500,000!

The two photos above both show views of the old Erith Library in Walnut Tree Road. The magnificent and imposing building has been closed and out of use for around five years, since the library was relocated to the new block opposite Erith Health Centre in the High Street. The upper photograph was taken by me last Sunday afternoon, whilst the lower one was taken in around 1910, by the look of the clothes on the two rather solemn and earnest looking young men in the shot - thanks to local historian Ken Chamberlain for the use of the photo. Several people have asked me what the future holds for the old Erith Library, which has been left abandoned and empty. Last year, when I was given a guided tour around the new Bexley College campus, directly opposite the old library, I was told in confidence that the college had applied for funding to buy the library and convert the interior into a training centre for the hotel and hospitality industry. Apparently with the planned opening of the Paramount Theme Park, there will be a chronic lack of trained hotel and restaurant staff in the South East. I was asked to refrain from mentioning this, as the deal was far from done. A year later I re - contacted my informant, and was told that the deal unfortunately had fallen through, and will now not be happening. The library remains empty and unused - possibly the most significant old building in Erith that is not in productive use. I will be discussing this in future updates. Any reader who has any insight into this, could they please contact me?

Some time last Sunday afternoon, a couple of hours after the last Maggot Sandwich update was published, I checked the blog dashboard, and discovered that the Maggot Sandwich has just received 500,000 unique page views. That is not the total number of blog hits (which is far higher), rather it is the total number of different people who have ever  come across the Maggot Sandwich at some point or another. On a normal week I average around 22,000 page hits worldwide. Thanks to all who have made this possible.

The following press release was sent to me earlier in the week by Dana Whiffen - the Chairman of Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association:- "Bexley Neighbourhood watch and Bexley Police have made history by being the first London Borough to achieve 2 wards with 100% coverage of NW. In January 2015 we announced that St.Michael's Ward in Welling had 100% NW-Coverage and now we are pleased to confirm that the neighbouring ward of East Wickham can also boast full coverage, that’s every street in these wards now have at least one registered NW member (coordinator). We are looking to see that the crime stats in East Wickham fall to the low levels of St.Michael’s where there has been zero domestic burglary since that was announced earlier in the year. This is due to the hard work of the police teams and NW-office staff in ensuring all these new members are registered, are aware fully of what they need to do and have their street signs put up, have their introduction letters and street signs. SAYING YES TO NW ALSO SAYS NO TO CRIMINALS

Dana Wiffen

Chairman/BBNWA"  

