The chip oil bandits.

The photo above shows a new addition to Erith's skyline. It is a tower crane that was erected on the new Bexley College campus building site in Walnut Tree Road this Wednesday. It is pretty impressive. I took the photos above and below on Thursday afternoon, just after the crane had finished being commissioned. By the time you read this it should already be at work. The new college building is scheduled to be completed and open within a year - a very ambitious project for all concerned. I feel that the new college will be a win / win for the students, the college staff, and for Erith in general. I look forward to seeing the building once it is completed.

My photo of the Mambocino coffee shop on last weeks’ update prompted a comment from an anonymous reader. They said that the place is often dominated by people sitting at the outside seats, illegally smoking, even though there are numerous and very visible notices prohibiting it. I have written extensively about this very issue in the past. When Erith Riverside Shopping Centre first opened, it was patrolled by a large and well motivated group of security officers. They ensured that kids did not ride bikes through the centre, people did not use the fire escapes as a means of entering or exiting the building, and first and foremost, the laws prohibiting smoking indoors in a public place were strictly enforced. This was all very well, and for a year or so it was run very well. As with many things, cutbacks were made – the centre operators must have decided that they needed to reduce the operational overheads of the place – after all, many shop units were still un-let, and the income the centre was generating was far less than optimal. In consequence the centre operators got rid of the efficient and enthusiastic security team, and replaced them with a single bloke who was about as much use as Anne Frank’s drum kit. He did not seem to care what people did, and gave the impression he just showed up to collect his pay packet. This sent out all sorts of unfavourable messages to the local low lives, who immediately started abusing the shopping centre. Not long after the reduction in security staff, I personally witnessed a bare chested teenage scrote riding an unlicenced motorised trials bike through the main shopping centre thoroughfare and then down the moving escalator. I would have been gratified if he had been incinerated in a fiery explosion when the bike crashed at the bottom of the escalator, but he made off across Morrison’s car park without a scratch. This lack of supervision and enforcement has had a deleterious effect on the centre as a whole. People smoke throughout the centre – but for some mysterious reason, they tend to congregate under the large and very prominent “No Smoking” signs outside Mambocino. Staff from other shops in the centre even come out to smoke outside of the coffee shop / cafe – it seems to be a social meeting spot. My own opinion is there is very little point in having a law if it is not policed or enforced. The whole smoking in public places ban seems to be treated in a very similar way to the ban on using a mobile telephone whilst driving a vehicle  - a significant percentage of the population seem to think that these laws don’t apply to them.  The fact that the area outside of Mambocino is used to serve food, and has a number of tables provided for the purpose seems to encourage the congregation of smokers even more – the tables even have “No Smoking” signs sellotaped onto the table tops – which just get ignored. I really don’t  know why the shop management don’t stop the practice. It seems to me as an external observer that nobody wants to take ownership of the now long established problem. *Update* - rather than just whinge about the situation here, I contacted the management of Erith Riverside Shopping Centre, and they have been absolutely excellent.  I Emailed the manager on Monday to complain about the situation with people smoking illegally. By the time I walked through the shopping centre on my way home from work, there were two efficient looking security guards right outside of Mambocino, stopping people from smoking. I also have had a very constructive further detailed exchange of Emails with Barry Owen, the shopping centre manager, and he has been superb; very proactive and positive in his responses to my questions. This was highlighted on Thursday afternoon, when a lady lost control of her car when she was driving along Erith High street, past Potion bar - she ended up hitting a lamp post and writing off her car - photo below- click on it for a larger version. Fortunately nobody was hurt, although the driver was taken to hospital for investigative tests. The Erith Riverside Shopping Centre security guards were first on the scene, and handed control over to the Police and Ambulance Service when they subsequently arrived. I feel that the problems with illegal activities in the shopping centre may well be at an end, but as always, locals need to be on their guard to ensure that things don't slip back into old habits.

