A surfeit of Dizzyade.

Residents in Manor Road, Erith got a letter from Bexley Council Highways Department through their letter boxes this week. Residents have been complaining about the crumbling state of the road surface, which was only relaid back in May 2009; you can see photos of the work back then by clicking here. The road surface was designed to have noise deadening properties due to its' special composition. The noise was indeed substantially reduced, but the surface proved not to be robust; within a year of it being laid, it began to crumble, as can be seen in the photo above. The Council letter was to let local people know that Manor Road is being closed to all traffic between 7pm and 2am on Tuesday night, so that the  damaged sections of roadway can be cut out and replaced. 

The Pound Town shop unit in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre has been vacated and empty for a surprisingly short amount of time; you may recall a scant few weeks ago that I was bemoaning the moving out of Pound Town – not because they could not pay the rent, but because the shop had been so stunningly successful that they needed to relocate to larger premises in Crayford, in what used to the old Peacock's store. I felt that it was going to be extremely difficult to get another tenant for the former Wise Furnishings furniture warehouse building. I am extremely glad to find that I was wrong. Whilst walking past the shop unit last week, I noticed light and activity through the whitewashed windows. Workers were refurbishing the shop. A day or so later when I passed the place, a large red and white sign above the store announced “The 99p Shop”. Well, it is a penny down on the last incumbent. I had vainly hoped that the place might have been converted into a sit down curry house or little Italian bistro, but these dreams were never going to be realistic. The cost of fitting kitchen equipment and cooker flues / filters would have been prohibitive, which is a pity. A 99p store is way better than leaving the place empty, and it the previous Pound Town obviously filled a local demand. I just hope that the new owners do something about the ventilation in the shop, as even in the depths of winter the old place was stiflingly hot and stuffy. Time will tell; I hope to be on hand to cover the grand opening of the shop.

Buying online is so easy and convenient nowadays – even my mother is a fan of Amazon; she feels safer shopping with them than she does when she goes in person to Bexleyheath Broadway. Sending credit card information over an encrypted HTTPS connection is a very secure thing to do. Many websites, wary of keyboard logging malware get you to “type” on a screen based virtual keyboard using mouse movements and clicks. This clever technique is also secure – but not if you are using Internet Explorer. There is a fundamental fault in Internet Explorer versions 6 to the current version 10 which means that by injecting just twelve lines of programming code into a web page, your cursor and key presses can be monitored and recorded by a third party anywhere in the world. You can read details of the fault (which at the time of writing, Microsoft say that they have no plans to patch) I have been critical of Internet Explorer on many occasions – it is slow, clunky, does not render web standard compliant pages correctly, it is a memory hog and even now does not handle tabs in the most intuitive of manners. This serious vulnerability really takes the biscuit – especially as Microsoft seem indifferent about fixing it. Personally I use Google’s Chrome browser, and Firefox is also excellent. The Opera browser has its’ fans, though personally I find it too quirky for me. The bottom line is that there are a number of alternatives to Internet Explorer out there – if you have not already done so, I would recommend you try them and find out which one works best for you.