Shoppers in Erith Morrison’s had a bit of a surprise on Wednesday and Thursday this week; scenes for the new advertising campaign were being shot in the supermarket. On Wednesday the action mainly involved filming in the main part of the supermarket, whereas on the Thursday the film crew concentrated on the large bakery the store has. Both video and still footage was shot, and signs outside of the entrances warned shoppers that they might be filmed, though it seemed that many did not see the notices, and were surprised to see the film crew. I have no idea when the adverts will be released, and I very much doubt that it will be possible to identify the location as specifically Erith, but I suppose that it is worth keeping an eye out for anyway. I was quite surprised to see the Erith branch chosen as a location; most video production companies are based in London’s West End, and generally the staff dislike going South of the River Thames. If anyone has more information on the filming, please either comment below, or Email me directly to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Back in January this year, I wrote about the problems the emergency services were having with their ancient and very out of date Airwave TETRA two – way radio system. You can read my original posting here. As I predicted, the issue of replacing the emergency services communications technology with something more suitable for modern conditions did indeed get “kicked into the long grass” until now – after the general election. The £1.2 billion emergency services contract which I flagged up as a disaster waiting to happen six months ago has now, as predicted, collapsed. After a year-long bidding process the government had whittled the tenders down to two companies: EE and O2. Now O2 has pulled out as a result of Telefonica selling the network to Three’s parent Hutchison Whampoa. The network is supposed to start replacing the creaking Airwave TETRA radio system used by the emergency services next April, but that date is now in serious doubt. There are huge question marks over the suitability of 4G mobile technology for this with the necessary standards for device-to-device communication and control of groups still in the planning stages, and even bigger issues over equipping emergency services with mobile devices that rely on 4G for push-to-talk communications (like an analogue walkie talkie) when 4G phone coverage is so patchy around the country. The other problem with using digital I.P based communications is latency – there is a delay between pushing the transmit button, and the audio arriving at the receiver. With analogue radio equipment, there is no delay other than the constraint of the speed of light. Mobile phone push-to-talk systems are rarely like this. You press the button, it switches to the right app, fires it up, makes an IP connection and then starts the communication. This is not instant. Indeed, using such a system where you can see and hear the other person is un-nerving, with a significant delay that is more than an echo. Even a traditional 2G or 3G voice call has a little latency which you can hear if both people are in the same room. Push-to-talk latency isn't a problem in the “it might replace SMS” scenario the mobile industry once envisaged for it, but it is in an emergency. The classic example the Armed Forces give is to imagine a commander who has a team of snipers on a roof pointing at a target. He gives the command: “Don't shoot”. Unfortunately, in a cellular, IP based device, it takes a fraction of a second for the app to fire up and make a connection – a fraction of a second which is just long enough for the word “Don’t” to fail to make it into the message. Obviously this is just not good enough in a critical situation such as a terrorist attack. The other problem with any emergency communication system using 4G technology is that coverage of the country is patchy and uneven, with some areas having no signal whatsoever. Even if the emergency service personnel can get a 4G signal, you can then add to this the problem that with 4G there are other users on the network: ordinary customers, who, given that they are in the middle of an emergency, will want to call their mum or post a video of the incident to YouTube. There are systems in place to give emergency services priority, but network congestion is still going to affect the ability of the back - end infrastructure to cope. All in all the situation is a mess, and could not really have come at a worse time. Back in February, James Brokenshire, the MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, who at that time was also Minister for Security and Immigration, said the Mobile Services tender process had “produced some impressive technical bids combined with the prospect of significant cost savings for the taxpayer”. Unfortunately these are now looking like hollow words. Any communications system relying on 4G coverage in the UK will have problems, as the UK officially has the worst 4G service in Europe, according to a recent independent survey. The testing company gave the UK networks scores out of 500 and said: While the best UK operator achieved a score of 366, the top performers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland scored in a range above 440; and even a score above 470 was achieved in the last years. The lowest values in those countries were above 325, which would still be enough for the second place in UK. The survey company showed that EE has the best service, puts Three in second place, and places O2 marginally ahead of Vodafone, in a disappointing fourth place. This will be bad news for Vodafone, which has been shouting about significant capital investment in their network, but which does not seem to be showing much improvement after the expenditure.

My personal battle with local fly – tippers has taken a new and more serious turn. On Tuesday evening I was alerted by a neighbour that a large quantity of building material had been apparently dumped in a private parking area just off Manor Road. Upon investigation it became clear that the material had indeed been illegally fly – tipped, and not only that, a vast majority of it was made up of broken up corrugated roof panels – the kind in common use between the late 1940’s and the middle 1970’s. The panels are composed of Asbestos which is an incredibly toxic material when it is broken up or scraped – any dust produced when working with Asbestos is highly poisonous. It has been in use for thousands of years, but did not start large-scale until the end of the 19th century, when manufacturers and builders began using Asbestos because of its desirable physical properties:- sound absorption, average tensile strength, its resistance to fire, heat, electrical and chemical damage, and affordability. It was used in such applications as electrical insulation for hotplate wiring and in building insulation. When Asbestos is used for its resistance to fire or heat, the fibres are often mixed with cement or woven into fabric or mats. These desirable properties made Asbestos a very widely used material, and its use continued to grow throughout most of the 20th century until the carcinogenic effects of Asbestos dust caused its effective demise as a mainstream construction and fireproofing material in most countries. However, around two million tons of Asbestos were still mined per year as of 2009, half in Russia. It is now known that prolonged inhalation of Asbestos fibres can cause serious and fatal illnesses including malignant lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis. Health issues related to Asbestos exposure can be found in records dating back to Roman times. By the beginning of the 20th century concerns were beginning to be raised, which escalated in severity during the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1980s and 1990s Asbestos trade and use started to become banned outright, phased out, or heavily restricted in an increasing number of countries. The severity of Asbestos-related diseases, the material's extremely widespread use in many areas of life, its continuing long-term use after harmful health effects were known or suspected, and fact that Asbestos-related diseases can emerge decades after exposure ceases, have resulted in Asbestos litigation becoming the longest, most expensive class action in U.S. history and a significant legal issue in many other countries. From this you can see that the fly – tipping of Asbestos based materials is a very serious affair. It was bad enough investigating the fly tipping incidents that happened in September 2013 in the James Watt Way council recycling centre, when a couple of villains dumped two and a half tonnes of rotten bananas on pallets at the site; after much investigation be Bexley Council Environmental Crimes Unit, one of the pair was fined, had his van confiscated, and was sent to prison for eight months. Disgusting and noxious as the liquefying rotten bananas were, they were nothing compared to the load of dusty Asbestos that has now appeared in the area. Fortunately the council are arranging for it to be safely collected and responsibly disposed of. I have been in contact with the North End Safer Neighbourhood Police team, and they are increasing foot patrols in the area. We do have a lead on the crime; a witness saw the illegal dumping take place, and has a description of the vehicle and occupants has been passed to the Police for investigation.

