Crimbo.

The information sheet above was published by Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association on Wednesday. The two individuals pictured have a long history of stealing motor bikes, riding them locally without a licence, tax, insurance or a helmet, and then breaking the bikes for parts, which then get sold on. They have been a regular presence on the Frobisher Road Estate, off Manor Road in Erith for some considerable time. I am not aware of what other sentence they have had imposed. The issuing of a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO) goes over and above any judicial sentence - it is on top of, not instead of. In case you were wondering, a Criminal Behaviour Order (often known as a Crimbo) is a court order that replaces the better known Anti Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). The Crown Prosecution Service describe the CBO thus:-“On 20 October 2014, new anti-social behaviour (ASB) sanctions were introduced and Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs) replaced post-conviction anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs). The CBO is available on conviction for any criminal offence in any criminal court. The order is aimed at tackling the most serious and persistent offenders where their behaviour has brought them before a criminal court. CBOs include prohibitions to stop the anti-social behaviour, and may also include requirements to address the underlying causes of the offender's behaviour. The court may make a CBO against an offender only on the application of the prosecution. For a CBO to be made: The court must be satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that the offender has engaged in behaviour that caused, or was likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person; and that the court considers making the order will help in preventing the offender from engaging in such behaviour. The CBO replaces the Anti-social Behaviour Order (ASBO) on conviction and the Drinking Banning Order (DBO) on conviction. The main differences between the ASBO on conviction and the CBO are: The behaviour (first limb of the test for imposing an order) only need to cause or be likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to any person (removing the "not of the same household" requirement); The "necessity" test becomes a "helpfulness" test (as with that for Football Banning Orders); and the court may impose requirements as well as prohibitions. The police will usually raise the possibility of an application for a CBO against an individual at the point of charge. A local authority may also approach the prosecution directly with a request to consider an application for a CBO without having to go via the police. The police / local authority must provide evidence to support the request for a CBO. Prosecutors should be alert at charging stage and beyond to cases in which a CBO application may be appropriate. Before applying for a CBO for a youth, the prosecution must find out the view of the local youth offending team (YOT). In practice, the organisation preparing the application for the CBO (the police or local authority) will find out the view of YOT. If the views of YOT are not present on the file, the prosecutor must contact the police / local authority to request the information. A CBO may be varied or discharged by the court which made the original order. Either the offender or the prosecution can make an application but if this is dismissed by the court, neither party can make a subsequent application without the consent of either the court or the other party. It is a criminal offence if an offender fails to comply, without reasonable excuse, with the prohibitions and / or requirements in the CBO". It sounds to me as if the CBO is designed to fill in the loopholes and weaknesses of the old ASBO system. Anything that curbs the local lowlives has a thumbs up from me. 

Following the terrible fire in Moat House last week, there have been a few developments. It turns out that the fire alarm in the building actually worked exactly as it was programmed to do. The claims that the alarm did not sound were true in a way, but not in another. It turns out that many modern multiple occupancy alarm systems are not designed to sound out loud to the whole block, but only to alert the occupants of flats potentially affected by the fire. Regular reader and occasional contributor Caroline Field, Project Manager with Orbit Housing Association (and unconnected with the Moat House development) explains:- “Interesting to read about the fire - and have of course made mental note to be particularly careful of the wiring sign off on our PVs. However just to pick up on one of your points, it would not normally be fire service advice to have a fire alarm in a block of flats. Each flat would have an individual (these days, mains wired) alarm which would go off if the fire was actually in your flat. Firstly of course it would go off every time someone burnt the toast. Secondly the strategy is generally that residents stay put. (unless the fire is in their flat of course) The flats are all built to a high standard of containment and people should stay put until the fire brigade either make safe or rescue them from the building. If you think about it, the last thing you need is people all panicking to leave the building, quite likely leaving their safe flat to blunder into the fire zone. There are also obviously risks to people going down stairs etc (lifts can’t be used) in haste, perhaps when they are drowsy , panicked, disabled, drunk, encumbered with children etc. They will also get in the way of the fire brigade who will be arriving and wanting to get rapidly to the site of the fire. All flat blocks will have automatic opening vents – AOVs – which open in the event of fire and help to ensure that smoke, gases etc. don’t amass in the stairwells. There’s no point giving people an alarm and then telling them to stay put –they won’t!. To put it in perspective, about five years ago there was a fire in Cambria House. The flat where it happened was totally gutted. The landing was very dirty with smoke - presumably when the door was opened for the family to escape or when the fire brigade went in. The old lady in the flat next door was pottering around her flat until a very nice fireman knocked on the door to ask her to leave. Her flat was totally unaffected. Remember that this was a really old flat – and just before they all had fire protection upgrades”. Fascinating stuff – and to be honest, it does make perfect sense. I guess that the new residents of Moat House were unaware of, or had forgotten how the alarm system operated. Moving into a new home could well cause "information overload".