The crackdown on local metal theft has stepped up a gear; a 34 year old man was arrested last week by Bexley Police for handling stolen goods. The man was found to have over two hundred assorted gas bottles stored in a shipping container in his yard. Just what would have happened had there been a fire is worrying; I recall some years ago, Erith Construction had a large yard and offices on the Slade Green Industrial Estate on Wallhouse Road. They had a fire in the yard back in 2006, and a number of propane and acetylene gas cylinders exploded, utterly destroying their offices and their IT infrastructure. Erith Construction were one of the very early adopters of Google Docs for Enterprise (now named Google Drive), which uses a web based office software suite, and cloud based document and data storage. Because of this (at the time) far sighted approach, the office workers were able to use anywhere where they could access a WiFi signal (such as McDonald’s in James Watt Way) to log into their documents and carry on working as if nothing had happened. The chap with the stolen gas cylinders would not have been so lucky; he would have probably ended up being the first human in orbit without the need for a rocket! The bill marking into law changes in the way scrap dealers operate was passed by Parliament, and has now come into effect. Scrap dealers are now forbidden in paying cash for scrap brought in to their yards. Now they must pay by cheque or direct credit – a step in the right direction, but I feel the measures may need to be stiffened still further, as the dodgy dealers will no doubt find a way around the restrictions. Thefts of copper power cables from the railways have got even worse over the recent months; this has given South Eastern Trains some legitimate excuse for delays and cancellations – not that they need much to disrupt their services – only last week when we had the merest sprinkle of snow, the Dartford via Greenwich rail line was thrown into disarray. On Tuesday morning the reason was cited as a broken down train between Lee and Hither Green, which affected all London bound trains from around 8am. It would appear that South Eastern have been taking it seriously in the neck; they have a twitter feed, which had collected over three hundred tweets in the space of no more than an hour. At least commuters have a way of contacting the rail company in real time to make their displeasure known, and to their credit, South Eastern have undertaken to answer each tweet individually. The trouble is, the weather has been chilly, but the level of snow really has been no more than a sprinkle. What will happen if (when?) we have a heavy fall is anyone’s guess. I am fortunate that I can very easily work from home; I have a very fast fibre optic internet connection, an office phone that I can remotely divert to my home phone, and a job which for much of the time does not require me to be physically present in the office. If heavy snow threatens, I can batten down the hatches in Pewty Acres and wait out the disruption; many are not so lucky.

Continuing with the travel theme this week, I undertook the last parts of my journey home from visiting Watford on Tuesday afternoon; for a change I decided to get off the Jubilee Line tube train from Euston at Bank, rather than carrying on to London Bridge to pick up the overland train to Erith. The reason for this was 1) the trains in and around London Bridge were still playing up from an earlier broken down train, and B) I wanted to explore the Docklands Light Railway link from Bank through to Woolwich Arsenal, where if the overland trains were still not running, I then had the option of picking up the 99 bus from Woolwich to sunny Erith. I must admit that the journey from Bank through the East End, Canary Wharf and past London City Airport is an instructive one. You travel through areas of both extreme wealth and extreme need in the space of only a few hundred metres on some occasions. The view of Canary Wharf from Poplar station is stunning at night – the office buildings are lit up like gigantic architectural Christmas trees. The approach to London City Airport is unusual – the first sense you are near jet aeroplanes is the smell of aviation fuel – Kerosene, which has a smell very similar to its’ hydrocarbon cousin, Paraffin. Only after this aroma permeates the DLR carriage do the airport and planes come into view. I would like to visit the airport in daylight with my camera and a couple of lenses, as it looks like it might be a very photogenic location. Going onwards, the DLR goes right underneath the Arabfly Dangleway. At the time of my trip I could see at least half a dozen cable car carriages in the air over the River Thames – and every single one of them was empty.  The whole sorry shebang smacks strongly of being one of Boris’s vanity projects. Not long after this you descend into a tunnel under the Thames which ends up in Woolwich, and journey’s end. An interesting trip I would recommend if you are unfamiliar as I was with that less visited part of the capital.

The picture above may look familiar - and that is because I have used it before - I am recycling some second hand photons; it pretty much sums up Christmas in parts of Erith to a tee; the bus shelter even looks passingly similar to one almost opposite Pewty Acres. As many readers may already know, I don't send Christmas cards, for a number of reasons, mainly as I think them redundant now that the Western world is now online, and via social networking, Email, Twitter and a host of other services, people keep in contact all year round, not just via a once a year bit of printed card. Cards use a huge amount of natural resources, both in their production and transportation, and generally get shredded or dumped after the annual festivities. I think we really need to move on from them. Think of this as my virtual season's greetings.