If you bank online, use EBay, post onto FaceBook or use a web based Email service like Gmail, you will have used online encryption – the chances are without even being aware of it. When you are on a website that shows a little locked padlock in the address bar, and the site address begins with HTTPS:// instead of the more familiar HTTP:// you are using a secure, encrypted connection that is designed to keep any information travelling across the link secret from hackers and other bad guys. The bad news is that a prominent team of IT security researchers have discovered a potential vulnerability in the two main methods of encryption that are used by most modern computer operating systems and web browsers. These two encryption methods are named RSA and Diffie – Hellman after their inventors. Both systems are underpinned by a mathematical challenge known as a discrete logarithm problem. The problem is astronomically difficult to solve without access to the problems’ unique numerical key. Breaking RSA or Diffie – Hellman encrypted messages today takes vast computational power and a long time. This is one of the things that so occupies the likes of the NSA and GCHQ – their vast supercomputers are used to crack encrypted traffic supposedly between terrorists and criminals (the ethics of this is a debate for another time and place). As far as the person in the street is concerned, an encrypted connection is functionally unreadable without the special key. The security consultants have discovered that it is theoretically possible that a new algorithm could be developed which would make solving the discrete logic problem that encrypts the message much more easy to break.  Security researcher Jarved Samuel said of the situation “we rely on that new, efficient algorithm not being found; if it is found, then the crypto system is broken”. Earlier this year, French academic Anoine Joux published two papers that suggested that  such an algorithm could be found before long. “This is a big deal, since there was marginal progress for 25 years,” said Samuel. “This will spur researchers into looking more closely at the problem and most likely result in more progress. One reason to believe that progress will be swift, says Samuel, is that Joux’s advances weren’t based on inventing completely new techniques. Rather, he applied known tricks that hadn’t previously been used on this specific problem”. What this all boils down to is that we are all relying on some super intelligent hacker NOT creating a new, hyper – clever decryption algorithm to break our up until now very secure online transactions. This does not sound like a very reassuring position to be in. More on this in the future.

The editor of the News Shopper writes a very long piece this week, about an event he had a hand in organising at the George and Dragon pub in Swanscombe. This formerly little known pub was until recently very run down and unloved, until it was taken over by a couple of real ale loving chaps who have set up a microbrewery in the cellars beneath the pub building. The Caveman Brewery went into commercial production at Easter this year, with their first ever brew – Caveman Citra was voted beer of the 2013 Bexley CAMRA Beer Festival. An astonishing feat for a brand new brewery. However talented the brewing team, it normally takes any new brewery a few runs to produce an acceptable beer – equipment needs to “bed in” and the foibles of the individual brewery setup can take a while to learn. It would seem that the guys running the Caveman have unusually managed to hit the ground running. I know when I tried their Citra India Pale Ale, I was exceptionally impressed with it – a hoppy, dry and aromatic pint, and found it very hard to believe that it was a debut brew. Had I not known otherwise, I would have thought that it was a new beer from Shepherd Neame, or another of the top rank real ale brewers. The George and Dragon has been voted as Gravesend CAMRA pub of the year 2013.  This got me to thinking; we have a handful of micro breweries in the area – the aforementioned Caveman in Swanscombe, Millis in Dartford, and the Nelson Brewery in the Chatham Historic Dockyard. On top of this we also are fortunate to have a couple of craft cider makers located relatively nearby. The Big Tree Cider Company are located in Hartley, and make traditional ciders and perries; they won the “Taste of Kent” award for the best cider in the county last year. Another cider maker who is local to the area is the Magic Bus Cider Company, who have their base at Horton Kirby. I have sampled a couple of Magic Bus ciders, and they are excellent – fruity, complex and astringent, and nothing like the kind of chemical laced rubbish you get from the likes of Magners (which calls itself Irish cider, but it is made from Spanish apple pulp, which is then laced with caramel to darken the colour; it is also pumped full of carbon dioxide – please avoid!) Magic Bus ciders tend to be of the sipping variety, as they tend to be rather on the strong side – certainly not the kind of drink you would start with on a long evening out – unless you wanted to be fished out of the Thames later on! Proper cider does tend to have another side –effect: too much of it can have an alarmingly explosive laxative outcome. Be warned!

