barge Pole has ever made was back in 2009, when it was used as the location for the filming of the Kaiser Chiefs video for "Never miss a beat". I am a strong supporter of the preservation of local pubs, but I most definitely make an exception in the case of the aptly named Barge Pole, which in my opinion ought to be nuked from space – it is the only way to be sure. 

Erith has been in the national news twice again this week; first because of the news that Arthur Simpson – Kent, the suspected murderer of former EastEnders actress Sian Blake and her two sons aged eight and four and is alleged to have buried them in the garden of 54 Pembroke Road, Erith, is due back in the UK to face charges and trial. Normally I don’t mention stories that have a national coverage, as there is little I can add to the “professional” reporters who cover the news; in this instance the extremely high profile nature of this case, and the international press interest the murders have attracted. If this horrible case was not enough, the news this week that an Erith resident has been jailed for nineteen years and six months for a string of horrendous paedophile offences. Trevor Monk, 47, from Erith, travelled to the Far East with the sole purpose of abusing children and kept thousands of indecent pictures and videos on his computer, including mementos from his trip. Sentencing him for a total of 18 offences at the Old Bailey, Judge Anuja Dhir QC told Monk that the consequences of child abuse of this kind “wrecks lives”. She said: “I have no doubt from the material I have seen today you had a perverted fascination with young females and that is what led you to behave in this abhorrent manner. Your actions were depraved and revolting. It is astonishing that anyone would want to film such abuse, but you did. I have no doubt you did so that you could watch it again for your own sexual gratification.” An examination of computers, external hard drives and memory cards found at Monk’s home revealed tens of thousands of indecent images and videos of children, and evidence that he had himself molested young girls in the Philippines. Just one of the computers contained evidence of more than 43,000 indecent images of children. Thankfully the judge and jury saw fit to put the criminal away for a decent length of time; even if he serves only half of his time inside, he will be away for around ten years, and the life of a sex offender in prison is never an easy one. I am led to believe the derogatory term Nonce comes from the acronym “Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise”. At least he is safely locked up for a considerable length of time.  What is also of concern is that two nationally publicised high profile criminals are being associated with Erith, just as the town is starting to improve its image. Locals know of all the good things and progress that has been made over the last decade or so, but outsiders do tend to hold onto outdated views about the town and the people who live there (you only have to look at wording of some of the talkbacks on the News Shopper website – okay, most of the comments are made by trolls that are trying to initiate an argument, but nevertheless if you repeat a lie often enough, some people will take it as fact – an observation originally made by Heinrich Himmler). 

The letter above has been sent to many Erith, Slade Green and Crayford residents - click on the image for a larger view. Suffice to say the traffic into and around Erith is going to be severely affected over the period of the roadworks. The town suffers greatly from traffic congestion at the best of times; it will be interesting to see if the changes to the road and roundabout layout will improve things. Many locals suspect not. More on this story in the future. If you have an insight into this issue, please contact me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

It has been known for over a year that the Peabody Trust, which controls large parts of Thamesmead, has had plans drawn up to try and move the town upmarket. Since the mid-seventies Thamesmead has had an unfortunate image problem as being a giant sink estate full of problem families, anti-social behaviour and crime. Whilst there are definitely problems of this nature in the town, a vast majority of residents are peaceful and law abiding, but the image has stuck for decades. I recall back in 1989, as Belmarsh Prison was being built, a common joke was “why bother building Belmarsh – just build a great big wall around Thamesmead!” Now Peabody are working to move the outdated image of Thamesmead upmarket. They have promised to build 1,300 new dwellings, and create a "temporary high street" at Harrow Manor Way with shops, food and drink outlets. There will also be affordable workspaces and facilities for local businesses, artists and community groups – following a £1m regeneration fund from the Mayor of London. Peabody's plans are being developed with partners including Bexley Council and the Thames Innovation Centre. In an interview with the News Shopper, Peabody Chief Executive Stephen Howlett said: "We want to create a thriving district close to the station which will provide commercial, social and leisure opportunities for residents in Abbey Wood and South Thamesmead. We hope the new mobile high street will provide a platform for local people, harnessing their talent and innovation. These are exciting times for everyone associated with Thamesmead which is fast becoming an even greater place to live, work and visit." This all sounds good; as long as a substantial part of the new development is truly affordable, and not just aimed at property banking investors in the Far East, as was notoriously the case with the tower block recently constructed close to Abbey Wood station which made the national news when it was advertised as having “no social housing” as a bonus attraction to wealthy investors. I feel that this story will develop over the coming months. 

