A 75th anniversary.

Erith is receiving extra money from the London Mayor’s Good Growth Fund. The cash will be used to improve several public areas around the town, including the Riverside Gardens (pictured above - click on the photo in order to see a larger version). In an interview with the News Shopper, Councillor Louie French, Bexley’s deputy leader and cabinet member for growth, said: “I am delighted this latest round of funding will see the Riverside Gardens rejuvenated and refurbished based on designs developed in partnership with local residents and community organisations. The project will upgrade this much-loved open space to improve visibility of and engagement with the river, creating opportunities for the community to use the gardens for play, leisure activities, planting and learning." The historic Carnegie Library in Walnut Tree Road has received similar funding, and the official opening event of the Bookstore Cafe within the building by The Exchange is scheduled to take place on the 14th February. You can read details about it here.

The mystery surrounding Electricity House deepens. Regular readers may recall that the large 1930's brick building opposite the De Luci fish roundabout and Pier Road. The building contains a number of businesses and other organisations. In recent times the building has had a somewhat rocky time. Part of the building was home to the Bright Steps children's nursery, until it was shut down by the Police and officers from Ofsted after a member of nursery staff was seen hitting a child, and the nursery owner tried to cover the crime up. After an unsuccessful court appeal against the ban, the owners of the nursery put it up for rent. This is all under a background of Bexley Council negotiating with the individual leaseholders in order to buy out the leases in Electricity House prior to what I and many others believe to be a compulsory purchase order and then site redevelopment. A new nursery provider took up the lease of part of the building. The nursery was originally called The Carnegie Playhouse, but shortly changed its name to The Bexley Road Nursery. Some building refurbishment work was undertaken, but for the last couple of weeks no activity has been observed on the site. I have Emailed the nursery owner asking for an update, but so far I have not had a response. In the meantime, the African church which has been using The P2 Events Centre - the shabbily converted former snooker club, located on the upper floor of the large building - have now moved out, and they are now holding their services in the White Hart African restaurant and wine bar. You may recall that last year the White Hart controversially submitted a request to Bexley Council licensing in order to stay open until 5am every day. Understandably this was thrown out. One other issue that came up at the licensing meeting was that the White Hart had converted the former beer cellar into an events space and an overspill area from the restaurant upstairs. The problem with this was that there is no fire escape - there is only a single staircase in and out of the lower floor area. Because of this, both Bexley Council planning team and the London Fire Brigade forbade the owners from using the former beer cellar until extensive alterations to create a fire escape had been made. Some locals have expressed concern that the church may be illegally using the former beer cellar area in order to hold their services, but at the time of writing, I have no solid evidence to back this up. Whatever is happening, things are changing, and the businesses located in Electricity House are gradually closing up as their leases are bought up by Bexley Council; I have it on reliable authority that the long established shoe repairer and key cutting shop called Soles and Heels. on the corner of Pier Road and Cross Street is soon to be no more. The council surveyors have been in to measure the place up prior to making the owners an offer that they will not be able to refuse. 

Nowadays many people are familiar with the ground breaking work done by hundreds of men and women during World War II at Bletchley Park to break the Axis ciphers, which are said to have shortened the war by around two years. Much has been made of the work by Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman and the hundreds of mathematicians, linguists, statisticians, cryptanalysts and administrative staff who worked to crack the Enigma Code, and several films and documentaries have been made on the subject, including the absolutely terrible film, The Imitation Game, which is horrendously historically inaccurate, and actually fabricates much of the story. Nevertheless, the work carried out in utter secret was absolutely vital to the Allies eventual victory. What is far less well known is the story of how Station X (the code name for Bletchley Park) broke the cipher used by Germany's high command, which was even more fiendishly complex and hard to break than the already formidable Enigma Code. Tuesday of last week marked the 75th anniversary of the first use of a digital, programmable computer, which not only substantially eased wartime code breaking, but went on to change the world - and it all started in a draughty shed near Milton Keynes. I digress; The cipher used by Hitler and his top generals was called the Lorenz Cipher. Lorenz used a massively modified electrical teleprinter. Teleprinters are not based on the 26-letter alphabet and Morse code on which the Enigma machine depended. Teleprinters use the 32-symbol Baudot code. Note that the Baudot code output consists of five channels each of which is a stream of bits which can be represented as no-hole or hole, 0 or 1, dot or cross. The system enciphered the message text by adding to it, character by character, a set of obscuring characters thus producing the enciphered characters which were transmitted to the intended recipient. The simplicity of the Lorenz system lay in the fact that the obscuring characters were added in a rather special way (known as modulo-2 addition). Then exactly the same obscuring characters, added also by modulo-2 addition to the received enciphered characters, would cancel out the obscuring characters and leave the original message characters which could then be printed. The Lorenz machines at each end of the communication link had to be set up with the same cipher key in order to effectively communicate. The difficulty was how to ensure, in a hot war situation, that the same random character keys were available at each end of a communications link and that they were both set to the same start position. The Lorenz company decided that it would be operationally easier to construct a machine to generate the obscuring character sequence. Because it was a machine it could not generate a completely random sequence of characters. It generated what is known as a pseudo-random sequence. Unfortunately for the German Army it was more "pseudo" than random and that was how it was broken. Brigadier John Tiltman, one of the top codebreakers in Bletchley Park, took a particular interest in these enciphered teleprinter messages. They were given the code name "Fish". Because the Lorenz system depended on addition of characters, Tiltman reasoned that if the operators made a mistake and used the same Lorenz machine starts for two messages (known by codebreakers as a depth), then by adding the two cipher texts together character by character, the obscuring character sequence would disappear. He would then be left with a sequence of characters each of which represented the addition of the two characters in the original German message texts. For two completely different messages it is virtually impossible to assign the correct characters to each message. Just small sections at the start could be derived but not complete messages. As the number of intercepts, now being made at Knockholt in Kent, increased a section was formed in Bletchley Park headed by Major Ralph Tester and known as the "Testery". A number of messages were intercepted but not much headway had been made into breaking the cipher until the Germans made one horrendous mistake. It was on 30 August 1941. A German operator had a long message of nearly 4,000 characters to be sent from one part of the German Army High command to another — probably Athens to Vienna. He correctly set up his Lorenz machine and then sent a twelve letter indicator, using the German names, to the operator at the receiving end. This operator then set his Lorenz machine and asked the operator at the sending end to start sending his message. After nearly 4,000 characters had been keyed in at the sending end, by hand, the operator at the receiving end sent back by radio the equivalent, in German, of "didn't get that — send it again". They now both put their Lorenz machines back to the same start position. This was absolutely forbidden, but they did it. The operator at the sending end then began to key in the message again, by hand. If he had been an automaton and used exactly the same key strokes as the first time then all the interceptors would have got would have been two identical copies of the cipher text. Input the same — machines generating the same obscuring characters — same cipher text. But being only human and being thoroughly bored and disgusted at having to key it all again, the sending operator began to make differences in the second message compared to the first. The message began with that well known German phrase SPRUCHNUMMER — "message number" in English. The first time the operator keyed in S P R U C H N U M M E R. The second time he keyed in S P R U C H N R and then the rest of the message text. Now NR means the same as NUMMER, so what difference did that make? It meant that immediately following the N the two texts were different. But the machines were generating the same obscuring sequence, therefore the cipher texts were different from that point on. The interceptors at Knockholt realised the possible importance of these two messages because the twelve letter indicators were the same. They were sent post-haste to John Tiltman at Bletchley Park. Tiltman applied the same additive technique to this pair as he had to previous Depths. But this time he was able to get much further with working out the actual message texts because when he tried SPRUCHNUMMER at the start he immediately spotted that the second message was nearly identical to the first. Thus the combined errors of having the machines back to the same start position and the text being re-keyed with just slight differences enabled Tiltman to recover completely both texts. The second one was about 500 characters shorter than the first where the German operator had been saving his fingers. This fact also allowed Tiltman to assign the correct message to its original cipher text. Now Tiltman could add together, character by character, the corresponding cipher and message texts revealing for the first time a long stretch of the obscuring character sequence being generated by this German cipher machine. He did not know how the machine did it, but he knew that this was what it was generating. This manual cracking of the Lorenz Cipher proved that it could be broken, but it was far too slow and laborious to be used in any kind of practical manner. What would massively accelerate the breaking of Lorenz enciphered messages would be if there was a way to automate the comparison of the hundreds of messages that were transmitted by the Nazis every day. This is where Colossus - the world's first, digital, programmable computer came in. Built by the Post Office at their research and development laboratory in Dollis Hill, and designed by a largely unsung genius called Tommy Flowers. Colossus was huge - hence the name, and used thousands of thermionic valves (what the Americans call tubes) to operate. Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours, and sometimes even minutes. Colossus read teleprinter characters, in the international Baudot code, at 5,000 characters per second from a paper tape. These characters were usually the intercepted cipher text which had been transmitted by radio. The paper tape was joined into a loop with special punched holes at the beginning and end of the text. The broad principle of Colossus was to count throughout the length of the text the number of times that some complicated Boolean function between the text and the generated wheel patterns had either a true or false result. At the end of text the count left on the counter circuits was dumped onto relays before being printed on the typewriter during the next read through the text, an early form of double buffering. It was just in time for the deciphering of messages which gave vital information to Eisenhower and Montgomery prior to D-Day. In effect Bletchley Park were "reading Hitler's Email". These deciphered Lorenz messages showed that Hitler had swallowed the deception campaigns, the phantom army in the South of England, the phantom convoys moving east along the channel; that Hitler was convinced that the attacks were coming across the Pas de Calais and that he was keeping Panzer divisions in Belgium. Colossus was so good at deciphering Nazi High Command messages that there were many instances when the cryptographers at Bletchley Park were reading decrypted messages before Hitler did! After D-Day the French resistance and the British and American Air Forces bombed and strafed all the telephone and teleprinter land lines in Northern France, forced the Germans to use radio communications and suddenly the volume of intercepted messages went up enormously. The Mark 1 had been rapidly succeeded by the Mark 2 Colossus in June 1944 and eight more were quickly built to handle the increase in messages. The Mark 1 was upgraded to a Mark 2 and there were thus ten Mark 2 Colossi in the Park by the end of the war. By the end of hostilities, 63 million characters of high grade German messages had been decrypted — an absolutely staggering output from just 550 people at Bletchley Park, plus of course the considerable number of interceptors at Knockholt, with backups at Shaftesbury and Cupar in Scotland. The first Lorenz enciphered message to be cracked by Colossus happened 75 years ago last week - and it changed the world, launching the computer age.

