The "Our Erith" art exhibition.

This weekend saw the launch of the first "Our Erith" art exhibition, hosted by The Friends of Christ Church Erith within the confines of the listed church building. Over 120 original paintings, photographs, sculptures and embroidery were on show. The event was opened by the Friends of Christ Church sponsor, MP for Erith and Thamesmead, Teresa Pearce. It had been intended for the Mayor of Bexley to open the event, but due to a mix - up at the Mayor's office, the event was not recorded in her diary. This was not a major setback, and Teresa, along with Friends Committee Chairman Jim Bennett made a great job of opening the exhibition. You can get an idea of a small number of the many exhibits from the photos above and below - click on any one for a larger view. 

Housing concerns make headlines in the local press this week; the News Shopper reports that a Crayford based midwife by the name of Elaine Willis has submitted a Freedom of Information request to Bexley Council to find out how much of the housing being planned, or under construction in the borough will be available to affordably rent. The answer is disturbingly little. The Erith Park development has fifty six percent of affordable rental properties; the forthcoming Riverside Swimming baths site redevelopment will have twenty five percent for affordable rent, and the Howbury Centre site in Slade Green will have fourteen percent for affordable rent. Mrs Willis told the News Shopper “My main concern is about all the buildings going up in this area and only a minute amount is social housing.  It must be absolutely horrible living in temporary accommodation with all these properties going up in this area. There is nothing for the people on the waiting lists. It seems wrong to me.  I grew up on a council estate - how to hell are they going to buy a £250,000 house? It’s just going to get more and more expensive to live down here.  I am a qualified midwife and I earn a decent wage but I wouldn’t even be able to buy a place.  People are having their aspirations taken away because they can’t buy a home." Sadly many people are in this position. I have a well-paid job working for a multinational professional services firm, but even so, the pace of property inflation has been so high that I could not afford to buy my own house if I was in the market for it today. Mrs Willis also points out that none of the properties being constructed on the Erith Quarry or Tower Hill sites in Erith have any provision for affordable housing. I think she misses a point here, however. Both the Erith Quarry (The Anderson Group) and Tower Hill (Barratt Homes) sites are fully commercial ventures being constructed by private firms rather than housing associations. They are there to make a profit for their shareholders, and as far as the Erith Quarry development is concerned, I understand that it is being pitched as an aspirational location with two, three and four bedroomed houses – the developers are aiming at relatively wealthy professional people buying their second or third time around home, not at first time buyers. They are hoping that the influx of middle class people into the predominantly working class area will mean that money will come into Erith, and hopefully filter into the local economy. The costs of properties in both Tower Hill and Erith Quarry are indeed substantially higher than the norm for the area, but perversely substantially cheaper than equivalent properties in other areas with a similar commuting time into central London. Mrs Willis did omit one development from her information request – she forgot about the forty new apartments for affordable rent in James Watt Way, which will be ready for occupation very soon now. The entire block is one hundred percent available for affordable rent. I would imagine that interest in this site must be very high – it will be interesting to observe as tenants get to move in soon.