I know many regard me as a grumpy old curmudgeon when it comes to the Christmas festivities; and I suppose I am to an extent. I suppose having no children does mean that I don’t see the holiday from their perspective. For the most part it is a period for me to endure, rather than enjoy. I am not saying that the festival is a complete anathema, but it sometimes feels that way. One thing I really detest is the journey home from work on the couple of weeks’ before the Christmas break. One invariably encounters “amateur drinkers” who have been on a boozy Christmas lunch; not able to hold their drink (or to know when to stop before the effects impaired their actions) they generally make the lives of their fellow commuters insufferable, even if it is just by sitting close by and breathing alcohol fumes over their fellows; I have to say that when in the office, either in Canary Wharf or Watford, my habit is to start early and finish early. In doing this I avoid the worst excesses of those suffering from a Yuletide surfeit of Dizzyade. I feel sorry for fellow commuters that have to travel later in the evening – I have been there in years past, and it is not pretty!

I periodically have a spring clean of my work laptop bag; I have an annoying habit of accruing all sorts of junk in the bag, which is my mobile office. Because my work role is peripatetic (and yes, I know you can get ointment for it nowadays) I don’t have a desk or cabinet to store all my bits and pieces. Back in the day when I was based in an office in Southwark, I used to enjoy a whole walk in store room to myself – I had entire desktop computers, spare hard drives, all sorts of cabling, tools, a couple of digital multi testers, and even a bath towel* squirreled away. Now I just have my bag. Whilst I was clearing out the bag, I thought that it was a good opportunity to do the same with my wallet, as that also is somewhat guilty of attracting all sorts of detritus – people’s business cards are a case in point. What I came across were a number of shop gift vouchers and cards, almost all of which were well past their redemption date. I reckon I had at least £50 in unusable credit sitting in my wallet. Bearing this in mind, I wonder exactly how much cash is tied up around the country with unused gift vouchers and the like? I reckon there must be millions, if not billions of pounds sitting in drawers and wallets around the UK. The winner of course are the companies that sell the vouchers in the first place. I have done some research with the UK Gift Card and Voucher Association (of whose existence I previously was unaware) and they estimate that there is at any one time approximately £250 million unspent and expired gift voucher credit on total sales of £2.1 billion a year. This would be enough to build and equip a major regional teaching hospital – it is in no way small change. I think the problem is compounded by the fact that the vouchers expire after two years – something most people are unaware of.

*Bath towel – read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the reasons why a bath towel is the single most important item a person can ever own. Douglas Adams wrote: "A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a brush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with." The ending video this week is the full length 2005 movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Many fans feel the movie was weaker than the 1981 television series, but for a newbie to the whole Guide phenomenon, it is a pretty good place to start. So here is all one hour and fifty minutes of the film, in high definition - click the icon for full screen presentation, should you so wish. Comments below, as always.

Where there's muck, there's brass.

Erith is somewhat unusual in that it is a town that still has an old – style “cottage hospital”. I don’t know how many local residents are even aware of this, as unless you live in close proximity to the site in Hind Crescent, you might well have not heard of it. Nowadays the hospital is mainly used for blood tests and X-rays, rather than in patient care. Back in the 1980’s there was a small surgical unit in the hospital where routine type procedures were carried out. There were two wards accommodating a maximum of thirty one in – patients in 1986. Nowadays the most common reason to visit the hospital is to have an X-ray. The X-ray department is located in a rather unusual out building, which resembles a “Happy Shopper Bond villain lair” in the words of my best friend Ian. You can see a photo of the building above – click for a larger view. The bunker was built in 1938 by the then Erith Borough Council as part of the Emergency Medical Service introduced by the Ministry of Health to deal with the anticipated large-scale casualties from enemy bombing during the Second World War. The provision was mainly hutted accommodation and although another five of these concrete structures were planned on the site, no others are known to survive. The only other underground hospitals known are the one at Dover Castle built by the military as a Field Dressing Station as part of a combined HQ accommodation and the underground hospital at Jersey built by the Germans with forced labour for their defence from the allies. Neither of these examples are comparable with this structure at Erith. The bunker was converted from an emergency field hospital into an X-ray department in 1950. The bunker structure was granted Grade II listed status in 2003, due to its history and uniqueness. It certainly still has a war – time atmosphere; on the one occasion I had to visit the bunker, I half expected a brace of Hurricanes to fly overhead! The photo below shows some of the war time staff that ran the place, along with some description of their working conditions. Fascinating local history. Thanks to Ian for taking the photos and passing them to me to use on the Maggot Sandwich.

