Post Office for sale.

The upper photo above shows the building and conversion work being carried out on the White Hart Pub in Erith High Street. The lower picture shows the low rise flats that will shortly be constructed in the former pub's garden behind the main building pictured in the upper photo. The building was left empty and unused after  the last occupants abandoned the property. It had been used as a wine bar / drug den by a couple of unscrupulous businessmen / criminals who illegally ripped out the historic Victorian acid etched glass and salt glazed tile frontage and installed hideous plate glass windows. The wine bar, which was called Potion, attracted all of the worst elements from the local area, and it soon became known as a hive of scum and villainy. The place was not properly run, and there were many incidents of drunken and drug fuelled fights taking place on the premises. Eventually the owners lost their licence, and they were also twice taken to court by Bexley Council over the illegal changes that they had made to the pub building, which is part of the Erith High Street Conservation Area. Needless to say they did not turn up at court, and claimed bankruptcy to save them from paying the extensive fines and restoration fees that the court subsequently imposed. Now the historic frontage has been replaced with a very nice looking and quite accurate replica of the original, and the building is being converted into apartments upstairs and to the rear of the bar area. The work is being funded by The Wellington Pub Company, the largest free of tie pub company in the UK, who specialise in resuscitating and renovating "problem" sites. It will be interesting to see if they do open a pub in the ground floor of the White Hart building, as the only other pub in central Erith is the dreary and under - used Running Horses, a pub / restaurant that was absolutely excellent in the late 80's / early 90's, with an extremely popular carvery in the upper floor of the pub building, but nowadays it is a sad shadow of its former self, which is a great pity. There have been many rumours about the potential future use of the bar area of the White Hart, as it is the only part of the building not covered in the extensive documentation that accompanied the planning application supplied to Bexley Council. Much guesswork and several rumours have abounded - that it was going to be an Indian restaurant, or a Gelato parlour, but thus far nothing concrete has yet been determined. 

Following up last week's story on the criminal moped rider who was hospitalised following a Police action called a "tactical stop", I have it on very good authority that the criminal who was detained has a long criminal record, both as a prolific moped thief, a drug dealer of some local repute, and the person who recently stole a bike from a member of the Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association management team. I get the strong feeling that the youth in question will be made an example of when the case reaches court. More news regarding the illegal motorbike and moped riders that plague the area; A reader who chooses to remain anonymous wrote to me recently, saying:- "Congratulations for highlighting the connection between illegal motorcycles and other crime. I support the police robust stop tactics. Any refusal to stop should be grounds for immediate confiscation of the motorcycle  without any  warning for the future at all. I can think of a few locations where a pursuit is not even necessary. Two bobbies posted with stingers deployed at the destroyed "kissing gates" into and out of Thamesmead former golf club would bottle up the regular motorcycle gang without the need for a helicopter blockade or active stop tactics by the police. Eventually they would be obliged to give themselves up. If you wonder about the relevance to Erith of this location then I invite you to inspect the recently installed barrier gate on the river path beside the Crossness Engines Trust. You will see that the ironwork beside the barrier has been destroyed  by cutting with angle grinders just like the adjacent "kissing gate". The River path is now being invaded by these illegal motorcycles rendering it practically useless for leisure purposes. Probably those same low-lifes  displaced by the recent Police action in Norman Road North beside Cory Environmental that you reported in a recent blog". I know that Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick stated only last week that the teenage thugs undertaking moped based crime need to have longer prison sentences. In an interview with the London Evening Standard, Commissioner Dick said:- "Years of trying to keep young offenders out of jail has resulted in an increasing number who are simply not fearful of how the state will respond to their actions. They don't see imprisonment as particularly likely or a serious threat and it does not in any sense deter them from criminal activity. At what point does the state prioritise its duty to protect the public and ensure that young people could see the criminal justice system as something that will catch up with them?" Commissioner Dick also reported the case of a 16-year-old in London who had 42 offences to his name, but had not served a single day in jail. Last year 26,236 criminals under 18 were reportedly sentenced by UK courts but just 1,598 – around one in 16 – were locked up. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

As I have previously covered, the quality of local journalism is going downhill; this is not the direct fault of the reporters on our main "local" paper - their numbers have been drastically reduced, and the areas they cover have been greatly increased. The News Shopper offices used to be based in Petts Wood, and the reporters were truly local; nowadays the News Shopper's parent company, Newsquest is based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The reporters that cover the London Borough of Bexley also have to cover such geographically diverse areas such as Richmond, Croydon and also South East London / North Kent. Bearing in mind the News Shopper only has s tiny handful of reporters nowadays, and those they do have are sometimes painfully unfamiliar with the area on which they are reporting; it is not surprising that they get things wrong from time to time, as has happened in the last week, where reporter Tom Bell wrote a story about a lady who had been mugged in Erith Road, Upper Belvedere - the piece is entitled "Strangers fundraise to replace pension of Nuxley woman, 84, robbed in street" - since when has there been a place / town called Nuxley? He is of course referring to Nuxley Road, Upper Belvedere, although you would never know from his article. I don't entirely blame him - he has probably never visited the place. I decided that I would write to Mr. Bell and give him some history of Nuxley Road, and why "Nuxley" and "Nuxley Village" have never actually existed. Here is what I wrote:- "Hi Tom, I hope you don't mind, but I need to correct you on your recent story entitled:- "Nuxley robbery: Grandmother has pension stolen by a 'monster'". A lot of people, some long – time local residents included, call Nuxley Road in Upper Belvedere “Nuxley Village” – even though no such place has ever existed since the beginning of recorded time. The origin of the names of the  places in the local area, and some of the surrounding landmarks dates back to the early fifteenth century, and the name Belvedere even earlier. The area of Bedonwell gets its name from the Bedon stream, which runs through what is now known as Streamway; the Bedon is a minor tributary of the River Thames, which is now run through an underground drain for much of its length. A fifteenth century form of the name was Beton Well, meaning “praying well”. The exact origin is lost in the mists of time, though the old English word “bydan” meaning a shallow valley may have something to do with it. On the South side of the stream was a further area of open heath land, called Nuxley or Little Heath, which occupied an area around what was later Bedonwell Primary School (and is now a Doctor’s surgery and private flats). The name Nuxley was sometimes spelled Naxley, which in turn is a corruption of Knocksley, meaning a small hill. Nuxley Road was originally named Bexley Road, until March 1939 when it was renamed as Nuxley Road, which it remains to date. There is no record of Upper Belvedere ever having been named Nuxley Village, and parish records for the area date back to 1235 AD, and survived the reformation, when ownership of the parish was transferred from Lesnes Abbey to the owners of Parsonage Farm (on what is now Parsonage Manor Way). During the late 19th century, Parsonage Farm was owned by the Vinson family, who were at the time rich and powerful enough to issue their own trade tokens (a kind of informal local currency). There are records that beer houses such as the Fox, and full pubs such as the Eardley Arms took trade tokens for payment for food and drink until sometime around 1900. The farm buildings, which were  constructed in the Middle Ages (principally to provide food and drink for Abbot and Monks at Lesnes Abbey) lasted until the end of WWII, when it was used to house an auxiliary fire station. After the war the building was so derelict it was demolished. Thus, the name “Nuxley Village” is a construct – a fictional creation of local estate agents who have no knowledge of the history of the area. Upper Belvedere has been so called for at least the last 782 years, and the thoughtless action of a handful of ignorant house peddlers is not going to change facts any time soon. I hope that this clarifies". I currently await a reply. 

