I took the photo above on Tuesday morning. The H&T Pawnbrokers in Bexleyheath Broadway had a team of shop fitters in to repair the damaged store frontage - the result of a ram raid, where criminals had crashed a stolen car through the security shuttering to steal jewellery and luxury watches, including a number of Rolexes from the window display. The raid happened at 3am on the 21st March. At the time of writing, no arrests have been made.
Following my article last week on Orange amplifiers, I was contacted by a reader called Margot with the following story:- "My mum Margot worked at Orange in Upland Road in the 70’s and 80’s. She had previously worked at Elizabethan in Erith until it closed. My dad worked at Burndept in Erith until he got a job as the Electrical Engineer at Southend Airport. Those were the days of valves . I can remember my dad being sceptical about the first transistor radios. The opening of the Orange factory in Upland Road was the beginning of something new and exciting for the area. Making amplifiers for pop groups was a rapidly growing business. They were a small group of staff. Most of the time a happy bunch. There would be visits from groups who would be keen to see how their amps were made. The management were very well respected and my mum said it was one of the best working environments she had. She even lied about her age because she didn’t want to retire. She enjoyed the work so much. I remember the name Barry cropped up quite a lot I think he was in charge of the production line and sorting out any problems, for instance if someone hadn’t soldered one of the joints properly. The factory was ideally situated, not far from the Broadway, just a short walk through the graveyard . This suited the ladies on the production line as the could nip out at lunch time and do a bit of shopping . I seem to remember there were Christmas Parties, something my mum had not encountered before. The management valued the staff and treated them well . I think she felt they were all like family. It was a sad day when the factory closed. I think she moved on to Rotosound for a few more years before retiring". Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
If you have an email address which includes @btinternet, @btopenworld, or @bt.com - basically any domain owned and operated by British Telecom, and you normally receive my weekly Blog update email, you may have noticed that you have not got the message for the last couple of weeks. The reason for this is that British Telecom have marked my messages as Spam. If you normally receive my emails and they suddenly seem to have stopped, this is the reason. If you have a BT account and can log a support call with them to get my emails unblocked, I would be extremely grateful.
I don't normally feature photos of myself on the Maggot Sandwich. I feel that doing so normally would smack of ego mania, even if the shots of me above (click on any for a larger view) are now 34 years old. This week I am making an exception, This Sunday marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the ground breaking offshore station Radio Caroline. The station was launched on Easter Sunday 1964, and revolutionised radio broadcasting in the UK. The history of Radio Caroline is long and complex; several books have been written on the subject, with varying viewpoints on both the station and the people who worked on it. You can read the very detailed Wikipedia entry on the station by clicking here. Many people only know about the offshore radio stations in the 1960's, and don't realise that Radio Caroline ran through most of the 1970's until the ship the Mi Amigo sank in 1980; after this they returned to the air in 1983 with a huge and very impressive ship - the former side trawler and ice breaker the Ross Revenge, which between 1983 and the hurricane of 1987 boasted a three hundred foot tall antenna mast, which was the tallest free floating marine structure in the world. The Ross Revenge remained at sea until November 1991. My time on board was towards the end of the station's time based at sea. Any semi clandestine organisation tends to attract eccentric characters, and Caroline was no different. In the greater scheme of things, my involvement with Radio Caroline was relatively brief – some people from the time, such as station manager Peter Moore are still hard at it today. My own time with Radio Caroline was between 1988 and 1992; You can see a handful of photos by clicking here. I have a couple of hundred others that are not yet digitised. Initially I was involved with a group of friends who helped run the shore side of the organisation, and arranged for secret supply deliveries to be made covertly to the Radio Caroline ship, the Ross Revenge, which was anchored fifteen miles off the Kent Coast, opposite the North Foreland in an area of sea called the South Falls Head. I made several secret supply runs on a variety of vessels – invariably