You may recall that last week I wrote about the Metropolitan Police who are in the midst of what it is calling a trial of automated facial recognition (AFR) technology, although it has been using the kit since 2016. Last week it used the kit in Romford, parking a van outside the station between 10am and 6pm. The cameras scan the faces of passersby and checks them against a watch list that is supposed to be freshly drawn up for each deployment. Forces have argued the public expects them to use emerging tech to improve policing, but critics railed against the fact it is being tested in live environments without a legal framework and in the face of evidence it has a 98 per cent false positive rate. Last week's deployment was due to be the final one before a full analysis, but snow meant that the second day had to be rescheduled because footfall would be lower than is required by the tests. The Metropolitan Police have yet to provide details of where and when this will be – info about the Romford trial was only released at 4pm the day before. The problem is not with identifying and tracking criminals, which I am sure pretty much everyone applauds, but the fact that the technology currently deployed simply does not work as advertised, and the extremely high rate of false positives means that potentially passers by can be identified as a wanted criminal when in reality they are completely innocent. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or alternatively Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

Now for the weekly local safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association. First a report from Barnehurst ward:- 

Image:- Fire fighters attending a property in Parkside Avenue, Barnehurst on Monday which resulted in the discovery of a cannabis factory. "Not a bad week crime wise across the ward with no burglaries reported. There has been an increase in theft from motor vehicles offences with five being reported in Hillingdon Road since Wednesday 30th January. All offences have occurred overnight. There has been no damage to vehicles and property including electrical items, sunglasses and small change has been taken. Please make sure that your vehicle is locked securely, do not rely on the electronic fob always check manually that your vehicle is locked. The team will be adjusting their duties and will be carrying out both uniformed and plain clothes operations at the relevant times. On Monday 4th February the fire service responded to a house fire in Parkside Avenue, the property was seriously damaged and whilst fighting the blaze a cannabis factory was discovered across the first floor of the house. Police attended and approximately 150 cannabis plants were seized from the property. Enquires are continuing in regards to potential suspects identified regarding the cultivation. Most cannabis factories are situated in residential streets, normally the electricity is by passed and with the heat generated from the hydroponic set up creates a major fire hazard. If you have suspicions that a property is being used to cultivate drugs please call the local policing team with details. If you do not want to talk to the police consider calling Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 this is completely anonymous and you do not have to give any personal details. Thankfully nobody was injured during this incident, however this was only due to the quick response from the fire service and the skill of the crews tackling the fire which prevented the blaze from spreading to neighbouring properties. A member of the team will be at Barnehurst Golf course on Tuesday 12th February at 11am. Please come along for an informal chat about any concerns or issues that you may have or just pop in to say hello. As always we can be found on twitter @MPSBarnehurst and Facebook, just search for Barnehurst Police". Belvedere ward:- "The team began this week by attending Belvedere Junior school in order to monitor parking and traffic along Lower Road, directly outside of the school after concerns were raised by both the school and Bexley Council. This has historically been an issue and the team are hoping to attend more regularly with partner agencies to take the necessary action against any person(s) that are found to be committing offences. We have now been advised that the elder of the two men that were sleeping rough on the site of the disused Belvedere Police station has been housed. A great deal of work took place by not only ourselves but several outreach workers and Bexley Council officers to assist the male with his health issues and he is now hopefully in suitable accommodation. We are aware that the younger male seems to have repositioned himself further along Nuxley Road and we are still working toward a suitable outcome for this male also. With the help of Ian Holt, the estate manager of the Lesnes Abbey heritage site, the team have recovered a safe that had been discovered discarded in bushes at the entrance to New Road. This has been stored in a more secure area at this stage and appears to have been taken from a house in the Welling area during a burglary. We are in the process of contacting the rightful owner in order to restore their property to them. Over the weekend the team responded to a call for Police as youths were apparently causing a nuisance in both Tennyson and Scott Houses in Albert Road. Unfortunately there was no sign of the group when we arrived at the location however we will continue to patrol areas such as this on a regular basis. Finally, the team visited a resident of Woodland Way who had reported a male that had been caught on CCTV from the property. He had been walking along Woodland Way in the early hours of one morning recently and was trying to open car doors. He eventually managed to enter a vehicle that had not been locked overnight, although he did not take anything from the vehicle as no items of value were left in the car by the resident. No other damage was caused to the vehicle however the team would advise that you always lock and secure your vehicle even if leaving it unattended for the shortest time. Also, never leave items on display within your vehicle. Place items where they cannot be seen (glove box or boot) or take any valuable items from the car when you exit your vehicle. Our next Community Contact session is due to take place on Friday 15th February at the Asda café from 12 noon". Bexleyheath ward:- "There has been one report of a burglary along Bedonwell Road Bexleyheath on the Friday 01/02/2019, method of entry is unknown. Saturday 02/02/2019 – Report of a theft from motor vehicle, outside Asda store Bexleyheath; Wednesday 30/01/2019 – Report of an interference with a motor vehicle along Hyde Road Bexleyheath. A theft of purse was report on the Monday 04/02/2019 along the Broadway Bexleyheath between 3.30 and 4pm; On the Monday 04/02/2019 - A male was stopped along the skate park in Bexleyheath for possession of cannabis. The team has received reports of males on bikes causing anti social behaviour in the carpark area at the Premiere Inn, patrols are conducted daily. If you do wish to pass on information to Police then please contact Crime Stoppers on 0800 555111. Please do not hesitate to contact us via Twitter, Facebook, email and the ward phone. If you are after crime prevention advice, please look at the Met Police website which has lots of information that you may find useful. Remember in an emergency please dial 999 or 101 for non-urgent reporting". Crayford ward:- "Number plates were stolen from a Ford Transit parked to the rear of a business by Crayford Parade between Friday 25th and Monday 28th February. On Thursday 31st January a burglary occurred at an address in Iron Mill Lane between 13.30 and 21.30. Entry was via a rear door, it was not reported what was stolen. Number plates were stolen from a vehicle parked in Farm Place between 18.00 on Thursday 31 January and 10.00 on Friday 1st February. These number plates OV53 VHJ should be on a Blue VW Polo. It was reported that between 09.00-09.10 on Tuesday 29th January a wing mirror was deliberately broken off a Ford Fiesta van whilst parked outside a property in Mill Place. Number plates KW10 GWV were stolen from a Black Volkswagon whilst