As I have mentioned in the past, I feel that I am not alone in seriously considering ditching my subscription to Sky TV, which I have had for the last twenty years. The quality of programmes and especially the selection of premium movies leaves much to be desired, and I seriously resent paying for premium channels like Sky Atlantic, and still have to sit through advert breaks. All Sky subscribers are actually paying a subscription to watch adverts – it makes no sense. In the USA, commercial TV companies are already feeling the pinch. Some are cutting back on the number and length of their commercial breaks to try and tempt back customers who are now voting with their feet and leaving the traditional broadcasters and moving to subscription based, advert free streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Netflix knows their customers hate ads. "We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising," Howard Shimmel, a chief research officer at Time Warner, told Bloomberg in an interview last year. "Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads." In response to Netflix's advertising policy, many networks have actually cut back on the amount of ads they show in an effort to lure back in the younger Netflix / Amazon Prime generation. Media analyst CordCutting.com crunched some numbers and found that each Netflix subscriber saves themselves about 158.5 hours of commercials per year. The number will be somewhat lower in the UK and most of Europe, where fewer adverts are allowed per hour of broadcast television, but it is still a substantial number. As I have previously written, I consider the Sky business model to be fundamentally broken, and if they don’t move away from hugely expensive satellite broadcasting and convert to a streaming service, I think they will be dead and gone in the next five years. What do you think? Comment below, or Email hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Devices such as mobile phones and tablets such as the Apple iPad can use swipe based authentication to lock and unlock the screen. This is convenient and relatively easy to remember when compared to a password or pass number, as many also use. The problem is that swiping has proved to be relatively insecure. I have in the past successfully unlocked a Samsung tablet which used swipe authentication - after getting permission from the owner. I won't detail how here, but suffice to say it is very simple indeed. Alternative methods of securing mobile devices are now being identified by hardware manufacturers. Among the many clever post-password authentication schemes currently under development is multi-touch gesture analysis. The basic idea is to observe a user's movements on a touchscreen device for some period of time and to come up with a gestural profile unique to that individual. Then, based on this profile, the system can verify a user's identity continuously as they use the device. The idea sounds fishy, yes. Couldn't some hacker just observe those same gestures and then mimic them to gain access to a system? The answer should be no because the gestures read by the system are interpreted in such a way as to compile biometric profiles of the user's hand/wrist/etc, resulting in a model that can be used to interpret/verify new/different gestures down the line.  While gestural ID systems are getting a lot of research play these days thanks to error rates trending toward the low single-digits, they also tend to take a rosy view of the security world in which hackers attempt to breach such defences via crude impersonation, e.g. when one hacker-user attempts to mirror some target-user. This is called a zero-effort attack and it stands in contrast to an attack-by-forgery, in which an attempt is made to recreate (rather than mimic) the user-target. A DARPA -funded report titled "Robotic Robbery on the Touch Screen" published recently in the journal ACM Transactions on Information and System Security looks at gestural authentication through the eyes of a more sophisticated hacker. It presents two Lego-driven robotic attacks on a touch-based authentication system—one is based on gestural statistics collected over time from a large population of users and the other is based on stealing gestural data directly from a user. Both were pretty effective. "Both attacks are launched by a Lego robot that is trained on how to swipe on the touch screen," the paper explains. "Using seven verification algorithms and a large dataset of users, we show that the attacks cause the system’s mean false acceptance rate (FAR) to increase by up to fivefold relative to the mean FAR seen under the standard zero-effort impostor attack." To amass enough statistics to launch the first attack, the researchers took 41 subjects, mostly college students between 18 and 25 years of age, and had them accomplish various tasks on an Android phone representing fairly normal Android operation. 28 different swipe-features were tabulated, ranging from touch-pressure to swipe start and end locations to swipe duration. The resulting data was then compiled into a single ultra-generic power-user.  This power-user ultimately became the Lego robot, which was outfitted with a Play-Doh-moulded "finger." The robot was able to achieve a 70 percent FAR for the least affected gesture-recognition algorithm the experiment tested. In other words, the robot was usually able to trick a recognition algorithm using high-resolution statistical observations of actual smart-phone usage. The second attack involved the theft of actual gesture-recognition data from a collection of target-user's phones. This data was then used by the robot to recreate a specific target-user's swiping biometrics, with, as expected, even better results. FARs for this method hit ninety percent at the high end.  While continuous gesture-based authentication is really only meant to be a backup to other (one-time) authentication methods, its apparent leakiness should be concerning. Also of concern, the authors note, is the traditional usage of zero-effort attacks for representing the relative successes of gestural algorithms.  "Because the attacks require only basic programming skills and are launched using cheap off-the-shelf hardware, they represent a realistic threat that should be expected to be faced by a real deployment of a touch-based authentication system," the paper concludes. "The article not only calls for the incorporation of robotic attacks in the standard impostor testing routine of touch-based authentication systems but also calls for research into mechanisms that could defeat these attacks”.

As I predicted some time ago, the number of shopping trolleys and baskets that are being stolen from Britain's supermarkets has rocketed since the plastic carrier bag charge came into force last October. Some supermarkets such as Asda are fitting their baskets and trolleys with electronic security tags to try and prevent thefts. Some light fingered shoppers are even pinching trolleys from stores and then dumping them in the streets after removing their shopping. Trolleys cost about £100 to replace and baskets around £10 – while electronic security tags cost just £1 each. I have also heard evidence from the medical profession that reusing "bags for life" can be extremely hazardous, as cross contamination from raw and ready to eat foods can occur, and bacteria can live on the surfaces of the bags for several days. There is anecdotal evidence that incidences of campylobacter and salmonella are on the increase. In a recent press interview, Professor Anthony Hilton, head of biological and biomedical science at Aston University, said the public needs to be educated about the dangers of contaminated bags. Professor Hilton and his team worked out that millions of bacteria cells can survive on plastic bag for days or even weeks - including potentially deadly E. coli. He said: "Reusing plastic bags is hugely beneficial to the environment but the public should be mindful of the ability of bacteria to contaminate and survive on bags for long periods of time. Bacteria can easily transfer from different types of reusable bags to the hands and back again. What is more, using the same bag repeatedly for different purposes increases the risk of contaminating the bag with a whole host of harmful bacteria. For example, carrying fresh meat brings with it known contamination risks and if you then use the same bag for carrying ready-to-eat foods such as cheese or bread there is the potential for cross-contamination. Likewise, if you carry sports shoes one day and then shopping the next." He advises that people only use certain bags for certain types of food produce, and always wash hands and goods thoroughly.