It is a little over five years since the last video media format war ended, with Sony and Panasonic declaring the victory of their jointly developed Blu-ray format over the rival HD DVD system developed by Toshiba. HD DVD machines disappeared from the shops almost overnight, and the format, which had initially seemed to be so promising, disappeared with remarkable speed.  Sony and Panasonic have recently published a specification for what they say will be the forthcoming disk format to replace Blu-ray. The new disk will store up to 300 Gb of data, which will enable support for full length movies recorded at 4K resolution (four times the current HD video resolution).  This is an important step forward, as 4K televisions are already available on the high street if you look hard enough; the problem with them is that there is currently no native 4K resolution content around to watch; at best you can view upscaled Blu-ray content, but it is hardly the same thing. With Sony and Panasonic working on the new format, which is set to be released in 2015, it may enable the film studios to have yet another cash cow, as movie fans line up to buy films they already own in a new format. A joint announcement was made by the two giant electronics companies which read that they had ” a proven track record in developing Blu-ray Disc format technologies, and by actively promoting the adoption of a new standard for next-generation high-capacity optical discs, they intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations”. Translating the corporate – speak reads to me as “"we rule the roost for the moment and may as well set the standard now before anyone else does”. The new disk format is primarily being designed for long term data archiving, rather than for storing movies. In their archiving role, the ultra high capacity disks will come in a cartridge to protect the delicate surface from dust and liquid contamination. It is thought that the latest optical technology should be capable of storing archived data for hundreds of years or longer – this may be moot, when one considers the laser disk. In the mid 1980’s there was a project to digitise the Domesday Book and a system using a laser disk player controlled by an advanced version of the BBC Micro (the Acorn Master) was developed. The system featured an updated version of the Domesday Book which was compiled with information from hundreds of school children from around the country, and was stored on two hybrid 12” digital / analogue disks with a unique format, enabling the disks to store 300 mb per side – a huge amount of data for the time. The problem was that within a very short period of time the non standard proprietary format, and the unique laser disk players went out of production, and after only a handful of years, it was virtually impossible to play back the disks. Two of the only three known original working players are now owned by The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The BBC joint sponsored a project to web enable the 1986 data, and part of it is now online, although there are significant omissions due to ongoing copyright concerns. You can view the Domesday online website by clicking here. The whole project ended up being a massive technological dead end, and proved embarrassing to most of those involved. The technology was moving far faster than the ability of the project managers to realise it.  This is a problem for any kind of archiving technology – it is all very well having a whizzy, robust and proven storage media format, but if there are no machines capable of playing back the media in years to come, then what exactly is the point?

The local press (News Shopper and Bexley Times) are just reporting a story I wrote about at quite some length several months ago. The story about the utterly dire state of hygiene in the restaurants and takeaways in Bexley has been bubbling along for ages; just this week the News Shopper reported the fact that 33% of food outlets in the Borough have  star ratings that are unsatisfactory (two out of five stars), or worse – something I covered back on the 26^th of May.  Bexley has the overall worst food hygiene ratings in the United Kingdom. It is remarkable that Bexley can do so badly – with Erith coming out as the worst area of the worst borough (at least we come out top in one survey!) A borough of comparable size and roughly similar demographic such as Bromley comes out so much better. It does beg the question, just why is there such a disparity in the hygiene ratings? Are both boroughs using the same metrics to measure the hygiene levels, or are the criteria Bexley is using more strict? I suppose that the only real way of measuring future performance is by monitoring poorly rated food outlets to see if they improve.  As previously covered, I think that it should be a legal requirement for a food outlet to display its’ food rating sticker in the front window of the shop, and that the rating would have to be paid for in a similar way to a car tax disk – this would fund the whole inspection and rating system, and take the financial burden off the Environmental Health Department of the Council. Compulsory closure for deep cleaning and other improvements would also be enforced for establishments with less than a three out of five star rating.  All stuff I have said before; I know several council employees (and probably a councillor or two) read the Maggot Sandwich. Hopefully something will come of it, though to be honest, I am not holding my breath.