Bexley Council appear to be up to a few tricks right now. There was a full council meeting on the 8th of November. The majority Conservative council were challenged over their spending. After a couple of years of cutbacks and austerity, it appears that they are now on a spending spree. Why would this be? The money situation has not as far as I can ascertain improved to any significant degree. In a series of questions asked at the council meeting of the ruling Conservative group, Councillor Alex Sawyer was forced to admit that spending on resurfacing on roads and pavements has seen a one-off sharp increase in spending in election year. The Conservative group also refused to admit that the focus of their pre-election spending will be across Conservative wards in areas such as road resurfacing and street planting with 210 of the 225 trees planned for planting in this year, planned in the 16 of the 21 wards represented by the Conservatives. Speaking in an interview after the council meeting, Councillor Joe Ferreira, Shadow Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Environment and Leisure said “It is now clear that Bexley’s Conservatives are using the underspends from the 2016/17 budget to fund a pre-election programme of tidying up the borough focusing on areas represented by Conservative councillors. In a number of areas, they are attempting to re-invest services to 2014 levels, showing they now accept that their programme of cuts to street cleansing and parks have failed, albeit with an acceptance that this spending cannot be guaranteed to continue after the election. The Tories are desperately trying to use our residents’ money to fund their pre-election campaign and are reversing their entire budget policy in an attempt to retain control of the council.” If this is all as has been claimed (and at the time of writing, I have no reason to suspect that it is not), then this will be yet another example of the Northern wards of The London Borough of Bexley suffering at the expense of the wealthier Southern wards. We are currently in the unenviable position of having a local council that can safely ignore the wishes of a significant proportion of its residents in the North, as their mandate is supplied almost exclusively by the residents in the South. This seems to me to be contrary to the principles of good democracy and government.

Back when flat screen televisions were first made available, they had a finite life. The early plasma screens were normally good for around 30,000 hours of service, the problem was that whilst the screens were bright and had a very good viewing angle, they used a lot of power, even when in standby, and when on they got very hot. When LED screens came along, their life was substantially longer, and again the limiting factor was the life of the backlight – a common issue. The latest screen technology currently available is OLED. An OLED display works without a backlight; thus, it can display deep black levels and can be thinner and lighter than an LED screen. In low ambient light conditions (such as a dark room), an OLED screen can achieve a higher contrast ratio than an LED, regardless of whether the LED uses cold cathode fluorescent lamps or an LED backlight. The trouble is, the screens are very expensive, and they are difficult to manufacture in the large sizes that a lot of customers want nowadays; on top of this, as the OLED screens generate their own light, the screens “burn out” relatively quickly, and the colour rendition fading – blues especially “wash out” quite early on in the life cycle of the TV screen. All this in actual use may be relatively unimportant, as other factors are far more likely to affect the length of life of a modern flat screen television. Most TV’s on sale nowadays have so called “smart” functionality built in – the ability to stream media from companies such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, for example, and access to the web and sites such as YouTube is now something many people take for granted. In my opinion, the limiting factor in the real – life durability of a modern smart TV is not actually the display technology hardware, but is rather how long the TV remains in software support from the manufacturer. How long updates, patches and software downloads are available for the TV. For example, I have a Samsung TV from 2012; many of the applications installed on it will no longer run, as they are now out of support. The TV itself still works fine, but if you want watch BBC iPlayer, for instance, you are stuffed. The issue here is that most smart TV’s use a version of the Android operating system – which is constantly being updated and modified by its creator, Google. The problem is that the TV manufacturers usually stop providing Android updates to TV’s after a couple of years, and sooner or later versions of apps for TV’s stop working on older versions of the Android operating system. It seems from my research that a TV will cease getting OS updates at around the fourth year from the point of purchase. It seems to me that TV’s are going the way of the computer and the motor car – they are now seen as time limited, disposable devices. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The Post Office and Cost Cutter convenience store in Erith High Street (shown in the photo above - click on it for a larger view) has just been put up for sale for £800,000. It is my understanding that it is being sold as an ongoing, viable business, and there are no plans to shut it down, or convert it for a different use. You can read all of the details by clicking here.