I have been a Sky customer for more years than I care to remember; I was one of the early adopters of the original Sky Digital, after having the original analogue system for a couple of years. Now I am on Sky HD+ and I have noticed over the last year or so that Sky seem to be changing their approach to content. It used to be heavily biased towards sports and popular entertainment, and whilst this is still very much the case, there is now a much stronger emphasis on high quality programming, with new channels like Sky Atlantic (The Borgias, Boardwalk Empire) and Sky Arts One and Two. Sky Arts in particular is a departure from the normal populist entertainment Sky is well known for. I have watched a 1969 black and white recording of a very young Led Zeppelin playing to a live audience in Paris, seen a documentary about Peter Gabriel’s “Real World” studio in Bath, and watched footage from the 2012 Beatles week festival – all things you would be hard pressed to find on BBC2 nowadays. Sky Arts seems to be filling the hole left by the Old Grey Whistle Test, and out “BBCing” the BBC. It is clear that Sky is spending money on what might be considered as minority interests, which is interesting considering the commercial nature of their operation. I would be interested in what others think of the direction Sky seem to be heading in.

The mystery surrounding the intermittent foul and sickly smells that have been plaguing Erith for the last few weeks has been solved. Following my recent Emails to the Council on the subject, I had a phone call from James Meconi of Bexley Environmental Health Service first thing on Friday morning, and he explained what was going on. It turns out the smells are coming from ADM Oils, the vegetable oil processing plant In Church Manor Way, Erith (see the photo above - click for a larger view). The processing of various seeds and organic matter into cooking oil produces some pretty horrible smells; it turns out that you need a special licence from the Department of the Environment to carry out the processing at all. For the last ten years, ADM have had a special smell filtering and odour mitigation system in operation, which until recently has done a good job of keeping nasty smells to a minimum. Recently the system began to wear out, and at present ADM are in the middle of replacing it with a brand new odour control system. At present there is no odour filtering due to the engineering work. They expect the new system to be up and running by the end of October. I have been asked by the Council to monitor the situation, and if we are still getting nasty smells by the beginning of November, to let them know and they will take appropriate action.

The news that London Resort Company Holdings (LRCH) propose to build the World’s fourth largest theme park for Paramount Entertainment on the site of the derelict quarry site at Swanscombe has got to be excellent news for the entire region, if not the country as a whole. The proposed site features Europe’s largest indoor water park, theatres, hotels, restaurants and all manner of themed rides, all in a site spread over approximately 872 acres. The bill (at least now, but it is bound to escalate) is estimated to be in the region of £2 billion, and the park will employ 27,000 people, many of them from the local area. If this plan gets the green light (and I seriously doubt it won’t) it will be a massive boost for the economy for the whole of North Kent and South East London. Much of this story is detailed on the News Shopper website here. What amazes me (quite apart from my usual misgivings about the quality of talkbacks and lack of moderation on their website) is the naysayers who are already moaning about the increase in traffic and likely disruption that the construction work will undoubtedly cause. These small minded people seem to completely miss the fact that the park will be a complete economic game changer for an area that will stretch from around Woolwich to down well past Gillingham. Once the park is built and running there will be all sorts of permanent jobs needed to keep the place ticking over – electricians, security, engineers, cleaners, administrators – the list is as long as your imagination. Ironically the brown field site in Swanscombe was the location of the destruction of Top Gear’s old “reasonably priced car” when local company Erith Construction blew up the old LaFarge factory chimney onto the hapless vehicle, as part of a stunt for the show.