parked in Perry Street on Saturday 2nd February between 12.15 and 14.30. Between 12.00 on Thursday 31st January and 14.15 on Saturday 2nd February a shed was broken into at Crayford Allotments, a quantity of power tools and gardening equipment was taken. A theft from motor vehicle occurred on Monday 4th February between 01.00-04.00 at Old Road. A small bag containing toiletries, a small flick knife and caravan keys were stolen from within a red Honda CRV, victim believes the suspect's intention was to steal the vehicle but it had a steering lock fitted. Our officers have dealt with 2 youths who had cannabis on them close to Halcot Avenue, their parents have been made aware. We were at Town Hall Square on Tuesday early evening with our partners from Peabody Trust to conduct house to house surveys about anti-social behaviour and disorder at that location and close by. Tackling anti-social behaviour in Crayford Town Centre is one of our current ward promises as agreed by our ward panel. Whilst there some youths were seen loitering in the rear of the underground car park and on seeing police ran off. A short foot chase ensued but the youths had too great a head start, they did however drop their lit cannabis joint which will now be destroyed. Many of the residents at Town Hall Square want us to be there to deal with the constant ongoing issues occurring there". Erith ward:- "Around Erith – A new café is opening soon, the bookstore café in the old Erith Library for more info have a look at this link: https://www.theexchangeerith.com/the-bookstore-cafe/ we will be popping in for a coffee every now and then supporting new local businesses. Also a free exhibition Windrush and Bexley's Story of Migration [exhibition] Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 11:00 AM - Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:00 PM. The Exchange Open Thursday – Sunday, 11 – 4pm. - Crimes of note: Burg Res (Burglary Residential) Sunday 27/01/2019 Rutland Gate - By suspect, breaking into victim's household whilst away, stealing several items and causing damage to several items + the household; Theft from MV (Motor Vehicle) Thursday 31/01/2019, St. Fidelis Road - Vehicle boot left unlocked and items taken; Burg Res Friday 01/02/2019 Crusoe Road - by suspect unknown gaining entry by smashing rear conservatory door to gain entry then remove property from within; Shoplift <£200 Saturday 02/02/2019 WM Morrison Supermarket, James Watt Way; Theft from MV 03/02/2019 Bramble Croft - front and rear number plates stolen from vehicle; Burg Bus (Burglary Business) Friday 01/02/2019, West Street - break in to a construction site. Community Contact Session date:- Thursday 14th February Erith Library". Northumberland Heath ward:- "One burglary reported to us over the past week in Belmont Road. This took place on the afternoon of Thursday January 31st between 3pm - 10.50pm when the occupiers returned to find the back door smashed and the house ransacked. A safe containing a large amount of cash was stolen along with a Rolex watch, a Louis Vutton handbag and office equipment to the value of£500. A Land Rover discovery was stolen overnight on Monday February 4th in the small hours of the morning between 0130 – 0620 when the victim discovered it missing when leaving for work .The vehicle was stolen with the owner still of possession of the keys. The victim has CCTV footage of three men in Balaclavas on their property, these males were believed to be driving a silver ford focus prior to the vehicle theft. Two theft from Motor vehicles in very close proximity to each other in Parsonage Manorway and Shinglewell Road. Both took place overnight on Thursday January 31st and Friday February 1st between 6pm and 8am. One vehicle had a bag containing £40 stolen and the other had a dashcam stolen. This week we had a meeting with Bexley council to discuss several youths who are still coming to police attention, we will update you with any further information in due course. Our next drop in Police Surgery will be held on Wednesday February 13th at Midday. All are welcome to attend". Slade Green and Northend ward:- "An armed robbery took place on Tuesday 05/02/2019. At 11:45 2 masked men entered the Post Office in Forest Road armed with axes demanding money from the tills. They got away with £600. Fortunately no one was hurt. The investigation is under way with the good news that one suspect has been arrested and hopefully the second will be caught soon. If anyone has any information relating to this matter please let us know or call 101. A vehicle was stolen from Cedar Road at some time between Saturday (2/2/19) and Monday (4/2/19) this week with no evidence of any smashed glass or stolen keys. The vehicle details have been flagged for the ANPR cameras. 2 positive searches this week. PC's Mark and James carried out some plain clothes work on Saturday 2nd Feb resulting in 1 suspect searched in Frobisher Road and found in possession of cannabis which ended with the relevant warnings given. Another suspect is coming back for an interview next week after also being found in possession of cannabis but denying any knowledge of it. On the morning of Saturday Feb 2nd police attention was drawn to an unattended motorbike with its engine running in the car park of Tesco Express, Northend Road. As officers went to go in the shop a male came out carrying £31 pound worth of chocolate, he said it was his bike. The bike was stolen as was the chocolate so he was duly arrested for both offences!" Thamesmead East ward:- "Burglaries - No burglaries to report this week. However remain vigilant at all times. Theft of motor vehicle - Between the hours of 02:00pm and 04:00pm on Thursday 31/01/19 a vehicle was stolen from Manordeane Road. Theft from motor vehicle - Between the hours of 07:00pm on Saturday 02/02/19 and 07:50am Sunday 03/02/19 a vehicle parked, locked and secure in Lensbury Way had the front passenger window smashed and a brand new tom tom valued at £220 taken from the glove box. During the early hours of Sunday morning of the 03/02/19 another vehicle parked in Lensbury Way had both the front passenger window and rear passenger smashed, an Apple mini iPad, Microsoft surface laptop, optical equipment and £350 taken from the glove box. Crime prevention - Wallets, purses ,handbags ,credit cards and loose change should never be left in an unattended vehicle. Remove sat nav mounts, suction cup marks on windows and cables which may indicate electrical items in the vehicle. Good news - On Friday 01/02/19 a male who resides locally was arrested for failing to appear, was kept in over the weekend and bailed to court. Meetings - Have A Say Day On Thursday 14/02/19 at The Link, Bazalgette Way between the hours of 1:00 – 2:00pm,an opportunity to meet with your local police team and discuss any concerns that you may have". West Heath ward:- "The ward has suffered two theft from Motor vehicles and two Theft of Motor vehicles. Between Tuesday the 29th January at 9pm -- Wednesday 30th January at 7.40am a vehicle was stolen without the use of the keys in Powys Close, a second vehicle was taken from Canberra Road again without keys between 11pm on the Monday 21st January and 7.30am Friday 1st February. Number plates were stolen from a vehicle in Clovelly Road daytime between 9.30am and 8.15pm on the Thursday 31st January. Petrol was stolen and the vehicles tyres slashed in Hurst Lane between Sunday 10th at 10am and Monday 11th February at 10am. We have been made aware by the residents of Glenview that person/s are informing them that un-necessary remedial works are required to their properties, they have also been offered services of driveway cleaning. Please be aware of unexpected callers offering these services. Please do not hesitate to contact police if you have any concerns about these callers. Our next Community Contact Session will be on Saturday the Saturday 9th February at Hurst Lane Estate between 1 – 2pm. The team have carried out arrest enquiries for persons who are wanted and now currently have only one person outstanding on the ward. We continue to carry out high visibility patrols in an attempt to reduce burglaries, ASB and drugs. We have delivered leaflets regarding drug activity in Heath Avenue and Powys Road".