This week guest writer and local resident Alec Tapper has much to say on the proposed (and now approved) housing development on the site of the former Erith Riverside Swimming Baths site. An artist's impression of the development is shown above. Here is his piece:- "Whilst it is very good news to learn that the Mayor of London's London regeneration Fund has allocated just under £2m which is to be matched by the council to provide £3.9m of investment in Erith. It is understood that this finance will be for major improvements to key areas of the town particularly between the Town Hall and the Post Office. It is also designed to re-energise the area an improve training and job opportunities for local residence. We also understand complementary bids have been made for two further funds managed by the Mayor of London  and we will learn of these in the next few weeks. For a number of residents this will be promising news but there are concerns with many residents over the density of developments being proposed for many sites both large and small in Central Erith. A major development such as that on the former Riverside Swimming Pool Site has plans to build some 81 flats and 10 to12 houses to the rear. This development does not recognise that this is a preservation area alongside the River Thames. This site along with a number of other smaller sites are earmarked for even more dense developments. Erith already has more flats than any other ward in the borough and it seems that this pressurized development has the potential to create new problems for Erith in the future. Open spaces are critical to the wellbeing of communities. This proposal brings its frontage hard up against the pavement of the Erith High street up to the Running Horses, which lays back from this harsh development line. This tight development policy with inadequate parking spaces, play areas for children and inadequate work opportunities will militate against harmonious living and reduce any sense of wellbeing for those living in such a packed and intensive manner. The tenants these kind of developments will attract are most unlikely to be from professional, commercial and entrepreneurial background. This in turn will be reflected in a failure to grow Erith's economy. Numerous shops, restaurants and businesses will continue to fail to be convinced by the uptake of people in this density developments who are likely to be open to semi-skilled or unskilled work. Erith is one of the most deprived areas in Bexley and the fear is, it will continue in the same vein. Unfortunately, it seems that Bexley adopts very different policies for developments across the Borough whilst the policy for Erith, North end and Thamesmead East are targeted for density infilling, wards like Longlands, Blackfen and Lamorbey, Blendon and Penhill and Cray meadows with reducing populations are preserved from any innovation for housing developments. Similar examples like Surbiton, Thames Ditton, and Woking in Surrey do effectively increase housing within existing developments. Indeed there are some long term residents that indicate consideration should be given to the wards earmarked from dense developments to be separated entirely and form a  separate District Council.  Clearly a case of sauce for the Goose isn't sauce for the Gander". Some very thought provoking observations. If you have another view, please feel free to drop me a line with an article of your own. 

If you look back at the now very extensive archive of old Maggot Sandwich updates, and visit some of the entries over the last nine and a half years that I have been running the blog (under the "About Me" panel at the top right of the screen) you will see a box marked "Blog Archive" - if you click on the dropdown button, you can see a list of the well over five hundred weekly entries that I have made - select and click on any of these to see old, historical content). You will notice on some entries that photos just show placeholders, or embedded YouTube videos no longer play. This is caused by a phenomenon called "Link Rot". There are lots of reasons for link rot: websites are restructured or shifted to a new content management system and break all the previous URLs; articles get moved behind a paywall; people delete social media accounts or change their privacy settings; or links contain information that goes out of date, or YouTube videos are taken down due to copyright violations. A piece of software called "Amber" has been created to stop this from happening. Amber has been designed by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and it provides what it calls a "persistent route" to information on the internet by automatically taking and retaining a snapshot of every page on a website and storing it on the same website's server. If for whatever reason a URL goes dead, rather than returning a 404 error page, the tool should provide visitors with the relevant snapshot. The snapshots are stored on the same server as the website but can be configured to save them on third-party systems or in archival systems. All very clever stuff, but no good to me at present, as at the time of writing, the platform which hosts the Maggot Sandwich does not support Amber - maybe in time; it would be a very powerful tool to have access to.

The end video this week explores the inconsistencies and loopholes in London's Oyster travel card system. Personally I find that the old fashioned monthly travel card works very well for me. See what you think, and feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The old college comes down.