Now for the weekly safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association. Firstly Barnehurst ward:- "On Saturday 11th November 2017 between 11.00 and 18.10 in Northall Road suspects smashed a rear patio window, a brick is believed to have been used. Entry to the property was gained and an untidy search followed with personal items taken. On the same night 11/11/17 between 06.35 and 21.10 in Hall Place Crescent the glass to the rear kitchen door was smashed and entry gained. An untidy search was found and personal items taken. On 12/11/17 a business premises in Midfield Parade was broken into by means of smashing a glass window to the front door. Petty cash was taken along with the till tray. CCTV nearby shows a person at the front of the property just after midnight, unfortunately the footage just shows a pair of legs from knees down due to the shops canopy obstructing view. On 14/11/17 between 02.50am and 03.00am another business premises in Mayplace Road East was broken into, again the glass to the front door was smashed and entry gained. Suspects made off with a small amount of cash. It is hoped the suspects are captured on nearby CCTV. Youths are continuing to target property’s in Taunton Close by throwing or hitting golf balls and damaging property. On 10/11/17 at 1030 a golf ball damaged property. On 09/11/17 at around 14.40 youths caused damage to a vehicle, it is believed person/persons have sat on the vehicle causing a dent to the bonnet. It’s the time of year again where burglars are out there and committing crime. Please take time to look at your home security and look out for your neighbours. Ensure wheelie bins are brought in on bin collection day, If you see post sticking out of letter boxes, push it through. If away for any amount of time let your trusted neighbours know, leave a key with a family member to close curtains etc. If you wish to discuss any of these issues raised or anything else, please join us for Coffee with cops at Barnehurst Golf Club on Thursday 23rd November 2017". Belvedere ward:- "Over the last week the team have been working on a variety of issues. PC Holmes arrested a male for 3 public order offences as well as a breach of court bail as part of an on going dispute. That male later attended court and was found guilty of public order offences, was given a hefty fine, a restraining order and ordered to 90 hours unpaid work. PC Holmes has also been working hard on the investigation of thefts of post in the Belvedere Park Estate. The team will be attending the Belvedere Park Residents Association meeting later this evening to discuss issues in the area and speak with residents. PC Holmes and PCSO Worrall were on duty on Remembrance Day and paid their respects on the Broadway with other Bexley officers. PC Holmes also arrested a male for criminal damage to a motor vehicle and malicious communications. The team will be in the Co-op on 22/11/2017 for a crime surgery at 11:30am should you wish to speak with the team in person". Brampton ward:- " We have a quieter week than the last few but still more than we would like. 2 x Burglaries in Heversham road and Dunwich Road - both occasions entry was to the rear of the property and cash and jewellery taken; 1 x theft of a wallet from a house in Normanhurst Avenue; Criminal damage to a motor vehicle in Birchington Close another vehicle tyre has been slashed at this stage we cannot rule out the foxes return and criminal damage to a property in Brampton road the front door window had been smashed; Theft from motor vehicle in Pickford lane cash stolen from an unlocked vehicles glove box; Theft of a motor vehicle in Pickford lane. This week we had meetings with neighbours , ward panel and Brampton councillors which were all very productive. Please follow us on twitter @MPSBrampton". Crayford ward:- "A number plate was pulled off a car parked at Screwfix on Friday 10/11/2017 between 07.00 and 09.00. A van was scratched along the front and side in Station Road between 04/11/2017 - 07/11/2017. There has been an increase in shoplifting. A lady had her purse stolen from her coat pocket at Aldi on Saturday 11/11/2017 between 16.00-16.20. We would ask that you are vigilant, keeping wallets and purses secured and out of sight. Please shield your pin number when using chip and pin or ATM machines. On Monday 20th November we will be at Darlton Hall at Darlton Close from 17.00-18.30 holding a “one stop cop shop”. This venue is close to Perry Street roundabout. We look forward to meeting our residents there".  Erith ward:- " Normal walks and patrols around the ward this week. Nothing of note to say this week. Next survey is 25/11/17 at 11am which will include bike marking - location is Pier Road Police base (next door to Farm Foods) . Weekly crime reports - We are still getting a lot of theft from MV [motor vehicles] please make sure nothing is on show including sat nav holders". Lesnes Abbey ward:- "From a Neighbourhood Watch Member in Fendyke Road - Just had a call from 01258963258 a 'Alan Watson' (although the name didn't match the accent) claiming to be from Talk Talk. He advised my IP address was being hacked and used to download lots of stuff. I calmly told him I would ring TalkTalk myself and he said I was silly not to believe him and he would cut me off to prove it (that old chestnut!). Said I would ring from mobile. I've since reported to TalkTalk and they've confirmed scam etc". North End ward:- " 3 more vehicle crimes have been reported this week. This is down on last week but 2 of them were items taken that were left on display inside the car. Please remember to remove all valuable items from your vehicles and leave nothing on display - phones, sat-navs, bags etc. We assisted with patrols on Bexleyheath Broadway last Friday evening. PC Mark Brookes-Smith had a successful foot chase culminating in multiple searches and a cannabis seizure. Excellent work. We visited a vulnerable adult at his home with various partner agencies and plans are already in place to get him the care he needs with our support. We have a surgery next Tuesday 21 November at Slade Green Library from 12 midday. Please come along and say hi".  Northumberland Heath ward:- "A fairly quiet week on the ward this week with only one attempted burglary reported to us in Hurlingham Road. On Thursday November 9th at approximately 6.15pm a male put his hand inside the letterbox at the address and the resident believed that a leaflet was being delivered. The suspect then tried the door handle several times and stood outside the address before walking away unwrapping what appeared to be a bandage from his hand. One criminal damage to a motor vehicle in Horsa Road on Friday November 10th where a vehicle was scratched causing £200 worth of damage. A cannabis warning form was issued to a man in Lawrence Road on Tuesday November 14th after a man was seen by officers smoking cannabis in his car. A charge is also to be issued to a youth who has recently breached a Criminal Behaviour Order after being stopped by officers". Thamesmead East ward:- "Good News, no burglary reported this week, however please see below regarding motor vehicle crime. Theft of Motor Vehicle – Tuesday 07/11/17 08:00 -12:00 hrs KALE ROAD Silver MAZDA. Theft from Motor vehicle – Tuesday 07/11/17 – 09/11/17 LYTHAM CLOSE Number Plates. The next Police Surgery will be held on Friday 24th November 2017 2:30 – 3:15pm at New Acres Library. We are always interested in recruiting new Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators for the ward. Please ask your family and friends if they would like to set up a Neighbourhood watch in their road. Please spread the word to any family and friends in the Borough - they can contact us on 020 8721 2049 or Thamesmead.SNT@met.police.uk for more information. For the latest news and updates from Bexley Police, visit our twitter pages - @MPSBexley and @MPSThamesmeadE".

Wellingtons (Erith) Ltd is a family owned retailer established in 1898. Andrew Wellington and his team specialise in the sale of freestanding and built-in appliances, cookers, TV and home entertainment systems.  The family have retailed in Northumberland Heath for 119 years and is now in its 4th generation of ownership. As many will know I like to use and promote independent local businesses whenever possible. The end video is a short film about Wellingtons - leave a comment below, or alternatively Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Potion progress?

As many of you will know, I have been following the situation with the abandoned and increasingly derelict former White Hart / Potion Bar with interest for several years. Various plans and schemes have come and gone, but Maggot Sandwich reader Stephen alerted me to a brand new planning application that has been submitted to Bexley Council by a potential developer. You can read details of the application by clicking here. In essence building owner The Wellington Pub Company are applying to convert the upper floors of the pub into flats, and to restore the former Victorian green glazed salt tiles and acid etched glass frontage with a replica replacement as can be seen in the drawings above. What is rather more surprising is that they also propose constructing some brand new flats overlooking the River Thames in the garden of the former pub. Nowhere in the planning application can I find any mention of what will be happening to the downstairs bar area and kitchen in the former pub. I suppose that any change of use would be subject to an additional planning application separate from this one. The new flats in the pub garden may prove somewhat controversial, and I have to say that at this point I feel that I need far more information about the proposed low - rise block before I can form an informed opinion regarding it. I can see the logic - the developer is going to have to spend a substantial sum of money on restoring and converting the upper floors of the White Hart - and the replacement pub frontage is going to cost a King's ransom to install. The handful of flats upstairs in the main building are not going to generate enough cash to make just that work profitable. Only additional new accommodation in the large former pub garden would seem to guarantee a development scheme that would make enough profit to make it attractive to an investor. We really need more information; I hope that more detail comes to light soon. The Architect's proposed design for the apartment block on the pub garden site can be seen below - click on the picture for a larger view. 