Both The News Shopper and The Bexley Times are full of the story that Bexley council leader Teresa O'Neill has been granted an OBE on the Queen's birthday honours list, making her the first sitting councillor in the borough to receive the award. Councillor O'Neill, who has been a member of the council for fifteen years, announced on June 12th that she received the news of the award. She has been honoured for serving the community and the local government. That’s the official line, anyway. Anyone who has been reading Malcolm Knight’s “Bexley is Bonkers” blog will know differently. I don't think I need to say anymore, other than in my opinion the award of an OBE to Teresa O’Neill is not merited.

Last week you may have seen my piece on why Erith Pier no longer gets the level of commercial traffic mooring on it that it used to. My former boss at Radio Caroline, the Station Manager Peter Moore is a regular Maggot Sandwich reader. He has written the following piece about the radio station and their experiences with the pier. I had a small involvement with the Erith Pier project (my role was to go onto the pier and photograph new ships when they moored there – as some parties needed proof that the pier was used for commercial mooring purposes). I used the excuse that I was a shipping enthusiast who wanted to get some photos (which also true to a small extent). Anyway, Peter has kindly written the following article, which I think many readers may find of interest:-  "Radio Caroline  ( MV Ross Revenge ) entered The Port of Tilbury in 2004 but after a long period of tolerance the port said that they would prefer us not to be there. We were good tenants and paid all the bills given to us, but they said they were not in the business of storing ships and that they could make more money by using the space we occupied for other purposes. Across the river at Gravesend were two areas of river wall that looked inviting and a couple of local Councillors were very supportive. But the first area was owned by a Pension Fund that had built a retail park on the shore. Their view was that if people parked to come and visit Ross Revenge, the traders would be annoyed and may not pay their rent. The other area was derelict awaiting development and we never could find out who the owners were. Our enquiries stalled when we got as far as the Bank of Ireland and then some Walter Mitty guy came along suggesting that it was his land but then he dropped off the radar. One of the enthusiastic Councillors was promoting the regeneration of the old harbour at Northfleet, hampered of course by the fact that the river wall had cut the harbour off from the river. He drew a futuristic artists impression of the restored port including Ross Revenge laying just outside, but it was never going to happen. Then we looked at Erith Pier, which I guess was restored and owned by Morrisons as part of the deal to have their Supermarket placed just nearby. They were happy for our ship to go there, but the Council said that any ship that stayed in one place for any length of time needed Planning Permission, so we applied. There were objections such as noise and obstruction of the view and a possible upsurge in vandalism and that maybe the leisure fishermen would be annoyed if we took up some of the space, but we pointed out that ships were there most of the time anyhow. Then the Port of London Authority appeared saying that while it may well be Morrisons pier it was their river and they had the final say, so we went to a meeting with them. They said that the presence of the ship may scour the area where it would be placed or conversely that it may cause silting. Then they asked if the ship may ever touch the river mud and we said that it might at certain tides. At this the PLA Environmental Officer joined the meeting and a very attractive young lady she was, but on hearing that the ship's keel may touch the mud she said that this would destroy the habitat of the Tentacled Lagoon Worm which seemingly was a vital part of the food chain of the river. Our marine man who had worked the river all his life said that ships had been 'taking the ground' from time immemorial and that the coasters that visited surely did the same, but this cut no ice with them and the question was raised of whether our presence would hamper these coasters and obstruct what was a temporary mooring place. But Morrisons were perplexed as they said that the PLA were telling them not to let ships tie up. So we assumed, and we do not think we were wrong, that the PLA did not want us there under any circumstances and would just surface objections until we gave up. They also pointed us at the Environment Agency and told us we would need a River Works Licence. We could also see that they could simply price us out of contention even if we complied with each and every other requirement.. Then we saw that our Planning Application had been struck out with the suggestion that it had been withdrawn by the applicant, which was not the case. So we left Tilbury and went right away and the ship is now in the middle of the River Blackwater. I am not suggesting the Radio Caroline would have been a huge boon to the area, but it was interesting and so typical of modern life that with a couple of notable exceptions all parties involved worked their utmost to ensure that a thing would not happen. Further they surely said ' Phew. we stopped that ' and returned to sitting on their bums. I wonder how we ever had an Empire.