Bexley is Bonkers author Malcolm Knight is doing a first class job of documenting the construction works currently under way between Abbey Wood and Plumstead stations as preparations continue for the launch of Crossrail in 2018. The station will allow very fast rail access to large swathes of greater London and the outer boroughs that have until now been difficult to reach by public transport. It will also make travel into business areas such as Canary Wharf much speedier – the new Crossrail station at Canary Wharf is utterly huge – I work in an office building right next door, and have watched it go up over the last four years. When it opens, it will have six storeys of shops, a cinema, numerous restaurants, bars, a landscaped park and a roof gardens located over the rail tracks. The aim is to increase the working population to two hundred thousand people over the next fifteen years. Abbey Wood and Woolwich are cited as being two of the areas which will most benefit from the huge increase in cross – London travel capacity that will result from the huge capital project. The work being undertaken at Abbey Wood will be the largest addition to the local train network since the North Kent rail line originally opened back in 1849. As I have previously mentioned, the whole area between Woolwich and Erith / Slade Green is likely to experience a strong increase in house prices, as commuting times to both Central and West London will be cut considerably. It will be instructive to observe what actually happens; for example, Woolwich has been labelled as an “up and coming” area for over a decade, with nothing much actually happening. I think that when the Woolwich Crossrail station opens in 2018, things will finally get moving. When the realisation that Woolwich based commuters could be in Canary Wharf in eight minutes, the City in fourteen, Bond Street in twenty two minutes, and door to door at Heathrow in fifty minutes, I think new residents will flock into the town. I just hope that the whole of Woolwich benefits, and not just those fortunate enough to be able to afford  a place in the Royal Arsenal Riverside development, which to my mind is too isolated from the town proper – it is a high end gated development that to my mind is too introspective. Matters may improve if moves to migrate Woolwich Arsenal station from Travel Zone Four to Zone Three actually come to pass (the word is – “don’t hold your breath”). Whilst modern flats have been built over the giant Tesco superstore (which I understand is safe from the Tesco cutbacks I featured last week), most of the relatively affordable accommodation in Woolwich comes in the form of former council properties. It does beg the question, if former council / housing association housing stock is being sold off, where can people find somewhere to affordably rent? The usual answer is that people in that position end up moving further outwards and into the suburbs – into places like Abbey Wood and Thamesmead, where the Peabody Trust is investing £200 million to create what they call a new “garden suburb” that will include apartments along Thamesmead’s three miles of River Thames waterfront, and be connected to the new Crossrail terminus at Abbey Wood. As I have previously written, Erith is also in the middle of the largest boom in house building for at least a generation; we have Erith Park (a mix of social and commercial flats and houses on what used to be the old Larner Road estate), The Erith Quarry development (high end housing, a new Primary School and environmental landscaping), along with further housing on the site of the old Bexley College campus in Tower Road (more on this shortly). There are also housing developments in Slade Green – the upmarket Ratio housing scheme in Slade Green Road, along with the Howbury Centre rebuild project. The latest in this long and extensive list of newly built housing is one that many locals have been worried about, due to the potential implications to Erith Riverside Gardens. London and Quadrant housing association are holding a public exhibition on Wednesday the 11^th February from 4pm until 7pm  in the new Bexley College building in Walnut Tree Road. L and Q propose building a total of seventy one homes for people on a range of incomes on the former site of Erith Riverside Baths, which has been empty since the old swimming pool building was demolished due to vandalism after the replacement pool was opened at Erith Leisure Centre.  The main concern that many locals have is that any development of the old Riverside Swimming Baths site has will involve building on part or possibly even all of the Riverside Gardens – an area that is sacrosanct to Erith residents, but not seemingly to some Bexley Councillors. It will be instructive to see what plans London and Quadrant have for the prime riverside location. I will be attending the exhibition at around 5.15pm – as soon as I can get to the college after work; fortunately though I work in Docklands for much of the time, I start very early, and can normally get away at or around 4pm.

Bexley Brewery are going from strength to strength; they are now wholesaling draught real ale to a large number of pubs and clubs, not just in the local area, but as far as outlets in Margate and Dover. You can see a map, along with a list of Bexley Beer retailers by clicking here. They have also diversified their range of quality real ales to include a Golden Ale and a Porter, as well as their existing Red House Bitter and BOB (Bexley's Own Beer - my own favourite). They are holding a publicity session and "meet the brewers" at the Penny Farthing micro pub in Crayford next Wednesday evening. I have yet to visit the Penny Farthing, and unfortunately have to be elsewhere on Wednesday evening (all will hopefully become clear in the update next week). I would strongly encourage you to pop along to the local micro pub if you can; not only are such independent hostelries the best way to sample quality real ale and cider, but with Bexley Brewery staff on hand to answer questions, it is bound to be an excellent evening. 