The upper photo was taken by Pier Road based professional photographer George Gilbert early in the morning of Sunday the 17th of July 1966. It shows what Erith High Street looked like fifty years ago, including L.B Stevens the Butcher. The only buildings still in existence in the photo are The Cross Keys, which can just be seen to the extreme right of the photograph. Slightly to the left of it you can just see Erith Post Office, which is still open as well. It was only a very short time later that the whole of the centre of Erith was demolished to make way for a horrendous brutalist concrete shopping centre, which was universally loathed (and as a child, my main recollection of which was a strong smell of stale wee and Jeyes Fluid). I don't know a single person old enough to recall the old town centre who would not have it back if it was possible. The lower photo shows the last day of trade for L.B Stevens - Master Butcher, photographed on Saturday the 27th May 1967, just before the shop was shut for good and demolished. By the look of things, the immaculate shop, with Len Stevens in his bow tie, spotless apron and straw boater hat was a real credit to the area. If the redevelopment vandals had not come in and demolished things, I do wonder if Stevens the Butcher would still be running today? With the increase in popularity of traditional suppliers, with high end butchers Carnivore opening in Sidcup, Erith could have become a haven for foodies. How things might have been different if wiser heads had been in control.

Back at the beginning of July I wrote a piece about a long dead recordable music format called Elcaset, which was developed and marketed by Sony. It was designed to offer reel to reel recording and playback quality in an outsized cassette case, Whilst technically the Elcaset analogue format was very clever, it was very expensive and it never really took off. In fact, the manufacturer Sony ended up killing off Elcaset with another of their own formats – Minidisk. A couple of readers have asked for more history on Minidisk, so here goes. The MiniDisc format began as a research project in the labs of electronics giant Sony in the early 1990s. In those pre-iPod, pre-flash memory days, engineers were struggling with the problem of how to make music portable. Sony was riding high on the success of their Walkman analogue cassette players, which had come to dominate the market in the 1980s. But they were bumping up against the limits of the media: both cassette tape and CD Walkman devices really could not get any smaller, because the medium itself was the limiting factor. Devices like the cassette tape Walkman WM-EX88 and the CD D-J50 were not much bigger than the cases that the cassette tape and CD were stored in: they literally could not get much smaller and still hold the tape or CD. What was needed, Sony decided, was a new way to store music. This new format was the MiniDisc. This development was spurred by two inventions: a new audio compression format called ATRAC and a storage system called the magneto-optical disc. The Adaptive Transform Acoustic Codec (ATRAC) was developed by Sony engineers who figured out an important fact: your ears are good, but not that good. They are attuned to picking up certain sounds better than others. Specifically, if there are two sounds at similar frequencies, your ear can’t separate the two. This is especially true of high frequencies: our ears are more attuned to picking out low frequencies like the rustle of a tiger in a nearby tree. At higher frequencies, your ear is not able to pick out the details. So, what ATRAC does is to effectively lump these frequencies together, losing the specific details that your ear can’t hear anyway. (That’s the theory, at least; audiophiles