Peter Moore,

Radio Caroline."

I don't think that there is very much that I can add to that. It just seems a pity that Erith could not have been a temporary home to a ship and radio station that arguably did more to influence British media than anyone else. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email hugh.neal@gmail.com. Incidentally, if you would like to hear what I sounded like back in 1990 when I was out at sea on the Ross Revenge, you can now do so; here is an edited recording of my late night / early morning radio show on Caroline. On the day this recording was made, we were in the middle of a Force 9 gale, and things were somewhat on the bumpy side! Give it a listen and let me know what you think. As you will hear, my pirate radio pseudonym was Tony Palmer. You can see an online album of photos taken during my time on Radio Caroline by clicking here. I would be interested in hearing your feedback.

As regular Maggot Sandwich readers will be aware, I am keen to support and promote independent local businesses. Recently a young lady called Bukky Alabi has set up a breakfast delivery service which caters for hungry people in Bexleyheath, Slade Green, Erith, Northumberland Heath, Dartford and Thamesmead. Bukky has written the following piece about her service:- "Got Breakfast was birthed from experience and passion. On a cold winter Saturday morning after a long week at work all I wanted to do was lie in bed all day Saturday but still wanted breakfast in bed without the hassle of getting up and sorting it out and it didn't help that McDonald's round the corner stopped breakfast at 10.30am. For months this feeling continued and one weekend I decided to put this idea and desire into action. Fast forward 11 months after and here we have Got Breakfast, which is a weekend premium breakfast delivery company delivering breakfast to people at home or at work in and around Bexley. It is important to me to support local businesses and in saying that every dish on our menu is made with fresh locally sourced ingredients in and around Bexley. On the menu you can find the typical full English , American pancakes, scrambled egg and smoked salmon pancake. We also offer a healthier option which includes fruit salads, healthy salads, porridge, honey nut granola, and lovely sandwiches. During the week we also deliver breakfast to customers at work, however our office menu is slightly different and consists of sandwiches, salads, pastries, fruits and juices. As well as being the owner of Got Breakfast, I also split myself between  dealing with orders and concerns, helping the delivery team and also making freshly made smoothies when customers order. Got breakfast consist of a team of 4 - myself, driver, chef and our social media guru. Got Breakfast will be expanding in the coming months, we plan to open another branch before the end of year, and also expand the menu. We are currently working on a vegetarian menu and will expand to open during the week also. The response has been amazing so far and it can only get better, from the first day we opened we had orders flying out of the roof. Everyone on the team is passionate about what they do, so this makes the job come natural and easy we put our heart and soul into everything we do and give our customers what we would expect. We aim to make breakfasting in Bexley exciting and easier for people. For more information please find us on www.got-breakfast.co.uk Twitter: @gotbreakfast_ Instagram: @gotbreakfast_"

Following the boarding up of Potion / the former White Hart a couple of weeks ago, the local rumour mill seems to have gone into overdrive. No planning applications have yet been made to the Council (I regularly check the planning application pages of the Bexley Council website). Nevertheless, this has not stopped what I suspect may be little more than wild supposition. I have heard from two separate sources that there are “definite” plans to convert the ground floor bar area into a Balti House restaurant. Whilst I, and many other local residents might welcome this, I find it difficult to believe. The amount of work and money required to completely refurbish the Victorian building, along with fitting a new commercial kitchen, and with a specialised fume extraction and climate control system would cost an utter fortune - a good couple of hundred thousand pounds; also bearing in mind that anyone that takes on the building will have to replace the hideous plate glass frontage illegally installed by the owners of Potion, to be replaced by a facsimile of the original frontage, complete with acid etched glass and green salt glazed tiles. This also will not come cheaply; I get the feeling that there has been a certain amount of wishful thinking going on - personally a local Balti House would be very agreeable, but this does not make it any more likely. Do you know more? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com if you have any information regarding this. 

The ending video this week is something quite unusual; it features lots of archive footage taken in and around Erith over the last hundred years ro so, accompanied by a poem about the town, which was written by very long time local resident Pat Watson. The video is courtesy of Lee Ricketts, and his YouTube channel.

Yesterday and today.