The end video this week is a documentary from 2014 featuring Welling born and raised musician Kate Bush; it makes for fascinating viewing. Please feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

Erith KFC 24/7?

On Thursday afternoon I was walking along Manor Road, past the KFC Drive Through (not "Thru" as it says on the sign - their branding team are imbeciles)  when I happened to see a notice in the window of the fast food outlet. I am always curious about such things, so I went down the steps to the entrance in order to more closely investigate. Quite a lot of the stories I publish come from carefully checking planning applications, either directly posted in the street, or submitted to Bexley Council's labyrinthine planning website. What I saw was a copy of a licencing application that the company that owns the KFC franchise has recently submitted to Bexley Council. What I saw horrified me. You can see a photograph of the application below. Apologies for the glare and reflections - the light was not the best.

In essence, the store wants to increase its opening hours to include the period between 11pm and 5am seven days a week. Apart from an hour or so closed in the evening, and another hour after 5am, presumably to allow cleaning, this would in effect mean that the drive through would be permanently open to customers. If they were to succeed in their application, there would be a constant stream of drunks, druggies, violent criminals and all sorts of anti social undesirables brought into what is a fundamentally residential area. You may think I am over - reacting, but if one looks at what has happened to the nearby existing 24/7 fast food drive through - the McDonald's at Plumstead, which is in a far more suitable location (opposite the Plumstead Bus Garage, next to the Post Office sorting office, and well away from any residential housing), they have had to employ around the clock security guards due to constant problems of alcohol and drug related violence, anti social behaviour and all sorts of other associated criminality. What makes the situation in Manor Road even worse is that the KFC is directly opposite a McDonald's Drive Through. If the KFC succeeds, the McDonald's will be forced to also open 24/7 in order to compete. The McDonald's backs directly onto the Compton Place housing estate - and I am sure that local residents will have a lot to say on the subject. The KFC itself is directly opposite the block of flats on what used to be the site of Erith Odeon (a grade II* listed Art Deco building that was illegally demolished by the developers of the current flats), and it backs onto what used to be Erith Trades and Social Club, which has just been demolished to make way for key worker apartments. There are also houses that form part of Compton Place opposite the front of the fast food outlet; basically it is hemmed in on three sides by residential accommodation. I have had a chat with my contact in the local Police - and they are not happy about the planning application. Apart from the concerns already mentioned, there is apparently a history of burglars parking vans in drive through restaurant car parks, before the occupants go off to burgle nearby houses. An unusual van parked in a street or cul de sac attracts attention, but a van parked in a drive through does not, thus enabling them to break into a number of houses, then bring their stolen booty back to the van before making another sortie, undisturbed. I am also led to understand that both the McDonald's and KFC car parks are used to conduct drug deals from time to time. If you have strong feelings about the matter, it is possible to log an online complaint by clicking on this link to the Bexley Council Licencing Complaints Website. Whatever your personal opinion of the large fast food chains like McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King, for example, one can at least say that if you are in an unfamiliar town and find yourself in need of sustenance, visiting one of the large fast food chains will mean that you will know what you will get, and the standard of cooking and food hygiene will be consistently high. The food itself may well be bland and uninspiring, but reliability is often the key. I was therefore extremely surprised that the Erith drive through branch of McDonald’s currently has a “Scores on the Doors” food hygiene rating of only two out of five stars. For an organisation that prides itself on cleanliness and good ingredient handling practices, this is a real blow. In their defence, McDonald’s have issued the following public statement:- “The management team had recently changed resulting in a breakdown in the supervision of the cleanliness system.  The areas highlighted in the inspection have now been rectified and the cleaning system has been re-implemented”. I am certain that things will have markedly improved now, several months after the last inspection, but it does beg the question, how could a multinational mega brand allow one of its stores get into a position that it can only rate a two out of five star rating? It is immaterial whether the store is company owned or a franchise – the standards expected are identical. The damage to the McDonald’s brand should such information become widely known is difficult to calculate, but it certainly would not be good. It is ironic that a two star rating in Erith is actually at the upper end of the high ratings – pretty much anywhere else has one or no stars, with the notable exception of the Mambocino coffee shop / cafe, and the T-Bone Cafe in Fraser Road, both of which score a very creditable four stars out of five. I will have to take a look to see if McDonald’s have their pitiful rating sticker on display. Something tells me that would be very unlikely.