will argue otherwise, but let’s leave that aside for the moment). ATRAC breaks the sound down into 24 frequency bands, and selectively compresses the sound, with smaller bands (that preserve more of the detail) at lower and middle frequencies, but losing a lot in the high bands. There is much more to the process than that (you can read all of the details here - trust me, it is extremely technical), but the end product is that it compresses the sound down so that the ATRAC version is one fifth of the size of the CD version. Each disc could hold 74 or 80 minutes of music, although this could be expanded with later models that could compress the music more to hold up to 320 minutes. The first MiniDisc players were launched in 1992, accompanied by a large advertising campaign touting the benefits of the new format. Initially, Sony tried to pitch it as an alternative to CD, a new format where you would buy albums on a MiniDisc. The first pre-recorded album was Emotions by Mariah Carey, which was perhaps indicative of the state of mind at Sony after the launch was a spectacular failure, with Sony reportedly selling less than 50,000 players in the first year. The MiniDisc never caught on as a pre-recorded music format, as CDs were the music format that everyone used. Never ones to admit defeat, Sony decided to try again in 1996. This time, they decided to play up the recordable and reusable aspects of MiniDisc, touting their new discs and portable players as being tougher, better and cooler than CD or tape, because you could easily move tracks from CD or tape to MiniDisc, then skip or shuffle tracks on the player. This relaunch met with some success: the MiniDisc players were lighter and more flexible than CD players, and they offered the skip protection and shuffle play features that cassette tape players were missing. Other manufacturers (such as Aiwa and Sharp) supported the format and started offering recorders and players. The new breed of portable MiniDisc players could record music directly from the digital output of a CD player, so the quality was great. You could also sacrifice quality for more music, storing up to 320 minutes of audio on those that supported the higher compression levels. One niche market that loved the MiniDisc were radio journalists. The aforementioned ability to write to MiniDiscs meant that you could record to them with many portable MiniDisc devices, and the ATRAC compression worked extremely well for voices and ambient sound recordings. It didn’t have quite the premium audio quality of DAT (Digital Audio Tape), but it was cheaper and more reliable than the notoriously mechanically finicky DAT recorders. The game was soon up, however, when Apple announced the iPod. The benefits of the iPod over the MiniDisc were obvious: the first iPods offered 5GB of capacity that meant up to 1000 songs, or hundreds of hours of music, while each MiniDisc held just 320 minutes at most. And the iPod didn’t ask where the music came from, or limit how you could copy it: it accepted most MP3 files without complaint or limitation. This caused a seismic shift in this industry: the iPod went on to sell millions, while the MiniDisc remained a niche product that was loved by some, but ignored by most. The writing was on the wall. The MiniDisc format lost ground over the early 2000s as MP3 players got better and better. Even the uniqueness of MiniDisc being able to record audio on the player was lost, as solid state recording devices started offering more flexible recording and editing features than MiniDisc ever could for professional users. The Minidisc format was discontinued by Sony in early 2013, though many fan sites and third party resources are still available for a product that never really made it out of a niche.