The photo above was taken on Friday; it shows one of the lower profile housing developments that is taking place in Erith. This new apartment block is located in James Watt Way; it is being built by Moat, and consists of six one bedroomed apartments, twenty nine two bedroomed apartments and five three bedroomed apartments, all for affordable rent. The development has been partly funded by Boris Johnson and the Mayor of London's Housing Office. Affordable rental housing is to be applauded - there is just not enough of it coming onto the market right now. The downside for the future residents of this particular block is that it is sandwiched between Morrison's petrol station on one side, and the KFC drive - through on the other. Residents will be assailed by vehicle fumes and the smell of fuel on one side, and the pong of frying chicken oil on the other, and constant noise from both sides. Still, overall the development is good for the town - I guess that beggars cannot be choosers when it comes to affordable housing - if the site had been more pleasant, a developer would have wanted to build expensive apartments to sell at a greater profit.

Not long ago I read an excellent book on the recent history of Kent by historian Bob Ogley which recounted an event that I had never even heard about, that happened quite locally back in 1968. In those days Chatham dockyard was still being operated by the Royal Navy as an active base. It employed hundreds of local civilian workers, as well as military personnel. As a side note, the location of the dockyard at Chatham is one of the main reasons the North Kent rail line was built as early as it was; whilst it did serve the then new phenomenon of commuters from South East London and North Kent into central London, the main impetus behind the creation of the rail line so soon after the invention of the steam engine was clear – it was to connect the dockyard with both the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, and the Admiralty buildings in central London. The whole of the military operation of Victorian Britain (and thus the Empire) was dependent on the North Kent railway line – something few people nowadays are aware of; I digress – back on August the 17^th 1968, a fire broke out on HMS Valiant – a Royal Navy submarine that was in dry dock undergoing a refit. The specialised submarine dock had only been opened in June 1968, and the Valiant was its’ first customer. The submarine dock was constructed between numbers six and seven docks, and was designed for the refit and refuelling of the non-Polaris class nuclear attack submarines employed by the Royal Navy. The base had a huge cantilever crane for the removal of nuclear reactors, an office block, underground workshops and a health centre. The Valiant-class was the first fully British nuclear fleet submarine (the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, used an American nuclear reactor). There were only two boats of the class, HMS Valiant commissioned in 1966 and Warspite the following year. Both were built by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness, and based at Faslane during the sixties and seventies.. The class was based on Dreadnought but twenty feet longer and nine hundred tons greater submerged displacement (4900 tons). They also had a Paxman diesel-electric generator for emergencies. In 1967, Valiant set a then Royal Navy record of sailing 12,000 miles (19,312 km) submerged in twenty-eight days, from Singapore to the UK. Whilst in refit, a fire broke out aboard the Valiant, and extensive damage was caused. Both the dockyard fire department, and the civilian Chatham Fire Brigade attended the blaze; there were immediate concerns that a release of radiation could be resultant of the blaze, and nuclear contamination crews were summoned with protective clothing, respirators and Geiger counters. No release of radiation was found, despite intense speculation on the part of both local and national press at the time. The Valiant was successfully repaired, and later returned to active service. Valiant re-commissioned at Chatham in May 1972, later returning for a second refit in 1977. By 1975, Chatham Dockyard was the only Dockyard in Britain to undertake the refitting work of two nuclear submarines - Churchill and Dreadnought - at the same time. This was known as 'dual streaming'. In October 1975, the Dockyard even entered into 'triple streaming'; Churchill awaited re-commissioning at the end of the month; Dreadnought remained in refit and Conqueror entered refit for the first time at Chatham. The older nuclear-powered submarines of the Valiant / Churchill classes were prematurely withdrawn from service as a result of serious cracking in the primary cooling circuits of their nuclear reactors. The Swiftsure class had similar power plants and experienced the same problems. One, HMS Swiftsure, was decommissioned for this reason – if the components affected happen to be located in areas where high radioactivity is present, it is often too dangerous to make a repair - instead that have to be scrapped. HMS Valiant was finally paid off from naval service in 1994. Nowadays HMS Valiant has been decommissioned from the Royal Navy and is stored afloat at Devonport. The defuel (removal of the reactor and all radioactive materials) of HMS Valiant, which was docked in 14 Dock for Dock Down and Lay-up Preparations, was successfully completed and the submarine left 14 Dock on the 6 March 2003. It had been moored in 3 Basin along with other de-fuelled submarines. The problems encountered with the engineering works on the Valiant and other early nuclear submarines was not the one expected – no radiation was released, and no radioactive materials lost. The problem was far more prosaic, but arguably just as deadly. All of the submarines, and pretty much all of the surface vessels refitted at Chatham in the 1960’s and 1970’s used large quantities of Asbestos, both as pipe insulation, and for fire – proofing. Many of the civilian and military personnel were exposed to Asbestos dust during engineering works. As is now well known, exposure to Asbestos particles over time can cause Asbestosis, as well as several types of cancer. Nationwide there are nearly five thousand asbestos-related deaths a year (about half of which are from mesothelioma). The Medway area, which includes Chatham dockyard, is in the UK’s top four for asbestos related deaths. A total of 104 people died from mesothelioma in Medway between 2006 and 2010. This is way above the number one would expect from such as geographically small area. I understand that several legal cases have been lodged by former Chatham Dockyard workers with the Ministry of Defence over Asbestos related illnesses allegedly caused to people working there in the past.  I ought to make it abundantly clear that the dockyard (now a popular museum and film location – it is regularly used by the producers of “Call the Midwife” to stand in for 1950’s Poplar, and the producers of films including Sherlock Holmes – a Game of Shadows, Les Miserables, Children of Men, and The World is Not Enough have used the place as a location) is absolutely not now an asbestos or radiation risk. The dockyard makes for a fine family day out, with plenty to see and do for all ages. It even has an excellent pub / restaurant in the Ship and Trades, run by Shepherd Neame. You can read about the Chatham Historic Dockyard Museum here.