London City Airport has been suffering from a problem that has become a global safety and security concern. Passenger planes taking off and landing at the East London airport are being attacked by idiots with high powered laser pointers, in an attempt to dazzle the pilots. A chap called DCI Mark Eley is in charge of the police unit dealing with the problem. He said in a recent BBC News interview "There's been a growing trend over the last few years and we are working hard to overcome it. We think it's down to the reduction in cost of laser pens and we now have a much better reporting ethos so we know when these strikes are occurring. It's often youths mainly doing it as a prank not realising just how dangerous it is to shine these lights at an aircraft. While it may seem like a bit of a joke at the time, people are being convicted of this offence and the bottom line is this is very dangerous." Back in 2011 the Civil Aviation Authority released an eye test to help pilots decide whether they needed to visit a specialist after such attacks. Green lasers pose the most serious risk because the human eye is so much more sensitive to green light. Typically the American authorities are far more robust when it comes to catching and prosecuting idiots who use laser pointers against aircraft. The FBI recently published figures showing that offenders can be fined up to $250,000 and face up to twenty years in prison for trying to illuminate aircraft and the FBI has offered a $10,000 bounty to anyone who lets them know when a dangerous idiot is on the loose with lasers. Commercial laser pointers are unlikely to permanently blind pilots, but they can - and do - cause temporary flash blindness in the cockpit which could prove fatally distracting during a tricky landing. Despite the warnings and the heavy penalties, it hasn't stopped a small number of people from carrying out the attacks. In fact the numbers are growing. As of October 16th the FAA reports there have been 5,352 cases of laser strikes on aircraft in flight. At that rate, it is only a matter of time before something catastrophic happens. The same thing applies in the UK as far as the potential risk of aircraft attack by laser pointer is concerned. 

My article on Betamax video recorders struck quite a chord with readers last week; I have been contacted by a number of people, and been the subject of an article on the radio station Laser Hot Hits regarding my story of how some models of Betamax video machines are now worth serious money second hand on places like EBay. Several readers have been checking out their basements and loft spaces to see if their old machines are still around and working. I have been asked what models are worth looking out for. I have been talking to a good friend who is a bit of an authority on old video recorders; he says that some models of Betamax can be worth a lot of money to a collector, but others are pretty much worthless - and it is not always the models that were expensive when new that are worth a lot now. Apparently the Sony C7 model (in the photo I used on the blog last week) is very desirable, as it was very well built, reliable, and spares like drive belts are still available nowadays. I may have one in my own loft, or it may be the lesser and not so desirable Sony C5 model - I should really go up and have a check. Below is a short and very informative video which further explains why the technically superior Betamax video format lost out in the market to the cheap and cheerful VHS system.

Earlier this week I was in a meeting with a couple of colleagues when I used the phrase “it goes up to eleven”. My two colleagues, who were in their mid-twenties looked at me blankly, and I then realised that they did not know the cultural reference, which mildly shocked me. I (wrongly) assumed that pretty much everyone would be familiar with it. The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 mockumentary/rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In the scene, Nigel gives the rockumentary's director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out one in particular whose control knobs all have the highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers, whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10, believing that this numbering actually increases the highest volume of the amp ("It's one louder, isn't it"). When Marty asks why the ten setting is not simply set to be louder, Nigel hesitates before responding blankly again, "These go to eleven”. The phrase has entered the English language, and if you use the BBC iPlayer website, the media player volume control goes up to eleven in tribute to the scene from the classic comedy film.

I have whinged at length in the past about the folly that is self-service checkout tills in supermarkets, and how they actually take the customer longer to use than conventionally staffed supermarket checkouts. They are both unreliable compared with staffed tills, and very susceptible to fraud. I also wonder why customers get charged the same for their goods when using the self – service tills as for the ordinary tills, bearing in mind that they do all the work, I would have thought that the prices should be lower for good processed through the self-service tills, but of course this never turns out to be the case. On top of all this, recent research shows that both conventional tills and self-service tills are increasingly becoming exposed to malware. Point of Sale (POS) devices are very vulnerable to two particularly nasty pieces of malicious software. The Cherry Picker and AbaddonPOS malware, exposed in the last week, are the latest evolution in stealthy and capable point of sales credit and debit card plundering. Cherry Picker has been targeting retail businesses since 2011 and now sports new anti-analysis tricks, persistence mechanisms, and better card ripping functionality. the malware is expert at wiping evidence of itself after an attack has occurred, overwriting files multiple times and removing data exfiltration locations. The memory-scraping malware runs on Windows platforms including Windows 7 and the hard-to-kill XP, running remote administration services. It specifically targets retailers in the food industry running any point of sale software. Most of the current malware infections have so far been discovered in the USA and Canada, but it is only a matter of time before they find their way across the pond. More on Windows later - you can see I plan these things.

You may have recently read that before he ended his own life, the late comedian Robin Williams was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition call Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). Depending on whom you speak to, it is either the second or the third most common form of dementia. Lewy bodies, named after the doctor who first identified them, are tiny deposits of protein in nerve cells. Researchers don't have a full understanding of why Lewy bodies appear in the brain, or exactly how they contribute to dementia. However, their presence is linked to low levels of important chemical messengers (mainly acetylcholine and dopamine) and to a loss of connections between nerve cells. Over time, there is progressive death of nerve cells and loss of brain tissue. Lewy bodies are the underlying cause of several progressive diseases affecting the brain and nervous system, notably DLB and Parkinson's disease. Together, these are sometimes called Lewy body disorders. The disease is still very often not caught or misdiagnosed – generally as either being Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. But Dementia with Lewy Bodies is a beast of its own, even if each patient presents its own version of symptoms – Problems with attention and alertness are very common. It is a feature of DLB that these problems vary widely over the course of the day, by the hour or even a few minutes. There may also be difficulties with judging distances and perceiving objects in three dimensions, and with planning and organising. Some also experience depression. Day-to-day memory is often affected in people with DLB, but typically less in the early stages than in early Alzheimer's Disease. Visual hallucinations (seeing things that are not there) occur in most people with DLB, and can be distressing. These are often of people or animals, and are experienced as detailed and convincing. Auditory hallucinations (hearing sounds that are not real, such as knocking or footsteps) can happen but are less common. Hallucinations and visual difficulties partly explain why many people with DLB have delusions (thinking things that are not true). Someone may believe they are being persecuted, that there are strangers living in the house, or that a spouse has been replaced by an identical imposter. Relatives and carers may find such delusions very distressing. This was the terrible condition that my late Dad suffered from for nearly ten years. One other symptom that he suffered from the the loss of distinction between being asleep and being awake. He would have a nightmare, wake up, but he nightmare would carry on - in his mind it was happening for real; this was extremely disturbing for him, and very upsetting for us. At present, there is no cure for DLB. However, with support it is possible to live well with DLB, and management of the condition aims to maximise the person's overall quality of life. Given the range of symptoms, input from a variety of professionals is needed at different times. When caring for someone with DLB, it is important to be as flexible as possible, bearing in mind that many of the symptoms will fluctuate. Treatment of DLB with drugs is often problematic: everyone responds differently, there is only limited evidence about what works, and there are few approved treatments. Also, medication given to improve mental abilities or hallucinations can make movement problems worse. Similarly, drugs for movement problems may have a negative effect on mental abilities or make hallucinations worse. It is likely to be a long time before any kind of preventive treatment, let alone a cure is found. 