I was discussing the issues with 3D television a couple of weeks ago; since then I have learned some interesting facts about OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens which were meant to be “the next big thing”. They are thinner that conventional LED or LED screens, as they don’t need a backlight. Currently they are in development hell, with Samsung promising dates that now seem to be eternally slipping. The main problem is that OLED screens are difficult to make in large numbers, as they have a niggling problem with dead pixels – something that used to be relatively common in all types of flat screen TV technologies, but nowadays is deemed unacceptable by consumers. When you are shelling out around £5,500 for a 50 inch TV, the last thing you would expect to see is a tiny dark spot on the screen. By the time the likes of Samsung and LG have ironed out the wrinkles in their production technology, and can actually supply OLED sets for consumer use, another technology will be on the horizon. 4K television is the next generation of high definition, having a resolution of 3840 x 2160, four times higher than the current 1920 x 1080 offered by existing technology. This higher resolution can be offered using existing LED technology – no new processes are required. Whilst the 4K sets will cost approximately twice as much to build as a standard HD set, this is still far cheaper than making an OLED set – and I understand that the huge cost of making OLED screens is unlikely to come down a significant amount until around 2017. The problem with 4K and its ’”retina” level resolution is that there is very little in the way of native 4K content available now, or in the immediate future. Certainly 1080 content can be upscaled to 4K, but it will not really sparkle until the likes of Sky and Virgin can offer original, native 4K programming. Nevertheless it seems likely that the real future of high definition television is with the cheaper to make, higher resolution 4K format, rather than the technologically more impressive, thinner OLED that we have all expected to win the television format war. Only time will tell if we end up with another Betamax versus VHS war.

Pound Town has proved to be surprisingly popular with local residents. The shop, currently located in the old Wise Furnishings premises on the corner of the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre that faces towards the Bexley Council offices, is looking to relocate to a larger unit. This will be interesting, as I am not aware of any units bigger than the one Pound Town already inhabit being available. One hope I have for the move (wherever they move to locally) is that their new home is air conditioned; their current shop is stiflingly hot and stuffy even on relatively cool days. It is bad enough for the customers – it must be terrible for the employees. Still, whatever the details, it is good to see a local business succeeding. The previous occupant of their current shop building – Wise Furnishings, did not last very long at all; they ended up cutting and running after the level of business that the shop did was unable to support itself. I always thought a “big ticket” shop would not be successful in Erith, as it is not a destination which non locals visit. You go to Bluewater or Lakeside to buy such items. Something like a pound store was always going to be a better business fit with the area; and it would appear to have been borne out by the facts. The owners of the Riverside Shopping Centre have still not managed to let all of the retail units, although the level of utilisation is a lot better than in the first couple of years of it opening, where a majority of shop front space was covered by decorated chipboard panelling, trying in vain to disguise the empty and unloved retail units. 

Have you ever put some key search words into a search engine such as Google or Bing, and got back some really unexpected results? For example, searching for “bicycle safety” and getting results from payday loan websites. If you have, this is down to a criminal activity called search engine poisoning. Search engine poisoning attacks are designed to skew results so that dodgy sites - anything from malware infected websites to payday loan sites - appear prominently in the index of sites related to popular search terms. In many cases the tactic is so successful that malware sites appear in the first page of results for popular search terms, in sometimes much higher than legitimate websites. More recently, miscreants have begun trying to manipulate image search results. The murky world of high interest payday loan sharks is to blame in many cases. The lenders always require details of potential new customers – what they refer to as “leads” and they are prepared to pay substantial amounts of money to grab as many leads as they can. One way that they do this is by hiring “lead generators” – dodgy, semi legal outfits that have been involved in hacking innocent, completely unconnected websites to redirect to payday loan websites and similar. The other side of this, is if you were actually searching for, as previously mentioned, a bicycle safety site, your search would result in your enquiry being redirected to a dodgy loan website – and your details potentially being siphoned off your web browser for the lead generating company to sell on to the highest bidder. All search engines suffer poisoning to some degree or other; web analytics from security company Sophos indicate that currently Microsoft’s Bing is the worst affected – which is surprising as it is relatively small in comparison to the elephant in the corner – Google. It would appear that whilst Google does suffer from search poisoning, their security is tighter, and less gets through.