The launch of the “Dart Charge” at the Dartford River Crossing seems to have gone relatively smoothly. The scheme went live on the evening of the 30^th November. Charges apply to any vehicle crossing the bridge / going through one of the tunnels between 6am and 10pm – overnight the journey is free. The Highways Agency have stated that eighty five percent of the vehicles transiting the crossing during chargeable periods have paid up. That still leaves a whole lot of drivers who have not paid. Bearing in mind the Dartford Crossing gets roughly a million transits a month, that would mean that something in the region of 300,000 vehicle crossings have been made but not paid for. The new system uses Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to identify vehicles as they cross the River Thames. Drivers are supposed to prepay online, or to pay later within twenty four hours of using the service. Anyone not doing so will be sent a penalty charge notice costing £70, reduced to £35 if paid within fourteen days, and rises to £105 if left unpaid for twenty eight days. I suspect, as I have written before, a substantial number of fees will remain unpaid; ANPR technology is useful, but unreliable in anything other than perfect conditions. Some number plates will not be recognised, or will be misread – it only requires rain, mist, dust or a flurry of snow to disrupt the computer linked camera system. On top of this I suspect that a substantial number of regularly evading users will be using cloned number plates – a problem that is growing over time. Over all of this, there is the continuing resentment that local people have over the whole charging system; when the crossing was paid for, it was meant to be free – though how anyone actually believed this was going to happen, I do not understand. The Dartford Crossing is such as cash cow that any operator would be stupid to cut off such a lucrative money generator.

The photo above was taken from an old 8mm colour amateur movie shot in Erith in and around the town centre in 1972 / 1973. The shot is an interesting one as it shows the old and the new. To the right of the image you can see the then new concrete shopping centre, which had only just been constructed. To the left of the photo you can see the old Victorian shops in Pier Road, shortly before they were demolished to make way for the building that nowadays houses both Farmfoods and the Erith Police Office. Local Historian Ken Chamberlain has kindly supplied me with some information and photos of this old row of shops, and I will be covering this in more detail next week.

The photo above was taken on Friday afternoon in Pier Road, as close as possible to the site of the original shot - unfortunately the positioning is not exactly the same, but it does give you an idea as to how much the town centre has changed over the last half century. One of the few businesses to make the transition is Howells and Harrison the Pharmacist - which you can see in the right hand side of the upper photo, and also again now, renamed simply as Harrison's Pharmacy. An excellent shop then and now. Whilst the shopping centre now looks much better clad in brick, rather than the hideous Brutalist concrete, it is actually a very clever refit - the original concrete skeleton is still there, but now looks better than it ever used to. 

