Although I am still housebound with post Covid exhaustion, otherwise known as Long Covid for the seventh week, word reaches me that the former Atlas Chemicals retail park in Fraser Road Erith has just been boarded up and prepared for demolition. As I have previously written the site is going to be the location of a new discount supermarket by Lidl - an architects image above - click on it for a larger version. The German company has owned the site for nearly six years, but due to legal and planning issues it has been unable to redevelop it even though many of the units in the industrial site have been closed and empty for several years. As I had previously written, I have had contact with planners at the supermarket recently, who told me that they had now got vacant possession and were planning to start work to install a new outlet. I am of the opinion that this is a good thing as currently the giant supermarket Morrisons has no realistic competition locally and has been going downhill since it was taken over by the American private investment company Clayton Dubilier and Rice a while back. From feedback I have had from local people and readers, the overwhelming majority of residents in the area favour the creation of a new Lidl supermarket with the number of residents increasing since the opening of the quarry residential estate almost next door to the proposed supermarket site and the lack of viable competition for Morrisons. It strikes me as being a very sensible move. I know that many local people who used to use Morrisons on a regular basis are now keen to go elsewhere due to the reduction in the number of staff, the increase in the mostly hated automated checkouts, the significant raise in prices, and the lack of basic supplies on a regular basis such as eggs, milk and bread, and are keen to take their custom elsewhere. I think that a greater level of local competition would be good for all concerned, especially the shopper. It also occurs to me that people without access to a car who live at the Western end of Fraser Road will not have to use the bus to travel to Morrison's, Farm Foods or Iceland in order to do their shopping. I also understand that the workers in the various retail outlets in the former Atlas Chemicals retail site that have recently been closed prior to demolition will have priority when it comes to jobs at the new supermarket. In my personal experience, the quality of produce at Morrisons has been reducing over the last couple of years, and the prices have been going up disproportionately. After speaking to several members of the staff, I am aware that many are unhappy with the situation and the fact that they are no longer valued as they used to be under the old administration. I know of at least one who is keen to retire as soon as possible, even though she has worked at the store since it opened in 1999. This seems to be a common thread. Comments as always to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
Firefighters were once again called to the Europa industrial estate in Fraser Road, Erith. There was a fire in a large pile of industrial pallets, this was the second occasion in two weeks where the fire brigade were called to a blaze within the industrial estate. There has been some speculation amongst local people that the situation may be more than meets the eye. It is apparent that the site is now extremely run down and many of the industrial units are now empty or derelict. It has been suggested by some that the entire site is ripe for redevelopment and that it would make a very large and very lucrative housing estate being located next to a major road and close to Erith station. Bearing in mind the successful and highly profitable housing estate at the other end of Fraser Road - The Quarry - it is feasible that another former industrial site could be redeveloped into more housing. I am certainly not suggesting that the two recent fires at the Europa industrial estate are in any way connected with this, but the issue has certainly been debated. It has been noted by some that this may possibly be a similar situation that happens when pubs are closed and they mysteriously burn down prior to a developer purchasing them at a discount rate to redevelop for flats or other housing. There is certainly a coincidence, although I'm not aware of any hard evidence to support this. I know that Bexley council have plans for the whole of the local area to be residential rather than industrial over the next couple of decades. This includes areas such as the Eastern end of Manor Road, which is currently occupied by several engineering works and recycling facilities. I understand that in time these will eventually be closed and the land converted for housing. It would appear to me that the issues with the Europa industrial estate may coincide with the policies of the council in the medium to long-term. Again, I must stress, I have no concrete evidence for this and there is much local conjecture. If you have any information regarding this then please contact me in complete confidence.