these would set out from places such as Strood Pier or Ramsgate Harbour at the dead of night, laden down with fresh drinking water, food, technical supplies, new records, letters from listeners and most importantly, magazines and newspapers for the crew to read. At the time I was working as a trainee quantity surveyor for a very prestigious London company. More and more of my time was being taken up with Radio Caroline activities, to the point where I realised that I was going to have to give up the day job – which was not such a big step, as I was struggling with my surveying exams, and had already realised that life on a building site was not for me. I jacked in the job, and six weeks later I found myself on board the Ross Revenge. I had a dual role. In the daytime I was to project manage the complete repainting of the ship from stem to stern (I had encountered a very wealthy Radio Caroline fan who owned a large commercial painting and decorating business West of London, who was happy to supply the organisation with roughly £10,000 worth of high quality marine paint), then at night I hosted a radio show featuring album tracks and various quirky news items. I was fortunate that this all happened in the long and glorious summer of 1990 – the weather was excellent, sea conditions for the most part were calm, and life was good. I have a host of stories from my time with the station – many of which sound decidedly far- fetched, though in those cases I have photos from the period for proof! One particular memory - when Captain Colin, myself and DJ Colin Ward had to take the supply ship MV Phylgela into Ramsgate Harbour at around midnight - we were on the way to the Ross Revenge, but the sea was far too rough to get alongside. DJ Colin Ward went ashore to try and get something to eat. In the meantime, we got boarded by a Customs rummage crew; bearing in mind we had a roll of carpet, a sack of listeners letters, a large box of new records, and a load of bulk food we had been with station manager Peter Moore to Asda at Greenhithe to buy the previous day, it was pretty obvious what we were up to. The three Customs officers looked around the cabin, and I looked at Captain Colin - we were bang to rights. We made the three visitors cups of tea, expecting the worst, but then I realised that I recognised one of the Customs officers. A couple of years previously, I had a job as a clerk in the training unit at Custom House in Lower Thames Street, London. The chap I recognised had worked in the next office along the corridor from mine. He had since got a promotion to the rummage crew - he recognised me, and we had a pleasant chat. In the meantime, Wardie turned back up on the quayside smoking an enormous spliff - Captain Colin frantically tried to wave him away without drawing the attention of the Customs crew, and eventually he got the message and disappeared. When the Customs officers finished their tea, they all got up as one - we fully expected to be arrested on the spot. Instead they said that the weather should be a lot calmer in the morning, we should have a pleasant trip. As they all left, the chap I knew quietly said to me "Play us a record please?" He then grinned and left. The aforementioned MV Phylgela was an interesting little ship. She was a 30 ft wooden fishing cruiser of indeterminate age and lineage. Her most notable property was her engine, which I suspect was an unwanted love child between a Honda 2-stroke moped engine and that of an ancient cement mixer. To say the engine was under powered, rough and extremely noisy would be an understatement. It was also quite unreliable. On one occasion on a trip out to the Ross Revenge, the exhaust manifold on the engine of the Phylgela cracked and we had a very bad leak causing the engine to misfire and lose the little power that it had. The weather was extremely rough and we had to drop anchor adjacent to the Rough Sands Towers. Fortunately, we managed to make a temporary repair by using some aluminium foil that was wrapped around my sandwiches and some Polyfilla. We wrapped the exhaust manifold with the foil and Polyfilla mixture and waited for it to set. While this was happening, I noticed that we were dragging the anchor and getting extremely close to the giant legs of the Rough Sands tower. Captain Colin told me to gently start the engine and gradually put it into gear. Bearing in mind the proximity to the leg of the tower and the likelihood of us being smashed to pieces if we hit it, I turned on the engine, rammed the gear lever into gear and put the throttle to maximum. Fortunately the repair held and we were able to pull up the anchor and make our way to the Ross Revenge. Several people have suggested that I write a book about my experiences, and maybe sometime I will. To be honest, quite a few other Caroline staff have written books over the years, and I wonder whether I would actually contribute anything worthwhile to the genre.