The News Shopper reported earlier this week that a rather unsavoury lady called Sandra Okoh was sentenced to five years in prison for running an Erith based employment agency “Blue Feathers Guarding” which employed security guards and paid them only around £3 per hour, often on 24 hour shifts, whilst still charging their clients the full going rate. The employees did not complain or seek employment with other agencies as many if not all of them were in the UK illegally, and liable for deportation if they were found out. Okoh and two of her fellow company directors (who were prosecuted and jailed last year, as I reported at the time) used this fact to treat their employees as virtual slaves. Employees could not complain, as doing so could see themselves prosecuted and subsequently deported. It is thought that Blue Feathers Guarding actually turned away legitimate applicants for guarding vacancies on the grounds that they were not able to exploit such workers as they could with the illegal migrants. This sorry situation was only discovered when staff at the Cross Street Law Centre were alerted by a former Blue Feathers employee who acted as a whistle blower on conditions of anonymity. The employment agency was subsequently raided by The Home Office’s South London Criminal Investigations team, supported by the Security Industry Authority, raided the company's Viridian Way offices in October 2012.  When they searched the premises they discovered a large quantity of forged identification documents relating to staff who they had illegally employed. The game was up, and the people behind the company were suitably punished. All this is well and good, but unfortunately the News Shopper then dropped the ball – they completely missed the bigger picture. The Cross Street Law Centre was forced to close due to cuts in their funding in March last year – a fact reported on by the News Shopper at the time. This means that future detection of illegal employment practices is considerably reduced now, as there is nowhere in the area that a whistle blower could turn to. Secondly it raises the issue of the number of people that found work, albeit illegally in the past, and what has subsequently happened to them? It strikes me that we have a vibrant underground economy that is passing under the radar of both the benefits agency and the immigration service. Whilst not the most desirable of situations, it occurs that in a pragmatic sense this is not always a bad thing. Local people living illegally still have to eat, heat their houses and travel – all of which means returning money to the local economy. From conversations I have had in the past from people well – placed to know, it is entirely possible that if all the people illegally working in the UK were able to be accurately identified and deported, that large parts of the British economy and infrastructure would crumble. It is an interesting theory, and not something I would wish to see tested in practice. What do you think? Comment below, or Email me directly at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

I recently discovered that South East London and North Kent once suffered from a serious earthquake. On April the 12^th 1884, and powerful earthquake shook an area from Woolwich to as far as Margate. Initially residents thought that one of the armament storage warehouses at Woolwich Royal Arsenal had exploded – as had happened back on Saturday the first of October 1864, when two massive gunpowder stores on the marshes in Lower Belvedere detonated – which was one of the largest non – nuclear explosions in British history. It was understandable therefore that almost twenty years later many who experienced the massive explosion would automatically assume that the earthquake was caused by another accident whilst handling explosives. You can read more about the Belvedere explosion by clicking here. The earthquake was a different beast altogether; the epicentre of the quake was in South Essex, from there the shock waves spread out causing disturbance over an area somewhat in excess of 53,000 square miles. It measured 6.9 on the Richter scale and caused buildings to sway and develop structural cracks, chimneys to collapse, slates to cascade down roofs, and several fires were caused. In North Kent, well away from the epicentre, the effects were still profound. People were understandably terrified – the ground beneath their feet was moving, and great clouds of dust rose into the air. Some people were knocked over, whilst others were sick with fright. Some even wondered if the day of judgement had come, as the motion of the earthquake caused many church bells to ring spontaneously. Eventually the earthquake passed; fortunately there were few serious injuries and no reported deaths. To date the Kent earthquake of 1884 remains one of the most serious geological events to have taken place in England. Let’s hope we are not scheduled for another, as the potential damage both to life and infrastructure would be proportionally worse nowadays – there were few gas mains, almost no electricity cables and certainly no fibre – optic lines for an earthquake to destroy back in 1884 – the same most certainly could not be said of today.