The photo above was taken by one of my local anonymous sources. It shows the rear of the K Spice African restaurant after a kitchen fire back in July. My source writes:- “I refer in particular to K`s Spice African restaurant which used to be a takeaway, since 2010 became a licensed sit in restaurant causing much noise and disturbance to us all and the anti-social behaviour when it closes at around 11pm drunken customers proceed to their cars in the Pier Road car park, frequently using it as an outside toilet. We have been complaining to the council and police for the last 6 years but nothing seems to ever improve. It has recently been granted planning permission to be knocked through into Mumbai curry house and will become twice the size. I just wanted to mention and publicise that we had a fire here too, Thankfully not anything like the scale of the one that occurred last Monday, but just as scary. It happened on Wednesday 20th July `16 (a really hot day) at 4.50pm. The cooking oil drums which K`s spice stupidly store in their ` rear fire exit` exploded, melting the plastic roof setting fire to the huge piles of cardboard and rubbish also regularly stored here ! The fire brigade said it was `Very poor housekeeping`”. I have to say that I too witnessed the fire; it was only the very rapid arrival of the Fire Brigade that stopped the minor conflagration from turning into a major blaze that would have seriously threatened the flats above the block. K Spice have had brushes with the authorities in the past; they unsuccessfully applied for a very late night licence, which only got refused after strong protests to the council from local residents. You can read the story from back in 2014 here. As I have previously mentioned, I get the impression that several businesses are engaged in a mini "land grab" over Electricity House and the block next to it in Pier Road. I think several savvy local business people are buying up as much of the place as possible, prior to a large developer coming along to buy the entire site for redevelopment. The snooker club recently got sold for £305,000, and as it only brings in £28,000 a year in rent, something is definitely happening. I think that property speculation is going on, and it will not be very long before an offer is made for the entire site - the land is now worth far more than the buildings on it. What do you think? Do you have any information concerning this? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

It would seem that Bexley Council have now belatedly taken action regarding Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMO). At present only HMOs with three or more floors, containing five or more people in two or more households and with shared facilities need a licence – Bexley has 22 of these properties, although there are thought to be around 1,400 smaller dwellings that under current Bexley rules do not need to be registered. Now, later than most London boroughs, Bexley is finally adopting an “Article 4 Direction” It means that in the future, all HMOs would need planning application approval – and this should come into force early next year. Leader of Bexley Council Teresa O'Neill said in an interview with Bexley Times "We understand residents’ have some concerns around HMOs and it is unfortunate that on occasion these properties are used simply to maximise profits by a small minority of private landlords. We must recognise however, that there is also a need for well managed HMOs in the borough. Many are used by students or young professionals, some are there to ease the enormous housing pressure that we are currently under. But we must have some better local regulation in place. This new licensing scheme is being proposed in the current absence of any nationally applied rules.” The decision to proceed with the new licensing scheme was taken by Cabinet Member for Adult Services, Cllr Brad Smith on the 12th of August. The decision will now be subject to a seven day Council 'call-in' period. Following that the next stage will be a ten week consultation period on the new licensing schemes, during which the Council will engage with tenants, landlords, managing agents and other interested parties. Following consultation the licensing schemes could be introduced from early in 2017.The 'Article 4 Direction' means that in future all HMOs would need planning application approval. The nature of the legislation means that this would come into place late next year. Houses of Multiple Occupancy can be a great success. The former Homeleigh care home in Avenue Road, Erith is a case in point. I have described Avenue Road before as “The Beverly Hills of Erith”. It is a very desirable location, with some lovely detached and semi-detached houses, mostly built in the 1930’s. The former Homeleigh care home now houses a number of formerly homeless people. It was unable to continue as a care home due to changes in planning regulations which meant it was no longer suitable for use as a care home, but there was nothing wrong with the building in itself – and just for once Bexley Council took the pragmatic decision to re-purpose the otherwise functional building. There was initial wariness from local residents about the move, but the feedback I have had recently seems to indicate that the arrangement is working very well indeed. HMO's are not automatically bad - it all depends on how they are set up, managed and regulated.