The photo above was taken by local resident Norbert from a viewpoint on Erith Pier; it shows the moment when the cranes were used to install the turbine blades on the body of the new Erith wind turbine a couple of weeks ago. Since the News Shopper led mini furore last week, the complaints of a handful of residents seem to have died down. Personally, I think it is a better piece of industrial sculpture than any of the so called street "art" around here, and has the added bonus of generating 500 kilowatts of electricity much of the time. From observing it from my home office window, I have noticed that the rotor will spin under the very lightest of breezes - it would appear to be particularly efficient, which is an added bonus. if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you should immediately notice that the turbine is  located on an industrial estate on Slade Green Marshes, with a couple of breakers yards for company - it is not exactly in anyone's back garden, though as I mentioned, I can clearly see it from mine. Behind the turbine you can clearly see the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge - more popularly known as the Dartford River Crossing.

Just as Microsoft are about to launch their next version of their desktop operating system, Windows 8 to a largely indifferent world, I recall the hype and drama behind the launch of Windows XP back in 2001. I was invited to the UK launch at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. I had managed to wangle a free ticket through work (being employed by a multi - national blue chip company does occasionally have its’ perks). The event started with a film presentation with professional idiot and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on screen “WWE” style, bigging up the new OS and then saying how he regretted not being able to attend in person. Just as he finished this, when, also in a style reminiscent of WWE he ran down the aisle from the back of the stalls hollering and whooping like someone demented. I was sat at the end of a row, and he passed me within inches. If I had slightly better presence of mind, I could have stuck my foot out and sent him flying. 

An Erith based environmental enterprise made the national business press last week. Manor Road based paper recycling company Pulp Friction (no, I am not making it up) got sold last Tuesday for £9 million to Pennon Group PLC, the UK’s third largest publicly traded water company. They announced that the purchase of Pulp Friction was part of their strategy to further expand their waste management and recycling business. It just goes to confirm the cliché – “where there’s muck there’s brass”. Hopefully Pennon Group will invest in the local business. Having seen Pulp Friction lorries on the roads around the area, I had incorrectly assumed that they had a number of depots in the region; after doing a little research, it turns out that they just have the one facility on the banks of the River Thames, almost underneath the new Erith Wind Turbine. Now that they are owned by a much larger company with correspondingly deeper pockets that might well change in time. It is nice to see a small business succeed, especially in the increasingly important area of recycling. You can see a short video about the local company below. Please feel free to leave a comment, as always.

Polo Golf.

Some months ago I promised to publish a photograph of one of the new Alexander Dennis Enviro 400 buses now running on the 99 route through Erith, between Woolwich and Bexleyheath. The problem  was, I had not actually taken any photos of the buses, which was pretty remiss, as they run past my front door every few minutes. Anyway, I determined to get out and take some bus related photos, and here is one of them. The 99 bus, stopped at the Bexleyheath bound bus stop outside of the Londis corner store in Manor Road, Erith. Click on it for a larger view.

Pound Town has now successfully opened in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre; I visited it earlier this week, and it certainly seems to have a very wide variety of stock, and seems to be attracting a lot of customers. The one overwhelming issue that comes to my mind however is that the place is incredibly hot and lacking in ventilation - it was an absolute oven in there on a not particularly warm day. I am concerned for the health and wellbeing of the staff and customers. The place was an absolute hothouse - they really need to sort out the environment for all of the inhabitants - it was intolerable during my short visit, and would definitely deter me from dropping in again. Some air conditioning or plain old fashioned ventilation is in order.