I may use an Apple iMac as my main home computer, but I am most certainly no Apple fan boy – I don't have an iPhone (or any mobile phone whatsoever, for that matter), I don't have an iPad or other such portable device. I like Apple computers because they are very well made, ergonomic and mainly because Apple OS X is based on BSD Unix – a rock solid, industrial strength operating system that has been around since 1977. It predates Windows and Linux (love Linux, not so keen on Windows) and was a wise choice when Apple were looking for an alternative operating system after they realised that their own proprietary Mac OS9 was not cutting the mustard. Many of Apple co – founder Steve Jobs quotes on life the universe and technology are enshrined by Apple fan boys as some kind of gospel; personally I find much of what he said at public meetings to be crass and somewhat self – serving. One thing I most certainly do agree with him, is his stance on the multimedia web browser plug in Flash. Flash has been around for nearly twenty years and it has always been a vector of malicious computer attack, and also the cause of many crashes – back in 2010 Steve Jobs said “Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first-hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash. To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other video streaming companies. Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained. When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads”. Since Jobs made this speech, Google have removed Flash use from YouTube and exclusively use the H.264 codec – which all modern web browsers support natively. Having said all that, Adobe (who now own the Flash brand and technology) persist in publishing new versions of the now outdated media player. Flash has serious security flaws which malicious attackers exploit to do nasty things to your computer, and however regularly Adobe issue patches and updates, the insecure design of the underlying architecture means that hackers soon find a loophole and Flash is once again compromised.  My advice to you is to Uninstall it and see how you get on across the web. If you really need it, go into your browser settings and make it click-to-play. That means Flash files aren't automatically opened on every page, reducing the risk of being owned by a dodgy advert or malware injected .swf file. In Google Chrome, go to Settings, click on the Advanced Settings link, click on Content Settings under Privacy, scroll down to Plugins, select "Click to play" and save. In Safari, open Preferences, go to the Security tab, click on Website settings alongside Internet Plugins, select Adobe Flash, and alongside "When visiting other websites", select "Ask" or "Block". You can whitelist certain sites in the box above. In Firefox, type “about:config” (minus the quotation marks) into the browser address bar and press “enter” and click on the "I'll be careful" button, and search for plugins. click_to_play. If it says "false" in the Value column, double click on it to change it to "true". Then restart Firefox. You now have true control over your web browser, and thus your computer.

The photos above were sent to me by a local photographer who chooses to remain anonymous. The shots show the demolition of the old Bexley College campus in Tower Road. I understand that the demolition has not been straightforward, and it is taking longer than was initially anticipated. The site will be ready for re - use for housing once fully cleared. More on this in a future update.

As regular readers will be already aware, I have been warning of the pernicious nature of bookmakers and their Fixed Odds Betting Terminals – often referred to as the “Crack Cocaine” of gambling, as it is possible for a gambler to lose up to £100 every twenty seconds. Betting shops are limited to five such terminals in each shop location; it is said that the main reason there has been an explosion in the number of betting shops on most high streets is that the betting shop chains open extra shops just so that they can get more Fixed Odds Betting Terminals out there – and until recently, cash strapped local authorities have accepted the extra bookmakers outlets, as they would rather get council tax payments from a working business, than leave an empty shop unit that earns no revenue. Things now do appear to be changing, however. The government recently raised the rate of duty on gaming machines, which has had the knock – on effect of making many bookmakers far less profitable, as the FOBT machines have historically been the most lucrative source of income from betting shops. Traditional gambling on sports events has lost a substantial amount of ground to the electronic machines. The number of betting shops is being slashed on many high streets; Ladbrokes, the second biggest gambling chain in the UK closed ninety of its 2,250 stores in the last year, including the one that used to be located in Erith High Street, which nowadays still stands empty. It expects to close more this year, as does its rival William Hill, which recently cut 420 jobs and closed 109 betting shops. Whilst the loss of jobs is to be regretted, the employment situation is not all bad; in many cases the old betting shop units are being converted into restaurants – this trend has been strongest in central London and the West End, but there are indicators that it may spread to other areas. If we really have weathered the recession, but the betting companies are now laying higher taxes and rates of duty, we may see a real retreat of them from the high street, and hopefully the return of healthier alternative businesses.