A new mini crime wave is hitting the local area; restaurants and takeaways are finding that their containers of waste cooking oil are being stolen. Many food outlets use large quantities of cooking oil, which is usually vegetable based. When it has become contaminated, they store it for collection by specialist cooking oil companies, who pay good money to get hold of the oil. Where’s the money on old cooking oil? I hear you ask; well, it makes excellent bio diesel. There is a general perception that cooking oil needs to be specially treated before it can be used in diesel engines. This is actually not true. You can empty a bottle of Mazola or whatever oil you fancy straight into the fuel tank of your diesel vehicle and it will work a treat. The only thing you need to do with old oil is filter out any particles or bits of food – as these can clog up the fuel injectors of the engine. Old fish frying oil actually smells of the chip shop when you burn it in a diesel engine. Some years ago Mercedes Benz commercial vehicle division did some tests on the use of vegetable oil versus conventional diesel in long term use as a fuel. They found that engines run on vegetable oil actually suffered significantly less wear and tear than those run on conventional diesel – this is not much of a surprise, as Vegetable oil is a lubricant, and diesel is a solvent. Vegetable oil has a lower energy density than diesel, so your miles per gallon does drop a bit, but the cost savings are so big that it makes it worthwhile. It is not illegal to power a road vehicle on chip oil, as long as you have  declared it to HM Revenue and Customs, filled in the relevant paperwork and paid the excise duty. Obviously the crooks that are currently nicking cooking oil for use as fuel have no intention of doing that – so if you see some shady looking characters in a van smelling of plaice and chips goes past, be very suspicious...

The ending video this week is an episode from U.S TV series "Good Eats" which features a basic guide to home brewing. I used to be a home brewer, and the episode does leave out a few key stages (for instance, if you don't wash out all of your brewing equipment after sterilising it, the brew will fail, as the yeast will be killed by your disinfectant remaining on the equipment). Other than a few basic flaws of this nature, the show overall gives a very fair introduction to home brewing; It may be an American show, but the beer he makes is a classic British Best Bitter, rather than an insipid lager, as much of commercial U.S beer tends to be. Do watch and leave a comment below. 

200,000!

The photo above was taken recently outside of the Mambocino coffee shop / cafe in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. The whole of the shopping centre is plastered with "No Smoking" signs. You may notice that the rubbish bin on the wall is directly under one sign, and there is another to the left of it. The stains on the wall surrounding the bins are the result of smokers stubbing out a cigarette before throwing the butt in the bin (at least most of the time - plenty still end up on the ground). This is not to obey the rules, it is mostly so that they can light up a fresh cigarette. The anti smoking law is so blatantly flouted in the centre that even staff employed by the shops in the centre light up in the banned areas. The whole thing is out of hand, and the reduction in the number and quality of security guards patrolling the centre is such that I have even (on the rare occasions when a guard has been around) seen a security officer dragging on a fag outside of Wilkinson's. I really think the whole thing is unenforceable; I cannot for the life of me see the point in having a rule that is not enforced. It just seems pointless. There would appear to be neither the will, nor the ability to uphold the law. Your thoughts are welcomed - please leave a comment below.

Some time on Friday afternoon, Google Analytics informed me that the Maggot Sandwich had just logged its' 200,000th unique page view. This does not mean that 200,000 people read the blog, what it does mean is that over the course of the six and a half years it has been running, just over two hundred thousand different people have read it. I do get roughly 20,000 regular hits each month - sometimes a little more, at present slightly less. I was approached by a marketing company a while back, who tried to encourage me to take advertising on the site. I refused. If I took adverts or some form of sponsorship, I would lose my impartiality. The fact I am free to praise or criticise as I see fit is not something I would give up, so no advertisers, thank you very much.

