Joshua.

The photo above - click on it to see a larger version - shows the interior of somewhere that I sincerely hope that you do not have to visit. Some months ago I wrote an article about the NHS Patient Transport Service, and how excellent it was, although many people are completely unaware of its existence or what it does. The above photo shows the interior of a patient transport ambulance, which I took on Monday of last week when I was being taken to and from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich for an appointment with my consultant endocrinologist. Fortunately, the patient transport ambulances are all fitted with air conditioning, and normally no more than two or three other patients are collected at any one time. Basically it is a free taxi service for those hospital outpatients who are unable to travel on their own, due to their medical conditions, or personal circumstances. The service is one where you are delivered door-to-door, and then returned home after the completion of your appointment. I cannot stress enough how polite, friendly and efficient the patient transport staff are. It is a service that is often overlooked, but forms an absolutely vital resource for people who are unable to travel under their own steam. Whilst waiting to be collected after my endocrinology consultation, I was sitting in my wheelchair in the dedicated patient transport waiting room in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and I had the misfortune to be joined by a gentleman who spent not only the short wait for the return ambulance, but the entire journey constantly whinging about how he thought the service was terrible, he did not seem to recognise the irony that he was being transported to and from his medical appointment, completely free of charge. I could have argued with him, but I thought he enjoyed having a moan so much that it will be pointless to spoil his fun. Fortunately, such people are very much in the minority, as most are fully appreciative of the excellent service provided at no cost to the user.

A technology anniversary has just been and gone with no celebration, yet the current version of the application is in use in millions of businesses and homes worldwide. The undocumented birthday was that for Microsoft Excel. The now dominant spreadsheet was originally released for the Apple Mac in August 1985 (and in the UK in October of the same year). This makes it 41 years old in its original incarnation. Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982, which was very popular on text based CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. This promoted development of a new spreadsheet called Excel which started with the intention to, in the words of Microsoft's Doug Klunder, 'do everything 1-2-3 does and do it better'. The first version of Excel was released for the Mac in 1985 and the first Windows version (numbered 2.0 to line-up with the Mac and bundled with a run-time Windows environment) was released in November 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by 1988 Excel had started to outsell Lotus 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve the position of leading PC software developer. This accomplishment, dethroning the king of the software world, solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing graphical software. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so. Early in its life Excel became the target of a trademark lawsuit by another company already selling a software package named "Excel" in the finance industry. As the result of the dispute Microsoft was required to refer to the program as "Microsoft Excel" in all of its formal press releases and legal documents. However, over time this practice has been ignored, and Microsoft cleared up the issue permanently when they purchased the trademark to the other program. Microsoft also encouraged the use of the letters XL as shorthand for the program; while this is no longer common, the program's icon still consists of a stylised combination of the two letters, and the file extension of the default Excel format is .xls. Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc: the cells are organised in rows and columns, and contain data or formulas with relative or absolute references to other cells. Excel was the first spreadsheet that allowed the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell re-computation, where only cells dependent on the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). Excel has extensive graphing capabilities. When first bundled into Microsoft Office in 1993, Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint had their GUIs redesigned for consistency with Excel, the killer app on the PC at the time. Since 1993, Excel has included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language based on Visual Basic which adds the ability to automate tasks in Excel and to provide user defined functions (UDF) for use in worksheets. VBA is a powerful addition to the application which, in later versions, includes a fully featured integrated development environment (IDE). Macro recording can produce VBA code replicating user actions, thus allowing simple automation of regular tasks. VBA allows the creation of forms and in-worksheet controls to communicate with the user. The automation functionality provided by VBA has caused Excel to become a target for macro viruses. This was a serious problem in the corporate world until antivirus products began to detect these viruses. Microsoft belatedly took steps to prevent the misuse by adding the ability to disable macros completely, to enable macros when opening a workbook or to trust all macros signed using a trusted certificate.  Many of us use Excel as part of our jobs nowadays - and I reckon that many are not aware of the long and rich history the application has. Whilst in very widespread use, it is not the only spreadsheet available, despite what Microsoft might have you believe. Happy 41st birthday Excel. Personally I only use Microsoft products when I am being paid to, but your mileage may vary. 