This Wednesday marked a very important date that remarkably few people are aware of. It was the seventieth anniversary of the switching on of Colossus – the World’s first programmable digital computer. On the 5^th of February 1944, the MK1 Colossus attacked its first cipher challenge. Contrary to some erroneous accounts, Colossus was not used to break the German Enigma code – that work was done on a separate set of electromechanical analogue computers called Bombes. What Colossus did was crack the daily key settings of an even more fiendishly complicated code system called Lorenz, which was exclusively used by the Nazi High Command to communicate with each other. Colossus was designed and built by a team headed by an amazing electronic engineer called Tommy Flowers, who was born and raised the son of a bricklayer in Poplar, East London. Flowers was ferociously intelligent, and whilst an  apprentice electrician at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, he undertook  evening classes at the University of London, where he was awarded a BSc in Electrical Engineering. He later became the head of the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill, where prior to the war he was instrumental in the design of the first automatic telephone exchange. I have a personal connection with this piece of history; my late Great Uncle Horace worked in the Dollis Hill Research Station during the war. We know very little of his wartime experiences, but we do know that as well as being exempted from military service, he was also exempted from Home Guard or fire watching duties, which was extremely unusual at the time. He never said anything about what he had been doing, but it remains likely he was part of Tommy Flowers’ Colossus design and construction team, which was the most secret allied project of the war, classified even higher than the Manhattan Project to create the first nuclear weapons. Colossus was an amazing feat of engineering - It occupied the size of a living room (7 ft high by 17 ft wide and 11 ft deep), weighed five tonnes, and used 8kW of power. It incorporated 2,500 valves, 501 of which are thyraton switches, about 100 logic gates and 10,000 resistors connected by 7 km of wiring. Reading 5000 characters per second (faster than anything ever produced commercially), Colossus found the start wheel positions of Lorenz-encrypted messages to enable the decryption of 63 million characters. Typically, it took Colossus up to four hours to establish the start wheel positions of messages. It is often surmised that the Allies might have been reading some of the decrypted messages even before they reached Nazi High Command. By the end of the war, 63 million characters of high-grade German messages had been decrypted by the 550 people working on the ten functioning Colossi at Bletchley Park. After the war, some of the Colossi were destroyed, and the remaining ones moved to GCHQ, where it is said they were in operation until the mid 1970’s. By the early 1980’s the story of Bletchley Park and the Colossus computer was finally coming out, after over thirty years of total secrecy. Great Uncle Horace never said a word, and it is to my great regret that we only discovered after his death what may have been his involvement with the astonishing feat which has gone on to change the world. Up until very recently I would have recommended Bletchley Park as an ideal day out for anyone with an interest in history, computers, radio, or who just wants a day out somewhere with lovely formal gardens and a picturesque lake. Things have changed, however. It used to be that visitors could pay a one – off entrance fee, which would grant them access to all of the facilities in the grounds of Bletchley Park; there was a motor museum, a museum dedicated to Winston Churchill memorabilia, the National Radio Centre (run by the Radio Society of Great Britain, of which I am an inductee) an old fashioned post office and a model railway. On top of this, the two main attractions were the main Bletchley Park House and the surrounding huts, used by the wartime code breakers, and the National Museum of Computing, home to the rebuilt Colossus. Recently a new Chief Executive was appointed by Bletchley Park Trust (the charity which has overall responsibility for the place). The new chap, called Ian Standen has decided that he wants to turn the park into the “Disneyland of code breaking”. He’s closed down the Churchill Museum, and made every facility except the main house and the huts an extra entrance fee, and also fired a number of the volunteer curators for not being “on message” despite the fact that many of the volunteers worked at Bletchley Park, or later at GCHQ and have an intimate personal knowledge of the history of the place. Instead he wants to use actors to play "characters" loosely based on real life people to guide visitors around the museum. To add insult to injury, he has had the National Museum of Computing fenced off and excluded from guided tours, even though the huts they occupy were an integral part of the original organisational setup. Visitors now have to navigate a series of gates and pay an additional fee to enter the computing section, even if all they want to do is see the Tony Sale Colossus computer rebuild (as pictured above), which to be honest is the focal point for any visit to Bletchley Park. As you may appreciate, these changes, which are designed to create additional visitor revenue may well have done exactly the opposite. A campaign is now under way to get Ian Standen sacked, and the whole Bletchley Park setup returned to how it originally was established. The campaign are currently trying to recruit Stephen Fry as their figurehead, and from what I have read, they already have a huge amount of support, both from visitors and the IT industry. At present Bletchley Park is being torn apart by a small coterie of people who have no appreciation or understanding of the place, and merely want to turn a quick buck. The place is not an amusement park; it is a British technological and cultural institution that should be treated with suitable dignity. I suspect that the “re – organisation” will be cut short by those who really care about Bletchley Park. In the meantime I would urge readers to boycott the place in order to send a message to the likes of Ian Standen that he cannot play fast and loose with a national treasure, where the wartime code breakers shortened the war by an estimated two years, saved countless lives and in so doing created the computer revolution. You can see an online album of photos of Bletchley Park by clicking here.

The News Shopper are reporting that the Crossrail tunnel from just outside of Plumstead Station going Northwards under the River Thames to North Greenwich has now been completed. Around seventy percent of the Crossrail project has now been completed, and I understand not only that, but the work has been done on time and on budget. Although seventy percent of the tunnelling is completed, the full project is at the halfway point. There are many stations to be built, and infrastructure to be commissioned too. Crossrail are opening some of their building sites to the general public, who will be able to view the progress of work for themselves. You can visit their website here to book free tickets for a number of events.  The Crossrail project is a massive venture; it is costing £73 billion, and employing around 10,000 people, including 280 apprentices.