Erith Blockbuster closed for good on Monday morning; although some stores were sold top Morrison's, and others have been bought by a venture capital group, the Erith store is now no more. The store has been emptied of the little remaining stock, and it now stands empty, though last time I walked past, the lights were still on. I hope that the corner unit gets taken soon, as it would otherwise be a magnet for vandals and metal thieves (often one and the same).

The popular press have picked up on a subject that I raised on my entry "The Electric Gasper" on the 24th February. The whole privacy issue with the forthcoming Google Glass project has finally been made widely known via the BBC News website. You saw it here first!

I use public transport daily; nowadays it is usually the overland trains and the Docklands Light Railway. Something that has been noticeable ever since the invention of the smart phone is the “phone hunch” – people sit, transfixed by their mobile devices, and usually oblivious to the world around them. I see young mothers pushing babies in buggies, oblivious to their offspring as they are preoccupied by the latest FaceBook status update. I am of the opinion that a prediction made by Albert Einstein has now already come to pass. Einstein said " I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots". On a number of occasions I have been in a conversation with someone, only for them to suddenly reach for their pocket, pull out their phone then proceed to ignore me for several minutes, without so much as a “by your leave”. I find it extremely rude, though when I have challenged this behaviour before, I have been met with blank incomprehension.  They genuinely could not see that their behaviour was rude and inconsiderate to those around them. A new psychological condition has been diagnosed by psychologists, it is known as “Phantom Vibration Syndrome” a stress induced condition where the sufferer incorrectly believes that their mobile phone is vibrating to alert them to a call.  You can read more about the recognised medical condition here. It would seem that a significant percentage of mobile phone users are in a constant state of anticipation – for a call, text or tweet from their extended virtual network of friends and associates, and this builds stress that can exhibit as the perception of phantom calls. Some of the worst stress effects of mobile phones arise through social habit. Despite the phones' promise of making daily life more convenient,  they often make things  more difficult. A study by Intel has found that one in five people admit to being wilfully late because they can reschedule dates and meetings at the last minute via mobile phone, and three-quarters say that mobile phone ownership has made them 'more flexible when meeting friends'  (i.e., they are wilfully late, but lie about it). My own conscious decision not to have a mobile phone has made me a bit of an unusual case; it does mean that I am always prompt for appointments, and never cancel at the last minute. Because I am very organised, I would say that there are only one or two times a year when having a phone would be to my advantage, which really is not a significant issue in my case. For me the upside is not being constantly bombarded with messages that I neither want or need, and also when I am at work I don’t have the distraction that so many people have. All in all, it works for me.

Did you know that Status Quo have made a full length cinema movie, which is being released in the summer? I didn't until recently either. It turns out to be a knock about comedy adventure. After watching the trailer, I cannot decide whether it will be a knowing, tongue in cheek bit of fluff, or one of the most dreadful movies ever committed to celluloid. Judge for yourself and let me know what you think.

An early build of the successor to Microsoft’s’ much derided and very unpopular Windows 8 has “leaked” onto several file sharing sites. Normally when this happens it is the manufacturer deliberately releasing a very early build in order to garner feedback from enthusiasts and early adopters. The next version of Windows, currently named Windows Blue is available for download from a number of shady an disreputable sites (no, I am not providing any links, the chances are you would end up with a hard disc full of malware and other junk if I did, and I don’t want to encourage illegal downloading anyway).

I reckon that Erith is the cheapest place to purchase residential property of anywhere within 30 minutes train journey of London Bridge station. There was a bedsit for sale on the Robinson and Jackson website that was on offer for £49,950. OK, it was not exactly large or well appointed (actually it was a squalid little shoe box of a place), but it was relatively modern, close to Erith Station, and a real foot on the property ladder for someone. It got taken off the estate agent's website pretty quickly, so I can only assume that it got a buyer very quickly indeed.