As regular readers will know, the blog concentrates on local news, current affairs and history, with a small amount of technology from time to time. It is extremely unusual for the Maggot Sandwich to have even a slight association with a story that is currently circulating in the national press. Unfortunately this week has proved to be the exception to the rule. Very long-term readers may recall that back in 2015, I had a series of online encounters with an extremely unsavoury character, who sent me a series of threatening and abusive emails. The person's name was Joshua Bonehill Paine. He was an extreme right-wing Neo-Nazi who made up completely fictional stories to try and foster racial hatred. He was by his own admission a Nazi, a misogynist, a homophobe and a racist who particularly hated Jewish people. This is all extensively documented, and after his persecution of former MP, Juliana Berger, he was eventually jailed for 3 years. Since his release, he has been mercifully quiet in the popular press until recently. He then announced that he was standing as a Conservative candidate in a local election in the southwest of the UK. This has caused some consternation across the board of political opinions. I am all for free speech, but Joshua Bonehill Paine far exceeded what is acceptable or indeed legal. He now alleges that he has put his racist past behind him, and that he is now a reformed character. Personally, this should be welcomed, but I find this extremely hard to believe. In my opinion he is playing the system for his own ends. I am not alone in this view. In a joint statement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and the Jewish Leadership Council said: "The severity of Joshua Bonehill-Paine's crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal restrictions. Whilst we do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, this should not in this case entail selection as a candidate for a political party, and the impact of this decision on the victims ought to be a central consideration". To give an illustration of his abhorrent and threatening online behaviour, not only towards me but to many others before he was sent to prison. I am reprinting an article I wrote at the time. I am always hopeful that an individual can turn over a new leaf, but in my opinion he is still the unmitigated fascist Neo-Nazi that he always was, and he's just putting on an act to try and fool people who are not aware of his true nature. Fortunately on Wednesday afternoon last week, he had to withdraw his election candidacy. Now here is the original text I wrote back in 2015, when Joshua Bonehill Paine was in full flight, not only threatening me, but many others as well. I quote:- "Over the past few months I have been involved in a situation which has been unlike anything I have experienced before; for various reasons I have had to keep very quiet about it, but the point has come where the matter has come to a head. Before publishing this article, I sent a draft of it to six people whose thoughts and opinions I greatly value and respect; of those six, five of them said that I should go ahead and publish. You may recall that back in August of last year I wrote a cautionary piece about a chap called Joshua Bonehill, and his dangerous, extreme right wing Nazi views. Bonehill runs a number of extremely offensive websites which you can easily Google (I will not dignify them with links from this site), and has featured prominently in the national press, including the Guardian, Russia Today and the BBC News website here. He is the person behind the campaign for the “De – Jewification” of the Stamford Hill area of North London, that has had so much recent press coverage. He was arrested and charged with Malicious Communication last year, and narrowly escaped a custodial sentence for accusing innocent people of being paedophiles and many other outright vicious lies. Since then he has been back in court a number of times, again for online trolling and Malicious Communication. Only last week he was handed another suspended sentence for a further case; he was also arrested and charged with Malicious Communication and Racially Aggravated Harassment after he targeted Labour MP Luciana Berger at the end of last week. On top of all this, he is due in court early in May, after he wrote that foods Tesco sourced from Africa were infected with the Ebola virus. Understandably Tesco and their lawyers take a very dim view of this, and the court case which starts on the 5th May should prove most interesting.  I like to think of myself as a generally easy going person; many long-time readers will know that I have a personal, libertarian philosophy of “if it works for you”.  The premise of which is that I believe that people should be free to do whatever they like within the law, as long as it does not cause harm, inconvenience or distress to others. Joshua Bonehill is self professed racist, homophobe, misogynist, xenophobe anti - Semite who hates anyone who is not white and British and shares the extraordinarily offensive fascist views he has. The Judge, when sentencing Bonehill for his first offence of Malicious Communication, described the 22 year old as “moronic” and was inclined to award a custodial sentence, but after his defence submitted mitigating circumstances, he was sentenced to two years’ probation and 180 hours of community service. Back last August, Joshua Bonehill sent me an email, quite out of the blue. In the interests of liberty and free speech I publish it unedited, complete with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors below for you to make up your own opinion:-

Dear Hugh;

In your article you state that I "Live with my mother"; this is completely false. I've been living independent since the age of 14. Wish I did live with my mother though - would be a lot cheaper.  Nice attempt at painting me out to be some sort of autist spastic freak though; would have worked if you were a national newspaper; unfortunately you're a simple blog with a small following. 

Next - you state that I've been prosecuted for "spreading malicious lies about asians". This is completely false; I've never been arrested for doing that. 

Last - You state I am 22, my age is 21. (He is 22 now)

Please fix the errors with your article and I won't need to include your name in the harassment case that is being investigated against people of your Ilk. I will give you this one chance to co-operate otherwise you can expect a knock at the door. Clearly as you know very little about me or anything I do given the mistakes in your article; you have no idea as to what you're getting involved with. 

Here is the link to the blog post

http://arthurpewtysmaggotsandwich.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/better-scores.html?m=1

I will be checking back in a few days; I trust these issues will be remedied by then? 

Now - One last thing; you state in your biography that you were a "Radio Caroline DJ". Did Jimmy Saville also not work there? I know that travis did. Given the fact that all of these Radio DJ's are being ousted as nonces; maybe it's a valid call to publicly look into you and document this investigation through my Blog the Daily Bale which has a subscription list of over 1 million people. I would hate to be the centre of a witch hunt connecting me to paedophillia - would be an unbearable thought! 

So there's your one chance really and a bit of a taste of what you can expect if you don't co-operate; I'll go down the legal route first and if that fails then I'll destroy you publicly using my "Vast social network" as you claim in your website. 