Over the last week you may well have noticed a number of people on the river front at Erith, and on the Slade Green Crayford Marshes; they were equipped with binoculars and cameras. If you wondered who they were, and what they were doing, then I will explain. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) conducted its fourth annual seal survey. Combining aerial surveys of the Essex and Kent coastlines, as well as sandbanks in the outer Thames Estuary, with more traditional boat and land-based studies, ZSL’s conservation scientists have been counting latest numbers of the marine mammals, as well as looking out for any emerging health trends. Data collected from the research will reveal any change in harbour seal populations and also highlight the ratio of harbour seals to the larger and more dominant grey seals, which increasingly compete with harbour seals for food and territory. Last year’s ZSL seal survey counted 451 harbour seals and 454 grey seals in the Thames Estuary. The 2016 edition will provide the latest update on these figures and also inform future conservation and management of seals in the region.This will be done through implementing the Greater Thames Seal Action Plan, providing scientific evidence during any planning applications that may impact seals, as well as generating comprehensive population data to inform future research in the region. As I have previously mentioned, the seals swim in the River Thames and often into the River Darent; they often float in the water with their heads above the surface in and around Anchor Bay, and well-meaning passers by on the shore sometimes mistake the seals for swimmers who appear to be in trouble in the water. Indeed, the average survival time for a person in the water is estimated to be eleven minutes, due to the extreme currents and undertow in the river in and around Erith Pier. Obviously the situation is somewhat different for seals – the water is their natural habitat, for which they are perfectly evolved. I understand that at least one RNLI callout recently has been as a result of a misidentified seal mistaken for a swimmer in distress.

This weekend has been the first outing for the limited overnight operation of certain tube lines in London. The end video this week shows the behind the scenes final preparation for the 24 hour tube which were made last weekend, when trial runs were made, and the last safety testing was undertaken. Please feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

A burglary.

You may recall that last week I wrote about a break in at the Cross Keys Centre in Erith High Street. The former pub building is being restored and converted into a mixed office space and community hub, which when finished will be open to the public. Since my last edition, I have received high definition CCTV images of the burglary, which happened on the evening of the 16th June. If you are familiar with the Cross Keys Centre - and after all it is one of the most striking pieces of architecture in the town, you will know that it clearly displays a number of CCTV warning signs on the exterior of the structure. I can only surmise that the youths did not care that they might be filmed whilst trespassing, breaking and entering and burgling the building whilst it was unoccupied on a Thursday evening. In the image above, you can see a group of youths at the back of the building, loitering on the first floor balcony, where one of the group is forcing off the shuttering covering the back door, and smashing the door glass to illegally gain entry to the multimedia presentation suite / conference room.

The second still image was taken twenty minutes later, when the group of youths exited the building. As they made their way down the metal staircase, they were clearly unaware that they were being filmed. The youth at the back of the group can be seen holding a Bose bluetooth wireless speaker in his right hand - he had just stolen this from the Cross Keys Centre.  

The third still photo was taken from slightly earlier in the chain of unfortunate events. It shows the same group as they climbed on the roof of one of the outbuildings to the rear of the Cross Keys Centre. It gives a pretty clear view of the faces of the group who were about to break and enter the building. If any reader knows the identity of any of the youths, please Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com, and I will pass the information on to the relevant authorities. As Julian Hilton, co - owner of the Cross Keys Centre said last week:- "The Cross Keys is an important building for the regeneration of Erith town centre, and we want to keep the doors open, not turn it into a fortress. Through Neighbourhood Watch we would like everyone's help in making sure young people don't vandalise and steal like this. This is the first incident of its kind in a long time and we hope it's the last".

The KFC drive through restaurant in Manor Road, Erith is currently partially closed for refurbishment. The “sit down” part of the fried chicken outlet is closed to the public, and only the drive through part is still functioning. The reason for this is that the fast food store is being refurbished and rebranded with the new KFC corporate look and feel. The red and white plastic look is being replaced with brick-effect walls and timber tables, designed to replicate a "kitchen as the heart of the home" image. A new feature being added to the restaurant is a semi-open plan kitchen that will allow diners to see their food being prepared. Its design should also allow service to be much faster. Commissioned artists will provide illustrations and photographs to adorn the walls - and the space will be brightly lit by low hanging copper lighting. This refurbishment is the latest battle in the all – out war that KFC Erith has with the large McDonald’s drive through that is located directly opposite it in James Watt Way.  The KFC has had a rocky history; back in February 2014 the Erith franchise applied to open 24/7, and a large local campaign was started to prevent this from happening. Fortunately common sense prevailed, and the franchise owners voluntarily withdrew the application when they saw the extent of local opposition. The Erith KFC franchise has also had problems with supply in the recent past; last summer I received several reports of certain menu items being unavailable when requested, and I also heard a couple of unsubstantiated rumours that the store was suffering cash flow problems. It would seem from the investment being made into the store now, that these rumours were either incorrect, or have now been successfully resolved. The new KFC store look is being rolled out all around the country, and the Erith store is merely the latest in the long line of outlets being thus rebranded. One problem the rebranding will not solve is the thorny issue of car queuing for the drive – through. Service at the drive through (and reportedly, the main store as well) is very slow; at busy times the cars queuing for the occupants to place orders get lined up all the way around the car park and out onto Manor Road. Though a busy main road, Manor Road is not very wide, and when queuing cars line up in the road itself, this causes terrible traffic hold – ups, as cars wishing to pass the KFC queue find it difficult to pass, as oncoming traffic can prevent overtaking manoeuvres. This problem has been reported to the local Police, but I am not aware of any solution being put in place. Perhaps the KFC refurbishment may lead to some traffic routing solution? Time will tell.