When standing in a supermarket queue, or waiting to pay for my paper in my local corner shop, I am struck by the large number of women’s scandal magazines that are on sale. I am thinking of titles like “Take a Break”, "That's Life!", "Love It!","Pick Me Up!", "Full House!" and a handful of others. Apart from having an almost compulsory exclamation mark in their titles, the other thing that all of these publications have in common is that they sell stories about personal tragedy in the same way that other magazines aimed at a mainly female audience sell celebrity gossip and slimming tips. These magazines are marketed as light reading, something to be absorbed whilst lingering over a cup of tea, yet they are filled with disturbing, harrowing stories that would only be covered after the 9pm watershed if they were a television show. The design, format and colour scheme of all of these magazines are rather formulaic; They generally have a young, smiling woman on the cover, a sort of "girl next door" type. The rest of the cover is filled with boxes and banners in primary colours - a means of grabbing the attention of a potential buyer. The trouble is that the content of the banners is horrifying - life changing events such as murder, incest, acid attacks, crimes of violence and personal tragedy. The irony is that many of the stories involve violence against women, yet they are read by mainly women as light entertainment. They seem to be the printed equivalent of the Jeremy Kyle show; I worry about the people who purchase these magazines. It strikes me that anyone who enjoys reading about the misfortunes of others probably has some issues themselves. I would be interested in what you think. Please leave a comment below; all comments are moderated and published within 24 hours at most.

Did you know that there are only two industrial buildings in London that have Grade 1 listed status? One is Tower Bridge, and the other is the pump house at Crossness Sewage Works. The ornate Victorian structure was designed by engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and architect Charles Henry Driver. It was constructed between 1859 and 1865 as part of his redevelopment of the London sewerage system. The pumping station was an essential part of the clean up of London’s water system, and led directly to the elimination of many water borne diseases, notably Cholera, which prior to this time was a significant killer. If you have not visited the pumping station, it is a cathedral in cast and wrought iron. The charitable trust that runs the building and that is nowadays responsible for restoring the giant boilers and pumps to a working state have just announced the schedule of days where the pumping station will be open to the public in 2013. The first event takes place on Sunday, April 21, from 10.30am to 5pm, and will be a local history fair with exhibitors organised by Bexley Civic Society. There will be another four steam days until October, but at the time of writing the exact dates are not yet available. The place is well worth a visit, whether you have an interest in engineering, architecture, local history or films and television. As I have mentioned before, the pumping station has been used as a location for both TV and films – the recent Victorian drama “The Crimson Petal and the White”, the first Guy Ritchie directed “Sherlock Holmes” movie (the opening sequence where Lord Blackwood is about to perform a human sacrifice in what looks like a Masonic temple was actually filmed in the centre part of the main pump hall). Many other films, such as the first Tim Burton directed “Batman” and the first “Alien” film also used the place as a major location. What is both interesting and ironic is that Sir Joseph Bazalgette is the great – great grandfather of TV producer Sir Peter Bazalgette, the person who brought us programmes such as Ground Force, Ready, Steady Cook and Big Brother. There is a running joke in the media industry that whilst Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for removing excrement from the home, Peter is now responsible for introducing it!

Erith based graphic design consultancy 4Q Graphix are looking for an office in or around the town. If you know of any spare office space suitable, and at a reasonable cost, please let Mark Smallcorn at 4Q Graphix a call; their details, and a bit about the company are below - click for a larger view.