Red public telephone boxes may soon be a thing of the past British telecom are engaging in a project to remove virtually all of the red telephone boxes outside of tourist areas in cities such as London. The principal reason for this is the cost of maintaining them versus the limited profits they now make. The UK has 14,000 working phone boxes, down from 20,000 three years ago; at their peak in the 1990s, there were 100,000. Of these, around 3,000 are the iconic red design. When about 95% of households have a mobile phone, it’s perhaps a wonder that phone boxes survive at all. Owned and run by BT, and costing millions of pounds each year, they are required by the regulator Ofcom under the quaintly named telephony universal service obligation. In the year to May 2020, almost 150,000 calls were made to emergency services from phone boxes, as well as 25,000 and 20,000 calls made to Childline and Samaritans, respectively. A phone box cannot be removed if it is the last in an area (more than 400 metres from another phone box), and if one or more of the following conditions apply: if it’s in an area without coverage from all four mobile network providers, or if at least 52 calls have been made from it in the past year, or if it is somewhere with a large number of accidents or suicides. British Telecom are saying that the number of boxes is no longer financially viable. I recall that some time ago there was a well – used payphone in Manor Road, outside of the former Royal Alfred pub. A reliable source told me that the phone box use got very much heavier, the further into the month one went. Apparently this was because local addicts would use it to phone their drug dealers when the credit on their mobile phones had run out. That all ended in the autumn of 2011 when joy riders in a stolen BMW lost control of the car and crashed into the phone box. It was thought that as the pay phone generated a fair deal of cash, that BT would replace it, but after a few days the box was removed and the hole it left in the pavement was covered with tarmac. That was the end of what I understood to have been the most profitable phone box in the area, so I am not exactly surprised that less well – earning phone boxes are being retired. I do have concerns however; mobile phone signal coverage is generally good in and around Erith, due mainly to the cell transceivers and antenna farm on the roof of Electricity House next to the Fish roundabout. Other parts of the London Borough of Bexley have far patchier mobile phone coverage, not to mention what would happen in the event of a national or local disaster, or even a terrorist attack? One of the first things to go down in such an event are the mobile phone networks. The authorities have the ability to disable all mobile phones in a given cell or series of cells, with the exception of specialist mobile phones (which have to be approved by the Police and the Home Office) which are used by the disaster recovery teams in large organisations. In certain circumstances, the entire mobile phone network may go down. If this happens the only alternatives are old fashioned copper landline telephones, or the most reliable backup method of communication – two way radio. Unless, like me you are a Radio Amateur, the options for two way radio operation are very limited; CB and PMR 446 are pretty much limited to line of sight – 4 to 6 miles at sea level on average (your mileage may vary due to a number of factors I won’t go into here). This is where the organisation RAYNET steps in; RAYNET is a voluntary emergency service operated by Radio Amateurs that provide short, medium and long range voice, video and data communications in areas where there has been a total loss of mainstream communications. RAYNET volunteers train alongside the Fire Brigade, Police, Ambulance Service, Mountain Rescue and RNLI. When all other forms of communication have failed, radio will always get through. What I am really saying is, if you want to maintain reliable communications under any sort of adverse circumstances, then you really need to become a Radio Amateur – you can read all about how to apply here.
A campaign has been launched to try and preserve some of the UK's telephone boxes; not as you might suppose the iconic red telephone boxes so beloved of tourists to the country, as previously mentioned, but instead the model shown in the photo above - click on it to see a larger version. The Twentieth Century Society, which champions outstanding examples of modern design, has applied for listed status for one KX 100 phone box each in England, Scotland and Wales before they are removed next year. At the time, the boxes were promoted as vandal-proof, airy and wheelchair accessible. As the glass door (if fitted) did not extend to the ground, they were easier to clean and less likely to smell of urine – which had become a feature of the red boxes. BT later conceded that the new boxes were unpopular with the public. In a 2010 account of a history of telecommunications in the UK, BT said: “Popular opinion was that the square shape seemed clinical and that something softer and more rounded would be preferable.” In an interview with The Guardian, a spokesperson for The Twentieth Century Society said:- “C20 Society has been the guardian of Britain’s telephone boxes for 45 years, and we’re now reviving our famous campaign in an attempt to preserve a handful of the underappreciated KX 100s – the last in the line of the public payphone. It may be viewed as the ‘ugly duckling’ in comparison with the iconic red phone boxes, but with these three kiosks, we’ve identified the very best exemplars across the country that deserve their place in the history books". At their peak in the early 1990s, there were just over 100,000 public payphones in the UK. There are now fewer than 14,000. Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
The end video this week is of the Blackheath Tea Hut - which has been serving customers on Blackheath Common since 1924. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