I was pleasantly surprised on Wednesday morning when I received an email from Bexley council telling me that the Regeneration team are planning two “consult the public” events, the first of which took place yesterday in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre, and the second takes place on Wednesday the 6th July on the triangle of land opposite the bottom of the shopping centre escalators. The Council announcement said:- “The London Borough of Bexley has been successful in securing funds for a number of projects aimed at regenerating Erith Town Centre. These projects aim to improve the town by providing new high quality housing and shops. They will improve the quality of key public space areas and see the launch of a number of projects aimed at revitalising the town centre”. This is all good news, and follows on from the announcement back in January when Councillor Linda Bailey, Cabinet member for Regeneration and Growth said "Erith has huge potential and our aim is to ensure it is developed in a sustainable way, with well-designed improvements that deliver the results local people need. We have also made complementary bids to two further funds managed by the Mayor of London and hope to be able to say more on that in the next few weeks." It would seem that a substantial cash fund of nearly £3.9 million has indeed been secured to develop and improve Erith Town Centre. I understand that the main focus of the regeneration will be the area between the old Erith Town Hall and the Post Office. I understand that the old town hall is currently almost totally unused, as the outsourced council tax and benefits functions carried out there have now been outsourced to Bromley Council in a cost saving bid. I have said before that I would be surprised if Bexley Council did not sell off the building and surrounding plot of land to developers. My concern is that they might try to package up the council office site with the old Carnegie gifted Library building next door to make a huge piece of real estate that they could sell for building flats on. The former Riverside Swimming Baths site at the lower end of Walnut Tree Road is already earmarked for redevelopment as town houses and apartments – the rapacious council would not surprise me if they tried to once again “sell the family silver” and flog off the rest of the land on the Eastern side of Walnut Tree Road. All the more reason I, and many other local residents would like to see J.D Wetherspoon’s take up the old Library building and sensitively conserve and convert it into a pub / restaurant. Wetherspoon’s have the deep pockets and cunning lawyers to challenge any underhand activities of Bexley Council – and are also very familiar with working with listed buildings – the library has Grade II listed status. What do you think the council should do with the regeneration money it has been awarded? What would you like to see in the town that is currently missing? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Some good news was pointed out by Malcolm Knight of “Bexley is Bonkers” that Bexley Council is about to launch a crackdown on Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMO’s). Bexley Council published the following statement “The council is working to implement a range of new controls to take firm control of the issue. It wants to ensure that smaller properties that are converted to HMOs provide suitable accommodation and reduce the risk that they create problems for other residents. This is something which has only recently started to cause concern and we are taking steps to ensure we have the powers we need to protect the occupiers of the properties and their neighbours. London is growing fast and the demand for housing far exceeds the supply. It's important to remember that these properties help meet people's genuine need for housing. If they are properly managed, they do not generally cause problems." The council says it has been looking at a package of measures which may include a selective licensing scheme for parts of the borough, securing powers to licence small two-storey HMOs, and the adoption of an Article 4 directive which would remove planning permitted development rights for smaller HMOs. All this is good news, though how far Bexley Council will go in practice is not clear at this point. We will have to wait and see what actually happens. 