Some news that really ought not to surprise many, Apple’s shiny (relatively) new iPhone 6 can be spoofed with the same fake fingerprints that tricked its older sibling, the iPhone 5S. According to mobile security firm Lookout, which said it discovered that it is possible to create a fake fingerprint that is capable of fooling the TouchID fingerprint security sensor of the latest iPhones (6 and 6 Plus are apparently equally vulnerable). Despite the addition of secure payment app Apple Pay to the iPhone 6, the in-built security has not evolved enough over the last year, the security experts warn. iPhone users are still vulnerable to the exact same security flaw as a year ago. The main difference is that now, with Apple Pay, the bad guys have more incentive to abuse access to an iPhone. The central problem is that the TouchID fingerprint scanner on both the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 can be fooled with a cloned fingerprint lifted from a shiny surface and recreated using easily available PVA wood glue. Germany's Chaos Computer Club was the first to crack Apple's TouchID fingerprint lock, a trick replicated by Lookout last September and replicated recently on the  newly iPhone 6. "Sadly there has been little in the way of measurable improvement in the sensor between these two devices," explained Lookout researcher Marc Rogers in a blog post. "Fake fingerprints created using my previous technique were able to readily fool both devices." In the future it may not even require hackers to have physical access to a potential victims’ fingerprints; a further report, also originating in Germany states that it is possible to recreate fingerprints from hi resolution digital photographs. Security researchers claim to have cloned the thumbprint of the German Defence Minister by photographing her hand at a press conference. In a presentation at the annual Chaos Computer Club hacker gathering in Berlin, biometrics specialist Jan Krisller – known in the hacker community as "Starbug" – explained how he'd taken a variety of photographs of Ursula von der Leyen when she gave a press briefing in October. Krisller used a telephoto lens with a focal length of 200mm and took the photographs from six feet away, he said. He then used commercial fingerprint software from Verifinger to map out the contours of the Minister's thumbprint. To get that into something that could be used on a biometric scanner, Krisller employed the same technique he demonstrated at the conference last year, where he successfully defeated Apple's TouchID fingerprint lock. The technique employs digital photographs, flexible materials, and laser printers to create false fingerprints. Krisller said the research inspired him to look at other ways photography might be used to defeat biometric security – for example, to copy the unique iris print of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Using high-resolution images from her election campaign materials, he said, it was possible to print out an image that might fool a basic iris security scanner. This issue will only become more serious and widespread as very high resolution digital cameras become more widely available. Both market leaders in high end digital photography Canon and Nikon have models with image sensors with 36.3 million pixels in a single image. At this level of potential detail, if a very high quality lens is used, a huge amount of biometric information can be extracted from the image. This is one of those classic laws of unintended consequences. I get a feeling this issue will run and run.

On New Year's Eve afternoon, I was queueing at one of the checkouts in Morrison's. The man in front of me had around a dozen jars of various varieties of pre - made pasta sauce in his trolley. I had to bite my tongue and not say anything. Mass produced pasta sauces are both a culinary abomination and a waste of money - not to say that they also contain a large number of additives. Fresh pasta sauce is so cheap and easy to make that I really cannot understand why someone would pay more for a vastly inferior alternative. Every so often I publish the occasional recipe, and this week is no exception. This is how to make a very basic pasta sauce - I have been using this for years, with very successful results.

Hugh's basic pasta sauce recipe.

Ingredients.

1 can of chopped tomatoes

1 large onion, finely diced

3 - 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 teaspoons of dried mixed herbs

1 teaspoon of dried Oregano

3 small Bay leaves

Dash of Worcestershire Sauce.

Method.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan or wok; add the finely diced onion and cook until it starts to soften, then add the garlic and fry until the onions are translucent. You can then add a generous dash of Worcestershire sauce (it will initially smell overpowering, but will mellow remarkably as it cooks), followed by the tin of chopped tomatoes and the bay leaves. Cook for around ten minutes when the sauce starts to reduce, then add the dried mixed herbs and Oregano, and cook for another five minutes, adding a dash of water if the sauce becomes too dry. Serve with cooked pasta of your choice. You can add chopped mushrooms, sweet peppers, finely chopped carrots or celery to this basic sauce to make it a little more interesting, or even add minced beef before the chopped tomatoes to make a basic Bolognese sauce (I don't subscribe to the theory that Bolognese meat should be a mixture of minced Pork and Beef - firstly this seems too complex for what is essentially an Italian peasant dish, and secondly I am Pork intolerant, and have to avoid all Pig related products). Nevertheless, the basic recipe can be modified as you see fit. It tastes infinitely superior to the shop bought jars, and is far better for you. The raw ingredients also cost a fraction of the factory bought stuff, so what is there not to like? If you would like more details on my recipes, do feel free to drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com - let me know what you think.

Another long running story is that of the Emirates Air Line cable car, (locally nicknamed the Arabfly Dangleway) which Greenwich and Charlton blogger Darryl Chamberlain of the 853 Blog picked up on a couple of weeks ago, when he submitted a Freedom of Information Request to Transport for London in order to discover how many commuters were using the cable car to commute across the River Thames. When the answer came back as “none” he wrote a rather pithy blog posting about the subject that you can read here. Later both the London Evening Standard and now the Daily Mail have picked up on Darryl’s research. The Mail sent a reporter down to the cable car to interview the few hardy souls who were using it, and discovered that with one notable exception the riders were tourists, or people out for a joy ride, rather than people commuting to or from work. This makes sense – the cable car journey is slower and more expensive that using the Jubilee Line tube which is a far more time efficient method of making the same journey – when you are a regular commuter, you want the most painless travel method possible.