Following my musing on local bespoke tailors nowadays and in history, another skilled craft came to my attention recently. Whilst putting together each Maggot Sandwich weekly update, I sit in my dedicated home office in front of my iMac. I have a very comfortable orthopaedic chair which originally belonged to my late Dad. He gave it to me years before he got seriously ill; I must have had it for around fifteen years I guess. The chair was custom made for him by what used to be the orthopaedic department of the now long defunct New Cross Hospital when he had a hip replacement operation. Even though the chair was custom made for him, he never really took to it, and it remained only occasionally employed, until he gave it to me. I have used it daily ever since. Nowadays the chair is looking very shabby; the black vinyl seat covering is split, and the foam stuffing is visible; it would be very easy for me to go out and buy a new office chair for around £70 or so, but not only has my old chair got sentimental connections, apart from needing re – upholstering, the thing is in very good order. There are still a few professional furniture upholsterers around, and last Saturday morning I turned up at the door of Perry’s Upholsterers at Plumstead Corner. The shop has been there for as long as I can recall. The owner was very open and friendly, took a quick look at my chair, and immediately said that he would be happy to restore it, but there was a six month waiting list for his services! I was gobsmacked – I had (incorrectly) assumed that very few people would require the services of an upholsterer. I thought that most people would have rather gone out and purchased a new three – piece suite from DFS or Land of Leather, rather than having their existing one professionally rebuilt. How wrong I was. The proprietor informed me that he gets a lot of work, as there is still a demand for furniture refurbishment and recovering, there are really only two high class upholsterers in the borough, and demand for their services is very high. He went on to say that when he first started, as apprentice to his father some thirty odd years ago, there was a lot of competition and prices were low in order to win work; now the opposite is true – prices are high, competition low and waiting lists long. This seems to resonate with my story about the rarity of the bespoke tailor in UK society nowadays. Back in 1939, Burton’s had opened a bespoke tailors shop in Erith High Street, and you could get a custom made suit for 45 shillings (£2.50 equivalent).  Local Historian Ken Chamberlain has memories of the place being extremely impressive, and sent me the advert with the very dashing looking chap in the photo above - click on the image for a larger view. I notice that the sharp styling is heavily influenced by American fashions of the time – wide shoulders and a narrow waist – a look that featured in many period gangster movies which were very popular then. Regular Maggot Sandwich reader Lance has been doing some investigations into the comparative cost of pre – WW2 bespoke tailoring compared with now, and has come up with some interesting findings. Lance writes:-“ Did a couple of quick comparisons against 1938 cost of living.  Firstly multiples of a loaf of bread.  In 1938 that was 2p or 6 to the shilling, so 26 shillings gives us 156 loaves of bread or at today’s price of £1.50 it’s £234.00. Secondly fractions of the price of a house.  In 1938 the average house price was £600 and 26 shillings is 1.3 pounds so 600/1.3 is 462.  Today’s average house price is £240,000 divided by 462 is £519.00 . Gives us a range between £234 and £519, which would fit in with your hypothesis about bespoke tailoring being relatively more affordable”. Interesting stuff indeed, as a bespoke man’s suit from Sidcup based Mold and Russell with set you back something in the region of £950 today, depending on material and finish.

Regular readers may recall that back in August last year, I mourned the closure of my favourite restaurant, which had been serving authentic home – style curries in Brick Lane since 1969. Sweet and Spicy closed its doors for the final time due to a massive increase in both rent and business rates, levied by Tower Hamlets Council. Sweet and Spicy catered mainly to the Bangladeshi and Pakistani local residents, rather than the tourists that most of the other more mainstream establishments in Brick Lane attract. It would appear that Sweet and Spicy may have just been the first of many food outlets to close – as the rules created and enforced by the council have suddenly been changed. The Evening Standard are reporting that many of the curry houses in Brick Lane have licences that allow them to serve food and drink until one or two AM on weekdays. The council have a bye law that says that no “sit down” restaurant  in Tower Hamlets can admit customers after eleven PM, and that all restaurants must be closed by midnight, or the owners would be faced by a fine of £20,000. They say that this ruling overrides the terms of the food and drink licensing, though I understand that this has yet to be legally challenged. Understandably many local restaurant owners are up in arms over this issue – they regard it as a restraint of trade, as the Brick Lane Restaurant Association say that on average, restaurants get around a third of their total income from sales made after midnight, and a curfew would mean that many of the sixty restaurants in Brick Lane would be forced to close for good. Tower Hamlets Council say that the midnight curfew is to stop “anti social behaviour”. I suspect an ulterior motive on the part of the council – when I first started visiting Brick Lane in the mid nineties, it was still home to the rag trade, with many small “sweat shop” factories, and trade outlet shops selling cheap clothing to vendors such as market traders. There were quite a few restaurants, but overall it was a grimy and not very welcoming place if you were not a local. Very slowly, over the intervening years, the Lane has slowly got smarter, and has become a tourist attraction dedicated almost exclusively to Indian restaurants. The area in and around Brick Lane was rebranded as “Bangla Town”, and a campaign to re-name Whitechapel tube station to Brick Lane Tube station started. Whilst this was all happening, the former Truman brewery in the lane was converted into a retail space with offices for a number of start up technology companies, and the surrounding roads, still with original crumbling Huguenot terraced houses became fashionable – one by one they were bought up and restored, and they are now some of the most desirable properties in central London. In short, the area has become gentrified. I suspect that Tower Hamlets Council are enforcing the midnight customer curfew as they actually want to drastically reduce the number of curry houses in the road; after all, the amount of Council and Business Tax that can be generated from a small but busy restaurant is limited. By killing the restaurants off, the council would be able to get property developers to move in, and thus attract wealthy foreign investors. London is already the hottest property location in the World – millionaires from places like Russia and China are attracted to the UK, and specifically London for a number of reasons: The UK is politically stable, has a very well respected legal system, and property is a very good investment, especially when foreigners may lack confidence in their own countries. As we have seen in the news not that long ago, some Russian oligarchs have been both  imprisoned and had their assets seized because they fell foul  of President Putin. Much money is flooding into the UK from foreign sources, as it is regarded as a safe haven.  I reckon that Tower Hamlets Council have realised that with some cunning dealing, they can secure a slice of this potentially lucrative cake. Please feel to leave a comment below, or email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com

The ending video is somewhat appropriate; it is a short explanatory film about Bletchley Park and the code breaking work carried out by the Colossi during World War 2. There are interviews with a number of the original operators and engineers. If my Great Uncle Horace had still been alive, it is possible that he would have featured in the documentary. Do give it a watch and please feel free to leave a comment below.

Analogue Amazon.

The photo above was taken by regular Maggot Sandwich readers Neil and Kay; it shows a vessel on the River Thames on its' way to take part in the River Festival at Greenwich. Thanks to them for the photograph.

Bexley Council are deservedly in the Government’s firing line once again. They are still hiding behind the “We allow filming / audio recording of Council meetings if you have written permission in advance”. This statement has been demonstrably proved to be untrue – as has been highlighted by Malcolm Knight of the Bexley is Bonkers website. No permission has ever been granted to make a video or audio recording of a council meeting – which makes the council’s statement “We are committed to openness” sound very hollow indeed. The Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has lambasted a number of local councils, Bexley included. Mr. Pickles said” Councillors shouldn’t be ashamed or be trying to hide the work they do. I am opening up the planning appeals that my department oversees so the public can see how the planning system works in practice. Councils should match this by opening up their planning meetings and other committees. A small number of councils are blocking filming because they want to suppress independent reporting, just as some councils are clinging to their town hall Pravdas. An independent local press and robust public scrutiny is essential for a healthy local democracy: without the sunlight of transparency, the flowering of localism will wither. Heavy-handed councils who call the police to suppress freedom of speech are abusing state powers”. Strong words indeed from the Government Minister. The behaviour of Bexley council is perplexing to say the least. We, the voting public put the councillors in their place; surely we have the right to monitor their activities – after all, they are only in power with our consent. I think that certain members of the council have forgotten (or possibly never understood, which is an even more worrying thought) that they work for us, not the other way around. I am glad that Eric Pickles is taking them on – he’s about the only person in power who has realised that local councils have to be accountable – something that Bexley either choose to ignore, or think that it does not apply to them. As I have previously written, the irony of the whole situation is that by being obstructive and secretive, Bexley Council have actually concentrated attention on their dislike of accountability – prompting the Ministers’ wrath. To be honest, most undertakings in the Council chambers are actually deadly boring – as anyone who has attended a session will no doubt attest. It is more a matter of principle. If Bexley Council act like they are the revolutionary committee in some tin pot banana republic, they will continue to be treated with the contempt that they deserve. In my opinion, Eric Pickles needs to come down hard on the Council, and give them a kick up their collective backsides that is more than a little overdue.