Local resident and Maggot Sandwich reader Raymond Ratcliffe sent me the the following piece, and some relevant photos, which you can also see below. "Ye Olde Leather Bottle – Heron Hill- Belvedere 1643 – 2016:-  This is what happens when Builders / Property Developers get hold of a building and a large area of land. First a little bit of history the core of the present building is said to date from 1643. In 1783, when this was acquired by Taskers of Dartford, it was described as the leather Bottle at Chalk-Stile. There is evidence for the building back to 1751 and the licences are recorded for the pub of this name back to 1726. The Leather Bottle was also a name given to a pub on the riverside. 

This happens when Builders / Property Developers get hold of empty properties. They do not care about any local history. By the way the public footpath through the property has all types of rubbish i.e. plastic bottles, papers and at the other end of the footpath is impassable due to loose ballast from the site and a shopping trolley blocking the way". Despite the age and history associated with the Leather Bottle, it was not a listed building - quite why I have no idea. The developers of the site have misled and outright lied to local residents - they said that they were merely clearing the car park and a small patch of land next to the historical pub - and their builders have been extremely rude, aggressive and abusive to anyone taking photographs of the demolition work, as Malcolm Knight of Bexley is Bonkers has reported previously. Our local history is being wiped from the map - this was possibly the oldest building in Upper Belvedere, and it has been destroyed. If this had happened somewhere else, there would have been public uproar. I am appalled.

Long time Maggot Sandwich reader, and occasional contributor Dana Whiffen writes:- "45 years since Led Zeppelin played locally. Formed from The Yardbirds and even called The New Yardbirds for a short while in 1968 before changing their name to Led Zeppelin. They joined a host of other live bands that were working hard to make a name for themselves between 1968-1970. Then this music was known to rock music fans as “Underground Music” mainly because there was no national commercial media outlet for this music at the time. With pirate radio stations, music clubs and the many local live venues the only way to get recognition at the time. Many of these bands worked constantly playing live to a growing number of fans throughout the UK, while their albums at the time received moderate sales and made little impact on the album charts and they rarely released singles, knowing that they would not get played. Between 1968-1971 there were also numerous clubs that played their albums or tracks from them to fans of the music, I remember a local venue that was hot and sweaty and packed with dancing fans who wanted to hear tracks played loudly from bands such as Led Zeppelin, Ten Years After, Grand Funk Railroad, Humble Pie, Johnny Winter, Humble Pie, The Groundhogs, Wishbone Ash (who are to play the Mick Jagger Centre in Dartford in October 2016) and local bands like Stray. On March 12th 1971 Led Zeppelin played the University of Kent, tickets sold out on the day they went on sale for 60p each (12 shillings in old money). This year was a significant year as many of these bands began to break America and the UK and to attract the attention of the major record labels. While in early 1971 BBC Radio playlists included Carole King “It’s Too Late”, David Bowie “The Man Who Sold the World” and Janis Joplin “Mercedes Benz”. The same year, the already established Rolling Stones released “Brown Sugar” in May 1971 and in June The Who released “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, while The Beatles had already imploded and were making solo music. Led Zeppelin (whose bassist / keyboard player John Paul Jones comes from Sidcup) between 1968-1970 had completed 4 US & 4 UK tours their debut album Led Zeppelin was released in January 1969 making the top 10 in both the USA & the UK for a short period, but the release of Led Zeppelin 2 later that year together with their constant touring was to propel them towards the big time with Led Zep-2 making a big impact on UK & USA album charts and this even saw their first album return to the charts at the same time. In the USA their record company released an edited version of “Whole Lotta Love” from Led Zeppelin 2 and it sold 1 million copies and received wide-spread airplay, but it was not released in the UK. Between 1971-1975 they became one of the biggest rock bands in the World and by November 1971 they had released their 4th Album. It went on to sell 37 million copies worldwide and is listed as one of the best selling albums of all time. In 1974 they launched their own record label SWANSONG and went on to sign bands such as Bad Company, The Pretty Things and Maggie Bell (from Stone the Crows). From 1975 to the later part of 1977 they took a break from touring resuming at the end of 1977 with a North American Tour where they set an audience record of 76,229. In 1980 after the death of their drummer John Bonham the band split and they were brief reunions in 1985, 1988, 1995 and 2007 with John Bonham’s son Jason on drums. Fans had hoped for a full tour and new album but despite rumours and large cash offers Robert Plant has said no".