The Erith and Belvedere Football Club correspondent Brian Spurrell reports:- "Erith and Belvedere FC are among the last ten teams left standing in a national competition whose final takes place at Wembley!  Their FA Vase fifth round tie at Holbeach United was postponed yesterday, which means they’re still in the hat for the quarter-final draw to be made by the FA tomorrow lunchtime.  The Deres’ Barnehurst neighbours Phoenix Sports were soundly beaten 4-1 at North Shields, so E&B are the south-east’s last presence in the competition. The Deres, currently 2nd in the Southern Counties East league, travelled to Holbeach (8 miles east of Spalding in Lincolnshire) on Friday, staying in a hotel to prepare for the tie.  Many of their supporters were en route to the game when news broke that it had been postponed owing to a partially frozen pitch.  So they’ll try again next Saturday. Holbeach United are 3rd in the United Counties League, and the other postponed tie was between Glossop North End (2nd, North West Counties) and Dunston UTS  from Gateshead (3rd, Northern League).  The six teams already through to the quarter-finals are:
Ascot United (5th, Hellenic League)
Highworth Town near Swindon (8th, Hellenic League)
North Shields (2nd, Northern League)
St Austell (3rd, South West Peninsula)
Shaw Lane Aquaforce from Barnsley (4th, Northern Counties East)
Tadcaster Albion (1st, Northern Counties East)
So tomorrow could either bring us a massive home game or a very long away trip!  The FA website will have the news tomorrow afternoon.  Meanwhile the Deres face Canterbury City in a league game at home (Park View Road, Welling) on Tuesday night".

The news that Ocado are building a large distribution centre just off Bronze Age Way is very encouraging news indeed. Three thousand brand new jobs for an area with a higher than average level of unemployment is excellent news. The location of the new warehouse complex makes good sense – there is plenty of unused land in the area, it is relatively cheap, especially when one considers its relatively close proximity to central London, along with excellent road links to the A2, M20, M25 and the South Circular. Coincidentally Ocado have just published their first quarter showing profits, so hopefully business is picking up for the online retailer. Construction of the new distribution centre is due to begin later this year, and should be fully operational early in 2017. There has been no word yet as to when the company will start recruiting for roles in the local area. Ocado will be joining Tesco, Asda and Lidl, all of whom already have warehouses and distribution centres in the local area – underlining the combination of relatively cheap real estate and excellent communications that the area between Erith and Lower Belvedere offers to the retail and service industries.

I was perhaps a little premature when I announced the formation of a new ten officer Police squad to patrol Thamesmead after the recent spate of drug and gang related violence, there has been yet another shooting last week. Police were called to Erebus Drive in West Thamesmead after gun shots were reported at around 4.30am on the 1^st February. This is one of the upmarket areas of Thamesmead, which is adjacent to the Woolwich Royal Arsenal Development, and not where one would normally expect gang related shootings. A chap called Clive Massi was found with a number of people in a couple of cars – he was suffering from one or more gunshot wounds. Ambulance staff tried to stabilise him and got him to hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries two hours later. The usual talk – backers on the News Shopper website have made assumptions as to what had happened – and I must admit that the circumstances reported make the situation look like it had some kind of gang involvement, but until the Police complete their investigations nobody will know for sure. Whatever the specifics of the event, locals will understandably continue to not feel safe walking the streets.  I am unsure if the new Police team have actually started work yet, but it would seem that they are desperately needed in an area which is getting an unenviable reputation for lawlessness. Until September 2011, I used to spend a great deal of time in the area in and around Erebus Drive. My late Dad’s nursing home was (and is) in Pier Way, which leads in Erebus Drive, and the river frontage with some very nice (and expensive) riverside apartment buildings. Not quite as fancy an address as the Woolwich Royal Arsenal next door, but desirable nonetheless. Whether the residents will feel the need to club together to hire private security to patrol their estate, as already happens in the Arsenal is debatable.

The end video this week is something that you may not have seen before. It features a singer / songwriter who really ought to be a lot better known. He is a blues / rock guitarist of amazing virtuosity call Joe Bonamassa. The music press have dubbed him "the new Eric Clapton" - though personally I think he sounds a little more like David Gilmour. The video shows him playing at the Royal Albert Hall. He's well known to musos and listeners to the DAB radio station Planet Rock, but thus far has not broken through to the mainstream. Incidentally, the somewhat dilapidated Fender Stratocaster that Bonamassa is playing in the video was lent to him by the family of the late Irish blues master Rory Gallagher, who was a large influence on the playing style of Joe Bonamassa. The track "Sloe Gin" is a Bonamassa trademark - listen to the blistering solo at the end. The guy is a master craftsman of the guitar. Comments below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.