Over the last couple of weeks I have received some questions about what the Maggot Sandwich is, and what it is actually designed for. The Maggot Sandwich is a Blog. A Blog is an online journal / personal diary. In my case, the Maggot Sandwich is designed to be a mixture of local news and personal opinion, topped off with a few amusing interludes and quirky stuff I have found online. It is designed primarily to entertain, like a magazine - if you pick up a few local tips on the way, great. I rely on feedback and tip - off from local people in order to create the weekly content. Needless to say, I am not a professional journalist or writer. Lots of people create and maintain blogs - it is now a very common way to bring local community groups and like minded individuals together - or just to have a quick read, and hopefully a laugh or two. The Maggot Sandwich is now read weekly by over 41,000 people from all around the world, and has been featured by Sarah Hartley in the Guardian, the News Shopper, and on XFM radio. Local MP Teresa Pearce is an occasional reader, as are the staff of Bexley Council, the local Police, and a number of local media outlets - this is in addition to random people from all over the planet. The Maggot Sandwich was voted as one of the 50 top blogs in London in September 2010 at the national online conference held at the OFCOM offices on the South Bank. I rely on information from readers and local residents to ensure the stories I publish online are both timely and accurate. Most stories are either originally sourced from local word of mouth, observation of planning notices that have been posted in the area, or other informal methods. This is an appeal to you - the loyal readers of the humble Maggot Sandwich. Keep me informed of local issues, events and quirky stories - especially if they involve something a shade on the geeky side - you know it makes sense.


The proposed frequencies to be used by the forthcoming advanced 4G mobile phone services may interfere with Freeview TV signals. Ofcom has extended the period for consultation on proposals for technical licence conditions for the award of 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum. The new closing date for responses to this consultation is 11th August 2011. Whilst not strictly related to amateur radio, there is an Electro Magnetic interference concern. The new 800MHz 4G signals will fall within the bandwidth of masthead preamps and TV tuners, adding to an already complex mixture for TV interference complaints. It may well turn out that the issue becomes part of the law of unintended consequences.

The video above shows the first experimental launch of a Lockheed F35C Lightning II fighter jet from a land based steam catapult, simulating an aircraft carrier launch. Britain is purchasing a number of these advanced, stealthy aircraft, to replace the Harrier. They are still some years away from delivery, and a great deal of work is required in the meantime. Watch the video to get an idea of what the aircraft are like. Personally, I wonder if the huge amount of money would be better spent on additional transport aircraft such as the C17 Globemaster, and a whole load more heavy lift helicopters to service our troops on the ground. The F35 is all very high tech and whizzy, but in these times of fiscal hardship, is it the best use for tax payers money I wonder?

As you may know, my favoured mode of footwear is the tan coloured steel toe capped builders boot (see the photo above). I find them cheap to buy and maintain, comfortable to wear and reassuringly stout in appearance.  They also have the secondary function in that they are a reliable and ever present defensive weapon. The unstated threat of a size twelve steel toecap in the nadgers tends to focus the attention of the scrotes and low lives in the area quite satisfactorily.  I do customise the boots to some degree - I don't just don them "out of the box". When preparing a new pair, direct from the shop, I remove the standard, chunky laces, that are more suitable for a construction site than the kind of offices I inhabit. I then give the boots a complete clean, using Punch Suede and Nubuck cleaner foam - to remove any little niggling particles left over from the factory. I then leave them to dry for 24 hours. The next stage is to thoroughly treat them with Kiwi "Aquastop" silicone based water repellant spray. This gives the boots an invisible waterproof protection that prevents them becoming discoloured if exposed to rain or puddles. The final stage is to replace the standard laces with longer, dark brown, flat boot laces from Morrison's. They provide better tightening and control than the originals. That leaves the new boots ready for wear. They may be rather heavier and more clumsy than regular shoes, but the level of wearer comfort and implicit security more than makes up for this.