A reader sent me the period photo above, which looks like it was taken in the late 1970's or thereabouts. It shows Station Parade - the row of shops which used to exist in Bexley Road, opposite Christ Church Erith. The shops were demolished to allow the construction of Bronze Age Way, the dual carriageway that leads to Lower Belvedere, Thamesmead and Woolwich. I dimly recall the parade - there was a newsagent, an off - licence (which had a reputation for serving under - age customers), an estate agent and a "greasy spoon" cafe, which was run by a rather dodgy bloke who was the uncle of someone I went to school with. My schoolmate would sometimes visit the cafe at lunchtime to get a free fry - up, but I seem to remember he had to go round collecting dirty plates and cups for his uncle afterwards. I never actually went in there myself. So much of old Erith has been destroyed over the years; this is the reason that so many residents, including myself are so keen on preserving the little that is left. 

A local community radio station has submitted an application to OFCOM for a regional commercial radio licence. Miskin Radio, which is based at North West Kent College in Dartford, is a local radio station that has been set up and launched by one of the College’s Media Lecturers, Andrew Sayers. Andrew has been working in radio since he was fourteen years old and is now focusing his passion into providing North West Kent with its own radio broadcast.  Miskin Radio has already made a firm impression since their internet debut in April 2012, with over four thousand listeners. They had a temporary community broadcasting licence back in 2012, in order to provide locally relevant coverage of the Olympic Games. Andrew described the station thus:- “This is a local community radio station for anyone who is interested in radio and the media industry. Our team includes a mixture of radio professionals, volunteers and students from North West Kent College. Our aim is to provide a radio service in the North West Kent area, for local people to get involved with and enjoy.” The OFCOM licence application normally takes around a year to be processed, so if successful, Miskin Radio could well be broadcasting to the local area by Christmas of next year. In the meantime you can listen to them online. You can visit their website here.

Microsoft Windows was thirty years old last week. On November 20, 1985, Microsoft unveiled its graphical operating system; (actually technically speaking it was not an operating system at all - from Windows 1.0 to Windows ME, Windows was actually a graphical interface shell that sat on top of DOS - which was the actual operating system - but I digress). Windows 1.0 offered a new way to navigate a PC, clicking a cursor on various boxes rather than scrolling through lines of text in order to navigate data and applications. While arguably less efficient than a command line, the graphical user interface (GUI) was more intuitive and easier for novice users to manage. Running Windows 1.0 required a PC running DOS 2.0 as well as two double-sided floppy disk drives, 256K of memory, and a new-fangled device known as a "graphics card." Windows worked with some DOS apps, while others would just run in full-screen mode. Windows 1.0 was not exactly a stirring success. PC users accustomed to the command-line interface of DOS weren't yet sold on a GUI, and only about 500,000 copies were sold in the first couple of years. It took until the early 90s for Windows to catch on, but when it did, the OS became synonymous with the PC and made Microsoft one of the most successful and powerful companies in the world for the next two decades. Windows has had its ups and downs - at times it has been an excellent operating system, with other iterations, it has been truly terrible; let's look at some of the bad ones first:- Windows Vista was the long-awaited successor to Windows XP – perhaps that's part of why it is considered such a huge disappointment. After years of speculation and hype, Vista was roundly panned by critics and loathed by consumers. Part of the problem was its hefty hardware requirements that, for many users, meant upgrading components or just buying an entirely new PC. Add to that performance issues and default security settings that would flood users with permission dialogues, and you get one of Microsoft's biggest flops. Windows ME, however, was an even bigger flop than Vista. The final DOS based, consumer-only version of Windows, its mere mention will draw cringes to this day. It was a buggy, sluggish mess of an operating system and is considered by many to be Microsoft's worst-ever Windows version. On top of being riddled with bugs, ME suffered from a rather unfortunate flaw in its system restore process that on some machines meant that when something did go seriously wrong, the OS could not be restored. On a happier note, there have been some excellent and very popular versions of Windows:- Windows 3.11 was credited as the first true "hit" version of Windows and the commercial success that the platform needed to be considered more than just an add-on for DOS. It also carved out a niche for itself in the embedded market that would last for more than two decades. Windows for Workgroups was phenomenally successful as a platform for consoles, point of sale terminals, and workstations. Well into the 2000s, Windows 3.11 could be found in embedded devices. Just a few weeks ago, it was found that Orly Airport in France used Windows 3.11 to power a critical weather prediction system, 23 years after its release and nearly 15 years after Microsoft pulled official support. Windows XP SP2 was the version of XP that Microsoft got right. Three years after XP hit, Microsoft pushed out the second service pack and finally addressed some of the myriad of security problems that plagued XP. Like Windows 3.11, XP SP2 has enjoyed a lifespan so long it has become troublesome. Despite Microsoft's best efforts to get people to upgrade their systems to newer versions, more than one in ten PCs still rely on XP. Windows 7 was another stellar release that came after a less-than-stellar predecessor. In this case, Windows 7 corrected a lot of the things that Vista got wrong, particularly security, performance, and hardware demands. It may also be in for a lengthy run as the Windows release of choice. With Windows 8 bombing and many viewing Windows 10 with skepticism, Microsoft could once again find itself having to continue to support Windows 7 longer than it would want to. Time will tell, as Windows no longer has the complete stranglehold on the computer world that it used to have.