Erith Riverside Shopping Centre has struggled to fill all of the retail units; indeed there are a few that are still standing empty. This is a pity, as the place is always kept clean and welcoming, as a couple of readers have recently commented. The incidence of illegal smoking has reduced markedly since I brought the subject up last month, though one regular reader Justin did email me on Wednesday to say that “ I must admit I thought of you and your blog the other day when I recalled your 'no smoking' story in the shopping centre, as last week I was walking through it when I saw a member of staff from Wilkinson’s having a smoke while standing under the no smoking sign while talking to one of the security guards!” This is a bit of a difficult one; I have been in contact with the shopping centre manager, and he has explained that actually only parts of the centre are covered by the smoking ban – basically the indoor part of the building where Matalan and Iceland are located. The areas that are open to the sky do permit smoking, even though the “No Smoking” signs are in this location. Very confusing. I know that the security guards were instructed to ensure the legal ban was enforced – and I witnessed this being carried out on more than one occasion. To be honest, I don’t feel sorry for the centre management or security officers – they seem to be in a “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” situation. Overall though, I think they do a fine job in what would appear to be a less than ideal situation. One shop that has a very positive presence in the centre is Argos; I would say that it challenges Wilkinson’s as the most popular shopping destination in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. Did you know that Argos is currently celebrating its’ fortieth anniversary? I must admit that it almost passed me by. That seems to be very much the nature of Argos – it is there when you need it, but it does not make an impact on the average shopper in the way that John Lewis or Marks and Spencer does. To some, Argos is a bit of a joke – indeed Bill Bailey did an excellent skit on the store, where he likened the laminated in store catalogue to “a book of dreams, plastic coated to catch people’s tears” – see the video clip below. The truth of it is however, that whilst other high street chains like Woolworth’s, Comet and HMV have bitten the dust, Argos is in rude health. It is estimated that 18 million UK households have an Argos catalogue, and 96% of the population are located less than ten miles from a store. The concept of having warehouse type stores, with very few goods on display, where instead shoppers made their selection at home then arrived at the store to fill in a small paper slip and hand it to a store person who would get the goods from “out the back” is an American concept that was brought to the UK in 1973 by businessman Richard Tompkins – the man who had introduced Green Shield Stamps some fifteen years previously. He wanted to create a union of self service shops and catalogues – the convenience of shopping at home with the traditional face to face contact of a local shop. The business model has not really been replicated by other retailers, and many regard it as “quirky” – like an analogue version of an online shop, created many years before the World Wide Web ever was conceived. Nowadays Argos do operate a Click and Collect service, which combines the convenience of online shopping with the ability to then turn up at ones’ local store and collect the goods, without the inconvenience of waiting in for a postman or courier to make a delivery. It is quite interesting how shoppers use Argos – one shopper said “John Lewis is where I shop for quality, Amazon is for electronics, books and music. Argos is for need them now goods”. Argos has always had image problems – it is widely thought of as being somewhat down market and a bit “naff”. It has always been a value retailer, and still today has elements of the betting shop about its’ stores; the little forms to fill in, the mini pens and the waiting for your number to be called. It has always been a shop focused on the working class – for people who perhaps did not want to be grilled by a sales assistant in a department store, but instead be able to turn up and collect. Whatever the details, Argos has been a British success story, and the Erith shop is always busy. The town would be worse off without it.

There was another incident on Erith Pier last Saturday morning. A chap threatened to throw himself off the pier and into the river. Gravesend RNLI and the Police were on hand, and he eventually came down. I was alerted to the matter as it was happening by a fellow member of Erith Watch. After consideration, I concluded that the best thing was for me not to blunder round there with my camera, as goodness knows what I could have inadvertently caused if I had. As I have reported in the past, there have been a series of incidents on both the pier itself and the wooden jetty that runs adjacent to it. I am wondering if a few discreet signs with contact numbers for the Samaritans might be a good idea? This has already been done in suicide hot spots like Beachy Head. It would not cost very much to do, and could end up saving a life. It might have helped back in March 2011, when a young man had a blazing row with his girlfriend, then threw himself off the end of Erith Pier. The undertow and currents around Erith Pier are extremely strong; I understand that life expectancy for anyone in the river is measured in minutes at best. Anything that can be done to stop this happening has got to be welcomed.

I have reported my troubles with my Blogger template to Google. You may have noticed that the comments box does not always appear at the bottom of recent postings, and that the “About me” and other blog shortcuts don’t always appear to the right of the text, near the top of the screen. For some reason these bugs affect the Google Chrome web browser – ironic when you consider both are Google products. Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer seem far less affected.  To be honest, I am not holding my breath. Google’s support for non premium (as in, free) products is pretty poor in my experience. This does bring up another thought – what web browser do you use by choice? A lot of corporate intranets are set up purely for Internet Explorer, and the end user has no choice in what they use. For consumers the story is somewhat different – Google Chrome is now the single most popular web browser – which, excepting the issue with my own Blogger template is something I concur with. Chrome is minimal, very quick to render, and most importantly for me, it is supported on multiple operating system platforms, notably Apple OS X and Linux, which is great for me. I still like Firefox, which is another excellent product, but for me, Chrome just feels like a more slick and integrated experience. However, it is most definitely a case of “what works for you” as always.

The Crossrail project seems to be running both on time and on budget (still, the cynic in me says that there is still plenty of time for that to change). The tunnel linking Plumstead and Woolwich Arsenal station has now been bored and lined. Electrical and other services still have to be installed, but even so, it is an amazing achievement. The large industrial looking development near Plumstead Railway station is a spoil separation plant – the earth and stone dug out by the tunnel boring machines is pumped out as a slurry, which is separated by the plant into sand, gravel and cakes of chalk. The sections of concrete tunnel lining used to make the tunnels water tight and physically secure seem to be coming from production facilities all over the place. I was standing on the London bound platform of Watford Junction station last week, and a freight train came past , loaded with sections – the only development in London large enough to demand the huge number of pieces of tunnel lining. The freight train I saw had come from Milton Keynes, so I guess that at least some of the tunnel lining pieces must have come from that neck of the woods. The whole Crossrail project is due to be completed in 2018. You can see their website here.

I have to admit that I am absolutely dreading the next three Star Wars movies. It is not just that George Lucas made such a dreadful Horlicks of the three prequels, it is because my regard for the director of the next Star Wars movie - JJ Abrams has been severely dented by seeing his most recent movie last weekend. I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness and regretted doing so when I was not even halfway through the film. It is a disjointed, illogical mess that has more in common with a very poor fan film than a major Hollywood blockbuster. If you have not seen it, and feel that you would like to, I would advise than instead you rent a copy of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, which may have been made in 1981 and cost only $11 million to make. The difference is that the Wrath of Khan is a compelling, character driven story where you really care about the characters, and the story has real resonance. “Into Darkness” is bad on so many levels - characters do things that make no sense, whole chunks of the story are recycled (badly) from Wrath of Khan and the whole thing is a waste of a couple of hours of your time. It is a pity, as the first movie from the rebooted series was pretty good. I am certainly not against the whole JJ Abrams reboot concept , but this, the second movie should really not have been released in its’ current form. I fear that Abrams is going the way of George Lucas. He’s now so big and powerful that there is nobody to say “no” to him – which was exactly the problem at the root of the Star Wars prequels. Now that Abrams has been appointed as the director of the first of the new trilogy of Star Wars movies, I fear for the worst.