Next week will mark a key event in the history of Erith. The much heralded regeneration of the Larner Road housing estate will begin. On Friday the 5th April, demolition of the seven large tower blocks will commence; all of the high rise elements of the original estate are being razed to the ground; the replacement £100 million plus development will consist of low rise accommodation and some conventional housing; part of which will be put on sale. The remainder will be administered by the housing association. The building programme is quite ambitious, and the construction workers will have a tight schedule to keep, as the first new houses are due for completion in 2015. A special viewing area will be set up for local residents to watch the demolition work as it happens; I would hope to get along there at some point over the weekend to photograph the work for posterity. The Friday commencement of demolition will be heralded with a party – A group of acrobats will be performing, live Zulu music from the Majuba Drummers. There will also be t-shirt painting, magnet making, a photography workshop and cinema showings of The Ballad of Larner Road film, that I featured on the Maggot Sandwich a couple of weeks ago. I won’t unfortunately be able to make this party, as I will be at work, and shortly after work I will be covering the 8th Bexley Beer Festival at its’ new venue – the Old Dartfordian’s Club in Bexley Village. I hope to have photos of the festival, ready for the next Maggot Sandwich update on Sunday. One of the breweries that will be exhibiting their wares at the festival is a brand new one. The Caveman Brewery is located in Swanscombe, and brews beers for a number of pubs and clubs around North Kent and beyond; their beers are even stocked at the prestigious Bricklayers Arms pub in Putney – consistently voted as one of the best pubs in the country. You can see the Caveman Brewery website here.

I took the photo above yesterday afternoon, dodging between snow and sleet showers. I have to say that I cannot recall it ever being so freezing cold at Easter before. The weather really is getting everyone down. Anyway, Erith Pier is host to a number of commercial ships on an almost daily basis. Generally they tie up for a day or so, before heading off to places unknown. Quite often the crews take advantage of the close proximity of Morrison's supermarket, and they have on several occasions been seen pushing trollies full of food along the pier and onto their ships. To my knowledge, this is the only place on the River Thames where a commercial ship can moor and the crew go shopping. Even the River Police have been seen going for a quick all day fry up in the cafeteria in the supermarket. Talk about a local service. I'm hoping to be able to make an announcement about the pier in the near future, but for the meantime, I need to keep my own counsel. Keep watching this space over the coming weeks.

I have heard consternation expressed that Belvedere Police station is reducing the hours it opens to just three a week. Many people seem to be unaware that it has been a public facing police station in name only for many years; most of its’ main functions are now undertaken at Bexleyheath Police Station, and I think it will not be long before the building is sold off to try and refill the Metropolitan Polices’ drained coffers. The hard fact remains that apart from being asked to produce motoring documentation, many people around the country don’t ever visit their Police station. In Erith, we have the Police office, next to the Farm Foods supermarket. It is not open to the public, but is a place where the various Safer Neighbourhood Police teams are based when not actually out pounding the beat. There are no cells or interrogation rooms in the building, just an office and storage facilities. This is the way that the police will be operating for the foreseeable future, reflecting the austerity the government is bringing to all public services. Having said that, I do detect an element of “do as we say, not as we do”. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a high level meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall as part of my job. I wrote a bit about it back then; what I did not say was that once I had got through the first two layers of intense security that surround the building (and pretty much all of Whitehall, for that matter) I was guided into an inner courtyard in which twenty Jaguar saloon cars were parked. It was obvious that they were government owned cars – they all had very similar registration numbers, and they were all less than a year old. After looking on the Jaguar website, the cars I saw, with the options they had, would have retailed at approximately £90,000 each. Whilst I am sure that the government would have got a bulk discount, a roughly £1.8 million bill for a bunch of ministerial Jags during a recession does strike me as “one rule for you, and one rule for us” and certainly sends out a mixed message. Personally I think Ministers should use public transport like the rest of us (with the added bonus that when they realised how horrendous it can be, they might be better motivated to actually get it improved!)

The ending video this week was sent to me by Alan, who (correctly) thought that it would appeal to me. The video was taken during the Earth Hour light switch off, it shows thirty remotely piloted UAV's equipped with LED lights. They are flown in formation to create the Starfleet insignia, as part of a promotion for the forthcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness movie. Very cool indeed.