Earlier in the week I received an Email which contained the following appeal to the public:- "I am PC Richard Bradford and I work for the Metropolitan Police Service here on the London Borough of Bexley. Bexley Police, in partnership with Bexley Council, are currently working on an initiative called 'The Commissioner's Christmas Tree Project'. Please see an extract below from the project information:- "A simple idea in the spirit of Christmas. A child in need can be helped by a simple gift from someone they have never met. That person gains no recognition other than knowing they have shown some care for a child that needs a little more love than most." The project began in 2012 with a single tree at New Scotland Yard. It expanded to five boroughs in 2013 and in 2014 the project was run for the first time pan-London, and supplied 6840 presents to looked after children. Every year we aim to increase this amount and maximise the engagement.There are approximately 65,000 children looked after by local authorities in England. At any on time the London Borough of Bexley has in excess of 1200 living in care within Bexley. All Metropolitan Police Boroughs will display a physical tree in their area, ours will be at Bexleyheath Police Station. Each tree will have tags on and the tags explain how to buy a present for a child in care. The gifts are handed in to police stations or other nominated Metropolitan police premises and then later distributed to the children. This project is now being directed at local businesses, churches, schools and residents asking for any kind donations of suitable gifts or store vouchers to pass on to the children in care in Bexley. The project opens on 10th November 2015 and will close on 08th December 2015 in order to get the gifts to the children in time for Christmas. To date ‘ASDA Bexleyheath’ have kindly offered to support us with their own donation point for a gift appeal and have kindly offered us a Christmas tree and support with publicity. ‘Premier Autocentres in Blackfen’ have kindly offered their support for this project by donating funds and are supporting us with the publicity. Prior to the launch date in November we will be liaising with local media asking for their support with publicity and the same on closing the project on 08th December 2015 when the gifts are given to the children and we will be thanking all those businesses for their support. So again I ask with the kindest intent would ‘YOU’ be able to support us with this project and consider making a donation at either www.met.police.uk/christmastree or www.justgiving.com/metxmastree Alternatively you can drop a present off at Bexleyheath Police station or speak to your dedicated ward officer for other arrangements".

As construction work between Abbey Wood and Plumstead continues, news reaches me that the UK’s largest rail project, Crossrail, will feature trains that are fully wheelchair-accessible, air-conditioned and wi-fi enabled. The trains, which are being built by Bombardier Transportation’s UK factory in Derby, will have space for 1,500 customers in nine walk-through carriages. Each will be more than 200 metres long. They will also re-generate electricity back into the network when braking, meaning they will use 30% less energy. The £14.8 billion cross-London project, which includes 26 miles of tunnelling through central London, has been hailed by Prime Minister David Cameron as “an engineering triumph”. The new trains will be in service from May 2017, though testing is scheduled to begin far sooner than that date. I am sure the many local transport enthusiasts will be out in force with their cameras when that day finally arrives.

The ending video this week is a historical gem - it shows life and work on the River Thames from back in 1959; it gives a rare colour glimpse into what was then a rapidly changing environment. One can see all of the old warehouses on the banks of the Thames, shortly before most were demolished to make way for offices - and the few that remained were converted into extremely desirable and expensive apartment buildings today. One can also see The Pool of London, and the old docks still at work. Only a decade or so later and most of this would be gone, as the larger container ships could not get upriver as far as London, and loading and unloading would move to the massively expanded container port at Tilbury.  In the film you can still see goods being unloaded by hand, something that would be completely unthinkable nowadays. It is a fascinating snapshot into a part of London that is no longer there. See what you think, and please either leave a comment below, or drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

500,000!

The two photos above both show views of the old Erith Library in Walnut Tree Road. The magnificent and imposing building has been closed and out of use for around five years, since the library was relocated to the new block opposite Erith Health Centre in the High Street. The upper photograph was taken by me last Sunday afternoon, whilst the lower one was taken in around 1910, by the look of the clothes on the two rather solemn and earnest looking young men in the shot - thanks to local historian Ken Chamberlain for the use of the photo. Several people have asked me what the future holds for the old Erith Library, which has been left abandoned and empty. Last year, when I was given a guided tour around the new Bexley College campus, directly opposite the old library, I was told in confidence that the college had applied for funding to buy the library and convert the interior into a training centre for the hotel and hospitality industry. Apparently with the planned opening of the Paramount Theme Park, there will be a chronic lack of trained hotel and restaurant staff in the South East. I was asked to refrain from mentioning this, as the deal was far from done. A year later I re - contacted my informant, and was told that the deal unfortunately had fallen through, and will now not be happening. The library remains empty and unused - possibly the most significant old building in Erith that is not in productive use. I will be discussing this in future updates. Any reader who has any insight into this, could they please contact me?

Some time last Sunday afternoon, a couple of hours after the last Maggot Sandwich update was published, I checked the blog dashboard, and discovered that the Maggot Sandwich has just received 500,000 unique page views. That is not the total number of blog hits (which is far higher), rather it is the total number of different people who have ever  come across the Maggot Sandwich at some point or another. On a normal week I average around 22,000 page hits worldwide. Thanks to all who have made this possible.

The following press release was sent to me earlier in the week by Dana Whiffen - the Chairman of Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association:- "Bexley Neighbourhood watch and Bexley Police have made history by being the first London Borough to achieve 2 wards with 100% coverage of NW. In January 2015 we announced that St.Michael's Ward in Welling had 100% NW-Coverage and now we are pleased to confirm that the neighbouring ward of East Wickham can also boast full coverage, that’s every street in these wards now have at least one registered NW member (coordinator). We are looking to see that the crime stats in East Wickham fall to the low levels of St.Michael’s where there has been zero domestic burglary since that was announced earlier in the year. This is due to the hard work of the police teams and NW-office staff in ensuring all these new members are registered, are aware fully of what they need to do and have their street signs put up, have their introduction letters and street signs. SAYING YES TO NW ALSO SAYS NO TO CRIMINALS

Dana Wiffen

Chairman/BBNWA"  