I don’t normally pass comment on stories that get covered by the national press, as I usually don’t find that I have anything to add to them. In this case I will make an exception. You may have seen the story about the tiny flat in Thamesmead - In the online listing, on Hunters estate agents website,  is described as: "One bedroom flat, available immediately. There is a lounge, fitted kitchen, double bedroom and gas central heating."  It is exceedingly small, having originally been designed for a car, and the lounge is only 4.42m by 2.26m. To be honest I wonder if it is even a legal development; the garages are for the storage of cars and other vehicles, and are not designed for habitation. It strikes me as being very similar to the “beds in sheds” phenomenon where unscrupulous landlords cram as many tenants into a property as they can physically manage, in order to illegally increase their earnings. Planning regulations, health and safety and fire regulations are ignored.  This story sounds very similar. I wonder if the notoriety of the story, and how widespread it has become will cause the planning authorities to take action? It is in interesting to note that the estate agents are up to their old tricks – they say that the tiny flat is located in Abbey Wood, when it is actually situated in one of the less desirable parts of Thamesmead.

You may recall me writing a while back in praise of the Tesla model S electric luxury limousine car. Do you have a teenage child that likes to borrow your car and then destroy it in a spectacular crash? I sincerely hope the answer to that question is a resounding "no," but in the off chance that you do, you may want to consider changing your current vehicle for a Tesla model S. Last week in Germany, the joyriding daughter of a Tesla owner discovered first hand just how safe the electric vehicle is, after losing control at high speed and rolling into a field. According to German newspaper Merkur, the 18-year old and four of her friends were messing around in her father's Model S before losing control. The car flew more than 80 feet (25m) into a field before rolling once and coming to a halt. Although three of the occupants had to be helicoptered to hospitals in Munich for treatment, none of their injuries were life-threatening, a testament to the safety of Tesla's skateboard chassis. Unlike a conventionally powered car, the Model S (and the newer Model X) have no large engine up front to intrude into the passenger compartment during a collision. This means the front and rear crumple zones can effectively dissipate the kinetic energy of a crash, as seen to good effect in the photographs taken after the accident, which you can see here. While the Model S was heavily damaged, one does not need much of an imagination to think that a similar crash in a front-engined internal combustion vehicle would have had a much worse outcome for the car's five occupants. In essence, if the teenagers had been in a conventionally powered car, they would have very likely have been killed. 

You may recall my account of attending the Bexley Beer Festival that I published last week. The event was excellent, well attended and as always very relaxed and friendly. What I neglected to mention was that afterwards myself and three friends decided that we would walk into Bexley Village and have a curry. We ended up at the very pleasant Baltizer Restaurant, which is located in one of the railway arches in the town centre. A very nice meal was had by all; amongst the dishes we enjoyed was a large bowl of outstanding lentil dhall, which was shared by the party. I love dhall - it is a cheap, nutritious and tasty dish which anyone, carnivore, veggie or vegan can eat. There is only one problem with it, which normally arises the next morning. That is rampant flatulence - I ended up sounding like a badly tuned two - stroke outboard engine for most of the Saturday, and I was not the only one of the group so affected. This got me thinking - surely there must be a solution to this kind of embarrassing problem? I recently read that an inventor has come up with a material comprising of metallic silver chemically bonded to polyester, to make underpants that kill harmful microbes, and thus stop the pants from becoming smelly with wear. In addition to the antimicrobial properties, the underwear can also help regulate body temperature because of silver’s thermal conductivity properties. Inventor company Organic Basics says that the underwear is “elegant. It’s comfortable. It’s odourless. It’s the future of underwear.” The company is raising funds for manufacturing the boxers, as well as T-shirts and socks, on Kickstarter. However, while silver is effective at killing off foul microbes, it has no defence against the power of the fart. I had a think; as some will know parts of Lower Belvedere and Erith were at potential risk of Chlorine gas poisoning from the giant tank of liquified Chlorine which was located in the May and Baker chemical refinery in Lower Belvedere. In fact, back on the 22nd February 1986, some roads in Lower Belvedere were indeed evacuated following a Chlorine leak, though fortunately nobody was hurt. Parts of Erith are similarly affected by various chemicals stored in warehouses and yards in the in the Darent Industrial Park in Wallhouse Road, Slade Green. Consequent to all of these noxious chemicals in the local area, some time ago I purchased a brand new high end gas mask, seen in the photo above - click on it for a larger view. The gas mask is of the same type used by the United Nations Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons inspectors. I also have spare air filters. The air filters contain a number of elements designed to pass through only clean air - any gases, microbes or particles of radioactive material would be filtered out. One of the main constituents of the filters is Activated Carbon - this is the substance which removes gases and only passes clean air. I think you can see where I am going with this one. What if you were to equip silver bonded underpants with a "panty liner" incorporating a layer of Activated Carbon? You could produce a pair of pants that were flatulence filters. You could let rip to your heart's content, secure in the knowledge that not even the slightest noxious whiff would escape. It would not do anything about the sound however - so maybe the whole idea needs a little more development. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