You may recall that I have been covering events in respect of the closure of Britain's largest dedicated water play park - the Belvedere Splash Park by Bexley Council. There has been a large and dedicated campaign by local residents to keep the park open; over the last few weeks things have gone very quiet, and I have had messages from several Maggot Sandwich readers asking me if the campaign organisers had given up. This is far from the case, as campaign lead Ian Doherty explained in a recent Email to me:- "The Save Our Splash Park campaign was started in mid-October to fight the decision of the ruling Tory Council to close the 100 year old beloved water park in Belvedere Village. Unfortunately due to work commitments and a rash of family bereavements I've been unable to devote time to the campaign recently but with a New Year it’s a new push. We will be aggressively courting local councillors to try and get them on our side and possibly linking up with the organisation that wants to save the local libraries and well as other interested community groups. For more information please see our Facebook page". Well, that clears up that uncertainty. More on the campaign next week.

Over the last couple of years I have been highlighting technological anniversaries, and this week it is a big one. The first of January 2015 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the first commercial telephone call made on a UK cellular mobile telephone network. The companies we know as Vodafone and O2 today were Racal-Vodafone and Securicor-Cellnet back then; phones were the size of a small suitcase and only did voice calls - no text or apps, let alone any kind of camera or GPS. The two companies had spent the months up to the 1st January launch deadline fighting for cell sites and testing coverage, particularly in London. There was no hint of site-sharing. The services used analogue TACS (Total Access Control System), and later ETACS (Enhanced TACS), as more frequencies became necessary. As mentioned last week, the analogue calls could easily be monitored using a radio scanner - as in the infamous Princess Diana "Squidgygate" tapes. The cellular service was not actually the first mobile phone system available - there was a Carphone Radio service called Band 3, but that was push-to-talk and all calls had to go through an operator to be connected. Calls were limited as was the number of users. You had to go on a waiting list and wait for a subscriber to close an account before you could buy one. It was complex, limited in coverage and extremely expensive. The first modern, cellular call was undertaken by Vodafone's Michael Harrison, the son of former Vodafone Chairman Sir Ernest Harrison, who was the first to test the system, calling his father at midnight on 1 January, 1985. Michael Harrison secretly left his family’s New Year’s Eve party at their home in Surrey in the UK to surprise his father, calling him from London’s Parliament Square. Harrison made the historic call from one of the first mobile devices – a Transportable Vodafone VT1, which weighed 11lb (5kg) and had around 30 minutes of talk time - more on this groundbreaking device in a bit. Harrison recalls that the line was crystal clear, although the excited shouting of New Year’s Eve revellers in London created considerable background noise. As Sir Ernest Harrison answered the phone, Michael said: “Hi Dad. It’s Mike. This is the first-ever call made on a UK commercial mobile network”. Which isn't quite “one small step” but is better than, “Watson come here I want to see you". The official press launch was held days later at St Katherine’s Dock in London where Vodafone had hired comedian Ernie Wise make the first public mobile phone call. Wise brought the same transportable device to St Katherine’s Dock in London in a 19th century mail coach, using one of the oldest forms of communications – sending a letter – to highlight the speed and convenience of these new mobile phones. Ernie Wise’s call was received at the original Vodafone headquarters, where a handful of employees were based in an office above an Indian restaurant in Newbury, Berkshire. Heavy and cumbersome, the first generation of mobile phones were sold in the UK from 1984 – before the first products were even available and before the network was officially live. Such was the demand for a fully portable, cellular phone that more than two thousand orders had been taken by the Vodafone sales team before Michael Harrison made his call from Parliament Square. By the end of 1985, over twelve thousand devices had been sold. Very soon afterwards a good friend of mine got given a VT1 portable TACS phone by his then employer, British Telecom. The phone was so powerful that when he made trips to the Carrefour Hypermarket in Calais, he could call his Mum to find out what she wanted him to buy, connecting via the British mobile phone cell in Dover (there was no international mobile roaming back in those days). The video below is a modern take on a period commercial that has been made by Vodafone to commemorate their 30th anniversary as a mobile phone service provider. See if you can spot the mistake - the girl walking a dog and using a VT1 unit would not have been able to make or receive a call, as there is no antenna connected to the bulky transceiver unit! Feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.