Shoppers in Erith Morrison’s had a bit of a surprise on Wednesday and Thursday this week; scenes for the new advertising campaign were being shot in the supermarket. On Wednesday the action mainly involved filming in the main part of the supermarket, whereas on the Thursday the film crew concentrated on the large bakery the store has. Both video and still footage was shot, and signs outside of the entrances warned shoppers that they might be filmed, though it seemed that many did not see the notices, and were surprised to see the film crew. I have no idea when the adverts will be released, and I very much doubt that it will be possible to identify the location as specifically Erith, but I suppose that it is worth keeping an eye out for anyway. I was quite surprised to see the Erith branch chosen as a location; most video production companies are based in London’s West End, and generally the staff dislike going South of the River Thames. If anyone has more information on the filming, please either comment below, or Email me directly to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Back in January this year, I wrote about the problems the emergency services were having with their ancient and very out of date Airwave TETRA two – way radio system. You can read my original posting here. As I predicted, the issue of replacing the emergency services communications technology with something more suitable for modern conditions did indeed get “kicked into the long grass” until now – after the general election. The £1.2 billion emergency services contract which I flagged up as a disaster waiting to happen six months ago has now, as predicted, collapsed. After a year-long bidding process the government had whittled the tenders down to two companies: EE and O2. Now O2 has pulled out as a result of Telefonica selling the network to Three’s parent Hutchison Whampoa. The network is supposed to start replacing the creaking Airwave TETRA radio system used by the emergency services next April, but that date is now in serious doubt. There are huge question marks over the suitability of 4G mobile technology for this with the necessary standards for device-to-device communication and control of groups still in the planning stages, and even bigger issues over equipping emergency services with mobile devices that rely on 4G for push-to-talk communications (like an analogue walkie talkie) when 4G phone coverage is so patchy around the country. The other problem with using digital I.P based communications is latency – there is a delay between pushing the transmit button, and the audio arriving at the receiver. With analogue radio equipment, there is no delay other than the constraint of the speed of light. Mobile phone push-to-talk systems are rarely like this. You press the button, it switches to the right app, fires it up, makes an IP connection and then starts the communication. This is not instant. Indeed, using such a system where you can see and hear the other person is un-nerving, with a significant delay that is more than an echo. Even a traditional 2G or 3G voice call has a little latency which you can hear if both people are in the same room. Push-to-talk latency isn't a problem in the “it might replace SMS” scenario the mobile industry once envisaged for it, but it is in an emergency. The classic example the Armed Forces give is to imagine a commander who has a team of snipers on a roof pointing at a target. He gives the command: “Don't shoot”. Unfortunately, in a cellular, IP based device, it takes a fraction of a second for the app to fire up and make a connection – a fraction of a second which is just long enough for the word “Don’t” to fail to make it into the message. Obviously this is just not good enough in a critical situation such as a terrorist attack. The other problem with any emergency communication system using 4G technology is that coverage of the country is patchy and uneven, with some areas having no signal whatsoever. Even if the emergency service personnel can get a 4G signal, you can then add to this the problem that with 4G there are other users on the network: ordinary customers, who, given that they are in the middle of an emergency, will want to call their mum or post a video of the incident to YouTube. There are systems in place to give emergency services priority, but network congestion is still going to affect the ability of the back - end infrastructure to cope. All in all the situation is a mess, and could not really have come at a worse time. Back in February, James Brokenshire, the MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, who at that time was also Minister for Security and Immigration, said the Mobile Services tender process had “produced some impressive technical bids combined with the prospect of significant cost savings for the taxpayer”. Unfortunately these are now looking like hollow words. Any communications system relying on 4G coverage in the UK will have problems, as the UK officially has the worst 4G service in Europe, according to a recent independent survey. The testing company gave the UK networks scores out of 500 and said: While the best UK operator achieved a score of 366, the top performers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland scored in a range above 440; and even a score above 470 was achieved in the last years. The lowest values in those countries were above 325, which would still be enough for the second place in UK. The survey company showed that EE has the best service, puts Three in second place, and places O2 marginally ahead of Vodafone, in a disappointing fourth place. This will be bad news for Vodafone, which has been shouting about significant capital investment in their network, but which does not seem to be showing much improvement after the expenditure.

My personal battle with local fly – tippers has taken a new and more serious turn. On Tuesday evening I was alerted by a neighbour that a large quantity of building material had been apparently dumped in a private parking area just off Manor Road. Upon investigation it became clear that the material had indeed been illegally fly – tipped, and not only that, a vast majority of it was made up of broken up corrugated roof panels – the kind in common use between the late 1940’s and the middle 1970’s. The panels are composed of Asbestos which is an incredibly toxic material when it is broken up or scraped – any dust produced when working with Asbestos is highly poisonous. It has been in use for thousands of years, but did not start large-scale until the end of the 19th century, when manufacturers and builders began using Asbestos because of its desirable physical properties:- sound absorption, average tensile strength, its resistance to fire, heat, electrical and chemical damage, and affordability. It was used in such applications as electrical insulation for hotplate wiring and in building insulation. When Asbestos is used for its resistance to fire or heat, the fibres are often mixed with cement or woven into fabric or mats. These desirable properties made Asbestos a very widely used material, and its use continued to grow throughout most of the 20th century until the carcinogenic effects of Asbestos dust caused its effective demise as a mainstream construction and fireproofing material in most countries. However, around two million tons of Asbestos were still mined per year as of 2009, half in Russia. It is now known that prolonged inhalation of Asbestos fibres can cause serious and fatal illnesses including malignant lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis. Health issues related to Asbestos exposure can be found in records dating back to Roman times. By the beginning of the 20th century concerns were beginning to be raised, which escalated in severity during the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1980s and 1990s Asbestos trade and use started to become banned outright, phased out, or heavily restricted in an increasing number of countries. The severity of Asbestos-related diseases, the material's extremely widespread use in many areas of life, its continuing long-term use after harmful health effects were known or suspected, and fact that Asbestos-related diseases can emerge decades after exposure ceases, have resulted in Asbestos litigation becoming the longest, most expensive class action in U.S. history and a significant legal issue in many other countries. From this you can see that the fly – tipping of Asbestos based materials is a very serious affair. It was bad enough investigating the fly tipping incidents that happened in September 2013 in the James Watt Way council recycling centre, when a couple of villains dumped two and a half tonnes of rotten bananas on pallets at the site; after much investigation be Bexley Council Environmental Crimes Unit, one of the pair was fined, had his van confiscated, and was sent to prison for eight months. Disgusting and noxious as the liquefying rotten bananas were, they were nothing compared to the load of dusty Asbestos that has now appeared in the area. Fortunately the council are arranging for it to be safely collected and responsibly disposed of. I have been in contact with the North End Safer Neighbourhood Police team, and they are increasing foot patrols in the area. We do have a lead on the crime; a witness saw the illegal dumping take place, and has a description of the vehicle and occupants has been passed to the Police for investigation.

Both The News Shopper and The Bexley Times are full of the story that Bexley council leader Teresa O'Neill has been granted an OBE on the Queen's birthday honours list, making her the first sitting councillor in the borough to receive the award. Councillor O'Neill, who has been a member of the council for fifteen years, announced on June 12th that she received the news of the award. She has been honoured for serving the community and the local government. That’s the official line, anyway. Anyone who has been reading Malcolm Knight’s “Bexley is Bonkers” blog will know differently. I don't think I need to say anymore, other than in my opinion the award of an OBE to Teresa O’Neill is not merited.