At the "Our Erith" art show in Christ Church Erith, I spoke to numerous people who were not conversant with the history of Erith and the surrounding areas, and who had absolutely no idea of the historic connections Erith has with so many scientific and engineering inventions. Back in Edwardian times, Erith and Crayford were one of the arms manufacturing centres of the UK, mostly due tot he efforts of Sir Hiram Maxim. I thought that I would expand on a piece I wrote about Sir Hiram Maxim a while ago by publishing parts of his obituary, which was originally published back in November 1916 in the Times:- "Sir HIRAM STEVENS MAXIM was born at Sangersville, Maine, on 15th February 1840. His ancestors were Huguenots and came to England at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Early in the eighteenth century they emigrated to Plymouth, Mass., and a hundred years later went to Maine. At the age of fourteen his father apprenticed him to a coach-builder, and during this period he was credited with having constructed the first tricycle built in America. Soon after this he worked at his uncle's engineering works at Fitchburg, Mass., and later was at a philosophical instrument maker's, also at a shipbuilder's. He was for a time with Mr. Oliver P. Drake, a maker of gas-machines at Boston, and while so engaged invented in 1865 a machine for making lighting gas by means of vaporized petroleum. He also perfected an automatic sprinkler, and made improvements in feed-water heaters, steam and vacuum pumps, engine governors, gas-motors, etc. In 1878 he became chief engineer of the first electric lighting company in the United States, which was founded by Mr. S. D. Schuyler. While so engaged he invented the process of flashing carbon filament lamps in a hydrocarbon vapour, and took out patents for dynamos, lamp carbons, and secondary batteries. In 1881 he went to Europe to represent his firm in Paris, and while there he was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, on account of his invention of an electric pressure-regulator. It was at that time he became interested in machine-guns, and was introduced to Mr. Albert Vickers, who at once recognized the value of the invention, which surmounted the difficulty of cartridges jamming in the barrel. The Maxim Gun Co., with Mr. Vickers as chairman, was founded in 1884, and in 1888 amalgamated with the Nordenfeldt Co. Later, these were absorbed in the Vickers firm, which then became Vickers, Sons, and Maxim. The Maxim gun was adopted by the British Army in 1889, and by the Navy in 1892, and it has been supplied in large quantities to all the military powers of the world. When he ceased to be a director of the firm on his seventy-first birthday, in 1911, the title was again changed to Vickers Limited. It is reported that, on the suggestion of Lord Wolseley, he invented a smokeless powder, and evolved the Pom-Pom gun. The question of aviation had interested Maxim from his youth, but he never achieved successful flight. Many experiments were carried out during 1892-4 at Baldwin's Park, Kent, and the most novel features were the engines and boilers; but their weight, together with that of the feed-water and fuel, precluded their success. A Paper on this subject was read by him in 1894 at a Meeting of the British Association. The light motor, to which aeroplanes now owe their success, had not at that time been developed. One Paper he contributed to this Institution, namely on "The Maxim Automatic Machine-Gun " (Proceedings, 1885, page 167). Honours and decorations were accorded to him in most European countries, and he received the Order of Knighthood in 1901. He had a rare genius for invention, and, while discarding failures, took great pride in his successes, which ranged over a great variety of ideas. His death took place at Streatham on 24th November 1916, in his seventy-seventh year". His son Hiram Percy Maxim (1869-1936) followed in his father and uncle's footsteps and became a mechanical engineer and weapons designer as well, but he is perhaps best known for his early amateur radio experiments and for founding the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) - the American equivalent of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) of which I am a member.

The end video this week is of a venue that is very popular and well - known by people outside of the local area, but almost completely unknown to many locals. The Abbey Wood Caravan Club site is an incredibly popular location for visitors to London. I have visited the site - it is clean, well run and you would not know that you were in South East London. Highly recommended if you are on a camping trip and want somewhere to stay locally. 

The Erith Odeon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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