When I reached Plumstead railway station on Thursday afternoon, I was greeted by the sight of a massive raid by British Transport Police and the Revenue Protection team from South East Trains on the fare dodgers that are endemic in the area. I entered the ticket office of the station, and immediately saw a chav in handcuffs (always a gratifying sight, and something I wish I was witness to on more occasions). From a short conversation with one of the Police officers, it transpired that the offender had travelled without a ticket, and when challenged had got abusive. He was restrained and his details checked on the Police computer. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that not only did he have a record as long as your arm, but he had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, which the officers duly carried out - hence the handcuffs. Bunking a £4 railway ticket got him nicked and ready for sending off to jail. Some people really are just too stupid to be allowed out. As I consequently made my way home , I watched the  workmen undertaking the initial phase of the building activity between Plumstead and Abbey Wood railway stations which is now well under way, which is forming part of the forthcoming CrossRail project. This massive and long term construction project will link Abbey Wood with Maidenhead in the far West, and Shenfield in the far East. More interestingly, it will mean train journey times of 21 minutes to Tottenham Court Road from Abbey Wood, a journey time of 35 minutes from Abbey Wood to Ealing Broadway, and a travel time of around 41 minutes to Southall (a great place for a really good curry, home as it is to the Madhus Brilliant - one of the best Indian restaurants in the country). It all looks like a good deal for local public transport users. You can read more in detail about the whole Crossrail project by clicking here.

The Maggot Sandwich has now hit close to 42,000 visitors, and indeed, by the time you read this, it may have actually achieved this point. I guess that most of these will have stumbled upon it whilst looking for something else of more relevance to them, but it would seem from the figures that some still do tend to stick around - see the display below, which I culled from the Blogger users statistics earlier this morning. The figures don't give any information about repeat viewers unfortunately. 

I was in a particularly tedious meeting at work the other week; in an attempt to stop my own lower intestine throttling my brain in utter boredom, I determined to develop a new sport to replace the most time wasting and pointless pastime that is Golf. After a little consideration and some jiggling with rules, I evolved the sport of Polo Golf. Please let me elucidate. Polo Golf will involve a group of eight players, each equipped with an old style "sit up and beg" bicycle. They each have a choice of bat - a tennis racquet, fishing rod, cricket bat or lacrosse stick - the options are only limited by the contestants' imaginations. The aim is to use their weapon of choice to get the golf ball into each of the eighteen holes on the course, in the specific order in the shortest time possible. What's the harm in that? I hear you ask. Well, the entire event is designed to be a full contact combat - the players are able to attack each other to either deny the ball to an opponent, or just because bashing someone is a bit of a laugh when allowed as part of a sporting event. The players are permitted to wear any kind of protective gear they wish, with the one caveat that nothing can originate from after 1945. The reasoning behind this is that with older equipment, greater protection invariably means greater bulk and weight - no modern composite materials being available. In theory, a competitor could take part wearing a suit of field plate armour - but would be unlikely to get past the second or third hole due to exhaustion brought on my lugging around the heavy armour. A compromise between protection and bulk would have to be sought. A good combination might well be a cork life jacket plus a 1920's brass fireman's helmet. Oh, I forgot - there would also be additional marks awarded for style and panache. Obviously a shiny brass helmet might get points for elan, but it would clearly mark out the competitor for special attention from the others. All in all, gadding around a golf stadium on a bike, wearing improvised armour whilst bashing seven bells out of other contestants and potting balls into small holes seems a much more interesting way to spend ones' leisure time. It is designed to be a rather more civilised and cultured version of Rollerball for chaps. Do let me know what you think. All comments will be moderated and posted within 24 hours of receipt.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of MS DOS - one of the earliest products marketed by Microsoft, and the one thing that started their journey to world domination. They bought DOS from a third party developer called Seattle Computer Products for what turned out to be a derisory sum of money, and added some features to ensure that it would look and feel quite like CP/M to keep the older punters happy. Anyway, The Register does a far better job of documenting the history - which you can read by clicking here. 

In a similar retro vein, the presenters of BBC TV's "Top Gear"last week absolutely excelled themselves. After reviewing a restored and substantially updated Jensen Interceptor MK III, Jeremy Clarkson remarked how it made him feel like the star of a 1972 detective series. The team then went to work, to actually make the title series from the fictional show. It is spot on, and an absolute hoot - one of the best things on Top Gear for a very long time. It evokes the spirit of Jason King, Department S, the Persuaders and the Saint brilliantly. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the Interceptors...