Last week you may have seen my piece on why Erith Pier no longer gets the level of commercial traffic mooring on it that it used to. My former boss at Radio Caroline, the Station Manager Peter Moore is a regular Maggot Sandwich reader. He has written the following piece about the radio station and their experiences with the pier. I had a small involvement with the Erith Pier project (my role was to go onto the pier and photograph new ships when they moored there – as some parties needed proof that the pier was used for commercial mooring purposes). I used the excuse that I was a shipping enthusiast who wanted to get some photos (which also true to a small extent). Anyway, Peter has kindly written the following article, which I think many readers may find of interest:-  "Radio Caroline  ( MV Ross Revenge ) entered The Port of Tilbury in 2004 but after a long period of tolerance the port said that they would prefer us not to be there. We were good tenants and paid all the bills given to us, but they said they were not in the business of storing ships and that they could make more money by using the space we occupied for other purposes. Across the river at Gravesend were two areas of river wall that looked inviting and a couple of local Councillors were very supportive. But the first area was owned by a Pension Fund that had built a retail park on the shore. Their view was that if people parked to come and visit Ross Revenge, the traders would be annoyed and may not pay their rent. The other area was derelict awaiting development and we never could find out who the owners were. Our enquiries stalled when we got as far as the Bank of Ireland and then some Walter Mitty guy came along suggesting that it was his land but then he dropped off the radar. One of the enthusiastic Councillors was promoting the regeneration of the old harbour at Northfleet, hampered of course by the fact that the river wall had cut the harbour off from the river. He drew a futuristic artists impression of the restored port including Ross Revenge laying just outside, but it was never going to happen. Then we looked at Erith Pier, which I guess was restored and owned by Morrisons as part of the deal to have their Supermarket placed just nearby. They were happy for our ship to go there, but the Council said that any ship that stayed in one place for any length of time needed Planning Permission, so we applied. There were objections such as noise and obstruction of the view and a possible upsurge in vandalism and that maybe the leisure fishermen would be annoyed if we took up some of the space, but we pointed out that ships were there most of the time anyhow. Then the Port of London Authority appeared saying that while it may well be Morrisons pier it was their river and they had the final say, so we went to a meeting with them. They said that the presence of the ship may scour the area where it would be placed or conversely that it may cause silting. Then they asked if the ship may ever touch the river mud and we said that it might at certain tides. At this the PLA Environmental Officer joined the meeting and a very attractive young lady she was, but on hearing that the ship's keel may touch the mud she said that this would destroy the habitat of the Tentacled Lagoon Worm which seemingly was a vital part of the food chain of the river. Our marine man who had worked the river all his life said that ships had been 'taking the ground' from time immemorial and that the coasters that visited surely did the same, but this cut no ice with them and the question was raised of whether our presence would hamper these coasters and obstruct what was a temporary mooring place. But Morrisons were perplexed as they said that the PLA were telling them not to let ships tie up. So we assumed, and we do not think we were wrong, that the PLA did not want us there under any circumstances and would just surface objections until we gave up. They also pointed us at the Environment Agency and told us we would need a River Works Licence. We could also see that they could simply price us out of contention even if we complied with each and every other requirement.. Then we saw that our Planning Application had been struck out with the suggestion that it had been withdrawn by the applicant, which was not the case. So we left Tilbury and went right away and the ship is now in the middle of the River Blackwater. I am not suggesting the Radio Caroline would have been a huge boon to the area, but it was interesting and so typical of modern life that with a couple of notable exceptions all parties involved worked their utmost to ensure that a thing would not happen. Further they surely said ' Phew. we stopped that ' and returned to sitting on their bums. I wonder how we ever had an Empire.

Peter Moore,

Radio Caroline."

I don't think that there is very much that I can add to that. It just seems a pity that Erith could not have been a temporary home to a ship and radio station that arguably did more to influence British media than anyone else. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email hugh.neal@gmail.com. Incidentally, if you would like to hear what I sounded like back in 1990 when I was out at sea on the Ross Revenge, you can now do so; here is an edited recording of my late night / early morning radio show on Caroline. On the day this recording was made, we were in the middle of a Force 9 gale, and things were somewhat on the bumpy side! Give it a listen and let me know what you think. As you will hear, my pirate radio pseudonym was Tony Palmer. You can see an online album of photos taken during my time on Radio Caroline by clicking here. I would be interested in hearing your feedback.

As regular Maggot Sandwich readers will be aware, I am keen to support and promote independent local businesses. Recently a young lady called Bukky Alabi has set up a breakfast delivery service which caters for hungry people in Bexleyheath, Slade Green, Erith, Northumberland Heath, Dartford and Thamesmead. Bukky has written the following piece about her service:- "Got Breakfast was birthed from experience and passion. On a cold winter Saturday morning after a long week at work all I wanted to do was lie in bed all day Saturday but still wanted breakfast in bed without the hassle of getting up and sorting it out and it didn't help that McDonald's round the corner stopped breakfast at 10.30am. For months this feeling continued and one weekend I decided to put this idea and desire into action. Fast forward 11 months after and here we have Got Breakfast, which is a weekend premium breakfast delivery company delivering breakfast to people at home or at work in and around Bexley. It is important to me to support local businesses and in saying that every dish on our menu is made with fresh locally sourced ingredients in and around Bexley. On the menu you can find the typical full English , American pancakes, scrambled egg and smoked salmon pancake. We also offer a healthier option which includes fruit salads, healthy salads, porridge, honey nut granola, and lovely sandwiches. During the week we also deliver breakfast to customers at work, however our office menu is slightly different and consists of sandwiches, salads, pastries, fruits and juices. As well as being the owner of Got Breakfast, I also split myself between  dealing with orders and concerns, helping the delivery team and also making freshly made smoothies when customers order. Got breakfast consist of a team of 4 - myself, driver, chef and our social media guru. Got Breakfast will be expanding in the coming months, we plan to open another branch before the end of year, and also expand the menu. We are currently working on a vegetarian menu and will expand to open during the week also. The response has been amazing so far and it can only get better, from the first day we opened we had orders flying out of the roof. Everyone on the team is passionate about what they do, so this makes the job come natural and easy we put our heart and soul into everything we do and give our customers what we would expect. We aim to make breakfasting in Bexley exciting and easier for people. For more information please find us on www.got-breakfast.co.uk Twitter: @gotbreakfast_ Instagram: @gotbreakfast_"

Following the boarding up of Potion / the former White Hart a couple of weeks ago, the local rumour mill seems to have gone into overdrive. No planning applications have yet been made to the Council (I regularly check the planning application pages of the Bexley Council website). Nevertheless, this has not stopped what I suspect may be little more than wild supposition. I have heard from two separate sources that there are “definite” plans to convert the ground floor bar area into a Balti House restaurant. Whilst I, and many other local residents might welcome this, I find it difficult to believe. The amount of work and money required to completely refurbish the Victorian building, along with fitting a new commercial kitchen, and with a specialised fume extraction and climate control system would cost an utter fortune - a good couple of hundred thousand pounds; also bearing in mind that anyone that takes on the building will have to replace the hideous plate glass frontage illegally installed by the owners of Potion, to be replaced by a facsimile of the original frontage, complete with acid etched glass and green salt glazed tiles. This also will not come cheaply; I get the feeling that there has been a certain amount of wishful thinking going on - personally a local Balti House would be very agreeable, but this does not make it any more likely. Do you know more? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com if you have any information regarding this. 

The ending video this week is something quite unusual; it features lots of archive footage taken in and around Erith over the last hundred years ro so, accompanied by a poem about the town, which was written by very long time local resident Pat Watson. The video is courtesy of Lee Ricketts, and his YouTube channel.