Kinds Regards,

Joshua Bonehill

I did not dignify his message with a response – I will not “feed the troll”. One hard and fast rule when engaging in any kind of dispute is to be certain of the facts. Bonehill makes a number of incorrect assumptions in his message; Jimmy Saville did not work for Radio Caroline, or indeed any offshore radio station. Dave Lee Travis last worked for Radio Caroline in August 1967 – when I was exactly three weeks old.  This is all entirely academic; his clumsy attempt at a threat through association really is a deductive dead end. Irrespective of this, despite having published malicious lies and been prosecuted for it back on the 25th April 2014, and again on the 9th February this year, and a further case forthcoming, on top of the Tesco Ebola trial; it would appear that Bonehill has not learned the error of his ways. I had planned to keep this story under wraps until Bonehill was sent to prison, but bearing in mind the huge amount of press coverage, that may now be too late. If I did not comment now that the press has caught the story, my entirely unwanted personal involvement with this vile individual could become irrelevant. On another note, it does strike me that Bonehill lacks any sense of irony or self awareness; one would surmise that one who espouses such anti Jewish bile would have thought to change his name from Joshua, the name of the Biblical leader of the Israelites after the death of Moses. Do feel free to read more about the person, and let me know what you think. It has been a stressful time. Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com". There has been much in the popular press, and online about the situation over the last week, and personally I would not be surprised if Joshua Bonehill - Paine was told to stand down as a candidate by Conservative Central Office, as his candidacy was causing huge levels of negative publicity, and potentially endangered Conservative Party leadership. 

Many thanks to regular reader and occasional contributor Lincoln for the historic photo above - click on it to see a larger version, which shows the loam pit / quarry which was located adjacent to Fraser Road in Erith, on the site which is now the appropriately named Quarry housing estate, which includes a primary school and a couple of shops. Whilst the photo is undated, it would appear to have been taken in the early 20th century - the Maxim - later Vickers, Sons and Maxim gun factory can clearly be seen in the background. 

As readers will be aware, I have been extremely critical of the BBC and their current licence fee situation, which I and many others regard as outdated and no longer fit for purpose. In the last year over half a million UK residents have declined to renew their TV licences, as they no longer watch or record live TV or watch BBC iPlayer, and instead just watch streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and YouTube. Currently under UK law, under these circumstances you do not need a TV licence. Many people erroneously think that if you own a TV it is a legal obligation to purchase a TV licence, this is most definitely not the case. As I have previously written, some years ago, I worked very closely with the BBC on a number of technology projects, where I was the lead contract manager and project manager. I dealt with senior BBC managers on a weekly basis. Almost without exception, I found them to be the most entitled and arrogant people that I've ever worked with. Now that I am housebound, I watch more TV than I used to. I also ought to add that at the moment I still have a TV licence, although I am reviewing that decision on a regular basis, as I hardly watch live broadcast TV, and I feel that the cost of the TV licence is disproportionately higher than is justified for what is offered, which on the BBC channels especially is mostly repeats, reality shows and 'celebrity' programmes featuring people that I've never heard of, and care nothing whatsoever for. Earlier this week I came across something that I regard as supremely ironic. Several commercial television channels in the UK are showing adverts promoting the BBC licence fee. Bearing in mind, in my personal opinion, the BBC should either go to a subscription service in a similar way to the likes of Netflix, or it should take advertising as does Channel 4, which is also a public service broadcaster. The sheer hypocrisy of the BBC paying for adverts on commercial TV channels in order to promote their antiquated and extortionate licence fee seems to me to be a strong indicator of how outdated, desperate and out of touch they are. Years ago I was a strong supporter of the BBC, but nowadays with not only the large number of scandals regarding BBC broadcasting staff, and the huge amounts of financial waste the organisation generates. I feel that their whole business model is now dying, if not quite yet dead. With the aforementioned streaming services, if you decide that you like their content, you can either pay for a year in advance to get a small discount, or pay by month. If you decide you no longer wish to participate, for whatever reason, you can cancel your subscription painlessly. The BBC, via a subcontractor still employ revenue collection officers, who act as if they are bailiffs or other debt collection staff, when in fact they are nothing more than sales people. They have no right of entry to your house, they cannot insist that you purchase a TV licence, and exist purely to intimidate nervous people into buying something that they may not either want or need, depending on their personal circumstances. There are a number of legal cases currently under consideration where UK residents are taking action against the BBC and their revenue collection contractor over intimidating and harassing letters which are composed in such a way to make them look like legal documents, when they are in fact nothing of the type. The BBC are really trying to bully people into buying a licence that they may well not actually need. As I wrote previously, if you do not watch or record live television or use BBC iPlayer, then you do not need a television licence. BBC radio is free to listen to without the need for any kind of licence. Unfortunately, the BBC still live in what they consider to be the middle of the 20th century. As readers will be aware we are well into the 21st century, and the world has changed, but the BBC have not moved on.

The end video this week is a new piece of footage, shot by aerial drone, showing what remains of the World War 1 warship, HMS President as it is broken up on the banks of the yard of EMR Metal Recycling, located in Anchor Bay on the River Thames, off Manor Road in Erith. It is clearly apparent from the video footage that the former Royal Navy warship is far beyond rescue, and scrapping it is the only logical solution, as I have written previously. Comments and feedback as always to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.