Recently I had a conversation with a friend who asked me a question about my time at sea with Radio Caroline back in 1989 / 1990. They asked me what the worst thing about living and working on an offshore radio station was. This was actually not a particularly difficult question to answer; in fact anyone who has been in a such a position would probably have a similar answer. My response was "doing the Gods". In the mid to late 80's radio advertising revenue was rather hard to come by for Radio Caroline. Very few advertisers wanted to promote their products on the station, due to the strict laws prohibiting organisations advertising on what was a proscribed organisation. Instead the station fell back on a revenue stream that it had relied upon for many years in the past. In my time with Caroline the music based programming ceased at 7pm until resuming again at 9pm every evening. For the two hours in between the station broadcast sponsored religious programmes from mainly U.S based evangelical churches and preachers. The shows were pre - recorded onto very cheap and poor quality audio cassettes, and the sound on the tapes was usually atrocious - the audio levels would go up and down in a very unprofessional manner. The daily two hour stint was broken up into fifteen minute sections, with preachers able to book individual slots. The most unpopular broadcasting job on Radio Caroline was baby - sitting these broadcasts to ensure that the correct cassette recording got played in the right slot, the audio levels from the poor quality recordings was compensated, and that the daily transmission log was completed. Not every slot would have a religious broadcaster booked for it; if this was the case, the DJ would have to play suitably sombre instrumental music to fill the slot until the next broadcast was due to start. This two hour religious show was called "Viewpoint" - which Caroline staff referred to as "doing the Gods" - and we knew that the listeners hated it, and switched off in their droves during the two hour period - they wrote and told us so. They almost to a person realised they station needed to cover its not inconsiderable running costs, and taking religious programming for a limited two hour slot was a pragmatic way of doing this, however. Nowadays, if you want to listen to religious based programming in the UK, there are a multitude of alternative outlets, such as Premier Christian Radio (who I believe have their AM transmitter site on the Crayford Marsh). Back in the day these options did not exist; if you wanted to listen to religious programmes, the only option was shortwave radio, or the two hour early evening slot on Radio Caroline. During my time with Caroline, a couple of presenters outright refused to run the religious programmes; I was unusual in that I did not mind the duty. Because I had come from the supply and operations side of the organisation, I had a slightly better understanding of the logistics of the station operation. The revenue brought in by the religious broadcasts was basically keeping the station on air at that time. One bonus for the presenter "doing the Gods" was that they got their dinner brought up to them whilst they were running the tapes, along with tea and coffee. This was as compensation for carrying out what was regarded as an onerous duty. Nevertheless the wealthy American churches were happy to dole out their cash to Radio Caroline in order (as they saw it) to bring salvation to a bunch of heathen Europeans. It would not be stretching the truth to say that most, if not all of the broadcasters were somewhat strange - in fact most were utterly bonkers. Some of the organisations who bought airtime during the "Viewpoint" broadcasts included a group who called themselves "The Thirteenth Tribe of Israel" whose beliefs included that Britons were descended from Saint Paul, and that the UK was the 13th tribe of Israel. Another broadcaster who took up several daily slot on Caroline was Roy Masters and The Foundation of Human Understanding. Roy Masters was born in the UK as Reuben Obermeister in London in 1928 to a Jewish family of diamond cutters. As an adult, he moved to the USA and changed his name to Roy Masters. His radio programmes were syndicated to over 120 radio stations in the USA and around the world, making him at the time the second most broadcast voice in the world - more on the first most shortly. Roy Masters programmes mixed right wing conservative politics, anti feminism, misogyny, and anti conventional medicine, all combined with a presentation style of a therapeutic counsellor. Initially his broadcasts could sound quite reasonable, as he did not rant as so many evangelical preachers did, but spoke calmly and in a measured tone. It was only when you took detailed note of exactly what he was saying that you realised what a nut he actually was. In a 1984 interview with Us magazine, Roy Masters said: "I am a man without sin. ... I bring out the evil, alien force that controls people." He half jokingly called some of his more passionate followers "Roybots." Enough said. Roy Masters died on the 22nd April 2021, though his "Foundation of Human Understanding" is being carried on by his sons. The other major broadcaster on the Radio Caroline "Viewpoint" show was a man who up until a couple of months ago was still on air on medium wave and shortwave radio stations around the world - in fact if you took a shortwave radio at any time of the day or night and tuned around the bands, you were almost certain to come across his rants. His name was Brother Stair (full name Ralph Gordon Stair) of The Overcomer Ministry - the most broadcast voice in the world, up until quite recently. He ran a commune / cult of followers in South Carolina, USA, where he allegedly had a great deal of control over them, going so far as to not let them have sex without his permission. Brother Stair believed in: King James Bible Only, speaking in tongues, young Earth creationism, Jesus-only baptism, New World Order conspiracy theories, rejection of modern technology/medicine (except for, obviously, radio and the internet), living in an isolated agrarian community like the Amish, rejection of the celebration of holidays like Christmas and Easter, men having to wear beards and women having to keep their hair in buns. Stair claimed to be the "Last-Day Prophet of God". He spent much of his radio broadcasts denouncing just about every other Christian minister as a false prophet. He claimed to have prophesied Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 back in the 1980s, and also did prophesy that Ronald Reagan would be removed from office and nuclear attacks would wipe out many U.S. cities by 1988. Brother Stair's ministry was noted for buying large blocks of airtime on shortwave radio stations. The joke in the shortwave listening community was that Stair was unintentionally keeping many of these stations, and shortwave radio in general, active and profitable. Stair was arrested in 2002 and plead guilty in 2004 to charges of misdemeanour assault and battery (fondling two underage members of his commune), but after serving 77 days in prison, returned to preaching as if nothing had happened. In 2007, a jury found him liable for over $700,000 in damages in a civil suit brought by former followers. On December the 18th, 2017, Stair was arrested at his compound in South Carolina and charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary and sexual conduct with a minor amidst an ongoing FBI probe. He reportedly told several women the alleged sexual acts were "God's will". Stair was released on a US$750,000 bond on January 25, 2018, and shortly thereafter resumed broadcasting new "The Overcomer Ministry" radio shows. Brother Stair's broadcasting - and criminal career - was finally ended for good when he died on the 3rd of April 2021, although recordings of his programmes are still broadcast by a number of shortwave radio stations to this day. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at sea on the Ross Revenge, and still keep in contact with my old boss Peter Moore from time to time (being honest, working for Radio Caroline is a bit like working for the Mafia – you never really leave). Nowadays, though the station has retained and restored the historic Ross Revenge, it broadcasts mainly online from land based studios in Strood, and from several remote locations. You can hear the station live right now by clicking here. They now have a broadcast licence, and in addition to their online streaming services, they can also be heard on DAB, and on 648 KHz Medium Wave. Happy birthday Radio Caroline – an organisation I am proud to say I worked for; I think you gave me far more than I was able to give you. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
The photograph above - click on it to see a larger version - shows the ULEZ camera on the corner of Barnehurst Road and Mayplace Road East in Barnehurst, which was cut down for at least the third time last week. The exact number of damaged cameras in and around London is difficult to pin down. Reports range from a quarter of all cameras being destroyed, to nearly 1,000 attacks in just seven months. These attacks range from spray paint to complete removal of the cameras, with a dangerous escalation to an explosive device being used in one instance in Sidcup. The Metropolitan Police have recorded over a thousand such incidents, with hundreds of cameras stolen or damaged. This has caused disruptions to ULEZ enforcement and resulted in calls for increased security measures. Proponents of the ULEZ scheme argue that these attacks endanger public safety and hinder progress towards cleaner air. Transport for London (TfL), the city's transport authority, has condemned the vandalism and emphasized their commitment to repairing or replacing damaged cameras. Opponents of the ULEZ expansion, however, highlight the financial burden it places on some drivers, particularly those who rely on older vehicles for work or cannot afford to upgrade. They argue that the ULEZ disproportionately affects lower-income residents and that alternative solutions should be explored. The destruction of ULEZ cameras raises several questions. Is this a legitimate protest against the scheme, or simple criminality? How effective is it, considering the extensive camera network? Most importantly, can a solution be found that addresses air quality concerns without unfairly burdening residents? There are no easy answers. The ULEZ debate reflects the challenges of balancing environmental goals with economic considerations. While some see the camera destruction as a misguided attempt to derail a necessary policy, others view it as a symptom of public frustration with what is widely considered to be an undemocratic and unfair scheme.
The end video this week is an ITV News report from last year, featuring a visit to the Radio Caroline ship, the MV Ross Revenge, and how the radio station is raising money to have the historic ship dry docked and refurbished. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
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