I see that Microsoft supremo Steve Ballmer has announced that he is to retire next year. This has been a bit of a surprise to many technology pundits, as only last year, when questioned during a press interview , he responded that he intended staying at the helm of the company for around another ten years. This has rather suddenly changed when he announced last Friday that he was to step down next year. A one year exit is proper, given Ballmer’s position; the CEO of a major listed company. What is surprising is his change of leave date, and that Ballmer is planning to start his leaving process now. From insider whispers, it is clear that the decision for him to leave was not made by him – it looks very much like a board decision – the directors include Steve Ballmer’s long time friend Chairman Bill Gates. It is ironic that since Steve Ballmer became Chairman in 2000 (when I very briefly met him at the launch of Windows XP at the Royal Festival Hall – more on this later), Microsoft revenues  and profit levels have gone up, and a huge amount of cash has been showered on shareholders. At the same time however, Microsoft has repeatedly failed to “see the way the wind is blowing” regarding emerging technologies – online search, smart phones and tablet computers, amongst other things. As recently as 2007 Ballmer was dismissive of the iPhone and was interviewed on several occasions, saying how Windows Phone was going to wipe the floor with iOS. As we know, the reverse was true; he also failed to see the emergence of Android as a threat, and now Windows for phone is a minority operating system used by very few mobile phone handsets. iOS and Android have basically carved the market up between themselves. On top of this, Microsoft have written down £1 billion in losses against the Surface RT tablet – the ill – advised Windows tablet that is powered by an ARM processor and is incapable of running standard Windows software. You may recall that a while back I wrote about what a disaster the Surface RT was going to be, and I was bang on the money. Since then, the stock market has voted with its’ feet, and wiped a little shy of $34 billion off the price of Microsoft shares. A group of dissatisfied corporate shareholders also launched a personal class action against Ballmer for appearing to conceal the extent of the losses – the days of the man nick named the Teflon CEO (for his previous ability to avoid any business errors sticking to him) are over. It seems that Bill Gates and the rest of the board thought it was time for Ballmer to go – tellingly, the Microsoft share price jumped up nearly nine percent on the news of his imminent departure – thus ironically making back the $1 billion lost on the Surface RT write down. Ironically Ballmer leaving Microsoft will massively benefit Ballmer personally – he owns 333 million shares in the company, which will skyrocket in value on his departure. If he was to cash in a few of these, he will be in a position to be comfortable for the rest of his life (before he cashes in any shares, his existing personal fortune is estimated to be around £15 billion), as well as buying the odd medium sized country, should the urge take him.  My encounter with Steve Ballmer was very brief; I attended the launch of Windows XP in London after managing to blag a ticket to the event through work (there are occasions when working for a household name multinational blue chip professional services firm can have its’ fringe benefits). I was sat in an aisle seat in the Royal Festival Hall. There was a big opening video with a track by Madonna, then Ballmer came running down from the back of the hall, all WWE wrestling style. Had I known Ballmer was  running past my seat a couple of moments earlier, I could have stuck my leg out and sent him flying. Anyway, at the end of the presentation, a few members of the audience, myself included were invited for a corporate “meet and greet” session. I said hello to Steve Ballmer; he took one look at me, and the polo shirt I was wearing, and his look was pure poison. He blanked me completely. I have to say that I was very impressed with this reaction; the polo shirt he had taken such offence to was a sober grey in colour, but on the right  hand breast was embroidered Tux – the Linux mascot; this was at around the time that he said of the open source movement  “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” Understandably he was not too impressed with my appearance!

A local commercial company have been caught by a member of Erith Watch illegally fly tipping old sofas and furniture at the recycling centre in Morrison's car park at 5.52pm on Saturday the 31st August. The evidence has already been passed on to North End Safer Neighbourhoods Police Team. It has been suspected for some time that the company has been carrying out illegal dumping, but this was the first time that hard, reliable eye witness evidence has been obtained. The recycling centre is purely for domestic waste for recycling - glass bottles, metal cans, paper / card, and plastic food containers. It is not a full council dump, and does not accept commercial waste of any description. The offenders were caught red handed dumping an old sofa and arm chairs. Whilst the company concerned cannot be publicly named until the Police and Bexley Council Environmental Health anti fly tipping team have completed their investigations, suffice to say that they are Erith based, and present a very professional appearance. It seems that the company are using the recycling centre to dump old sofas to avoid the commercial charges that are made by the Thames Road Council Dump in Crayford. It must be noted that The area of Appold Street and James Watt Way, where the Morrison's recycling facility is located is within a specified anti fly tipping zone. Upon a successful prosecution, fines for the guilty party can amount to £50,000, and be banged up in jail. I will keep readers posted as to the outcome of further investigations.

I had planned to visit Bletchley Park this weekend; unfortunately I was unwell, and could not make the trip - please see the video of a lecture which took place recently. Comments and feedback are always welcomed.

Station X and the Colossus.

This weeks' second Blog entry (please see below for the first, which was posted earlier today) is a paean to the bloke in the shed; the typical British understated, self deprecating individual who in times of need, dons their warehouse coat, pulls down their flat cap a little lower on the brow, and fills their well used briar pipe with strong shag tobacco before changing the world. This might sound somewhat soft headed and romantic, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Yesterday I took my mother on a pilgrimage to a place that I feel should be treated as a national treasure. That place is Bletchley Park, home of the war time Station X and the home for the world's first programmable digital computer - the legendary Colossus. Some of the finest brains in the wartime commonwealth such as Alan Turing, along with some amazing engineering talents such as Tommy Flowers were assembled to break the Nazi code systems including both the Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. You can view my complete set of Bletchley Park photographs on my Flickr account here.

Despite Bletchley Park having the same wartime security classification as Los Alamos, the home of the first atomic bomb, it is now being run by a group of extremely well informed and enthusiastic volunteers - no National Trust involvement, no help from either the Science Museum or the Imperial War museum; the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have even turned them down for a grant (ironic when one considers that Microsoft would most likely not even exist if it had not been for the pioneers of the computer age that started it all in Bletchley Park).

The efforts of the cryptanalysts, engineers and other staff shortened the war by an estimated eighteen months to two years; it is sad to see that the place is living a hand to mouth existence, when it really should be fully funded by a grateful government on behalf of the people. BBC News online have a report on Bletchley Park and their dire need for secure funding which you can both read and watch online here.

I would heartily recommend a visit to the place - it is only an hour by train from London Euston station, and it makes a great day out - and they really need your support. I must admit, after looking around for a couple of hours, I could not find the (in)famous Hut 33 as featured on BBC Radio 4. I will have another look when I visit the place again.