Every so often I feature an old and log forgotten technology that did not really take off. You may recall that I recounted the story of the Capacitance Electronic Disk video format a while ago. Now marks the fortieth anniversary of another media format that should have made it big, but due to a number of factors, it ended up being consigned to the parts bin of history. Back before all-digital music, back before the Digital Compact Cassette, back before even the Digital Audio Tape existed, there was a strange audio device that, briefly, captured the imagination of Hi-Fi enthusiasts across the world. The Elcaset, as it was called, was an enlarged cassette that started in Japan, wove its hidden, spinning spools round the world and then finished, appropriately enough, in Finland. The humble Compact Cassette was already more than a decade old in 1976, and its pros and cons had by then become fairly clear to most listeners. It wasn’t a huge reel-to-reel deck as used by pro studios, and was thus portable by the standards of the day—even though Sony's cassette Walkman was still a few years away. The sound was generally acceptable for a generation raised on crackly mono Dansette record players. But the small tape size—two sets of stereo tracks squeezed onto a strip of tape just 3.81mm wide—and the slow playback speed of 4.76cm (1⅞ inches) per second rendered the device incapable of really capturing and playing anything near the full sonic range that music ultimately requires. What's more, there was often plenty of hiss that couldn’t easily be masked. So 40 years ago, a trio of rising Japanese electronics giants decided to inject some quality into the game, something that they hoped would hit the Hi-Fi market as well as aspiring consumers and indie studios. Thus Panasonic, Sony, and Teac came up with the Elcaset, a larger small format. It was virtually twice the size of the old cassette—more like a paperback book in size, at a hefty 15cm wide, 10cm tall and 2cm deep. It contained quarter-inch tape running at double the speed of regular cassettes, which naturally gave the format greater frequency response and a wider dynamic range, as well as much less hiss. It also had six tracks, despite still playing back in stereo—the third track on each side was for a cue function that was designed as an additional facility that studios could use, but never fully implemented. The other big difference was that the Elcaset’s tape was gently pulled away from the body shell when it was played, so that even the most scuffed—or crudely-made—frame wouldn’t effect the audio signal. To put it in technical terms, the cassette had a high-frequency bandwidth that hardly got over 16,000Hz, whereas Elcaset exceeded 25,000Hz, and had a fine mid-band (the region in which most vocals and guitars live). It made a better noise, basically. The best Elcaset decks had three motors, three heads for playback, recording, and erasure, closed-loop dual capstan, VU meters, and remote control. All-in-all, they sounded pretty damn good. Sony, Teac, and Panasonic had their own top-of-the-range versions as well as more reasonably priced decks, and there was even a hand-bag sized "portable" version, the EL-D8, which looked like, and essentially was, a piece of mobile pro-audio kit. With a "big four" PR launch—input from Panasonic, Sony, Teac, and then Hitachi—for their "revolutionary Elcaset system," the format should have become a big seller. There were some good reviews, and certain pundits still claim today that Elcaset's overall performance was virtually as good as leading mid-range reel-to-reels at the time, such as the Revox B77. So with the cassette already battling the newish 8-track cartridge, the manufacturers believed Elcaset would apply the killer blow to the older format, leaving it to struggle with the 8-track for market supremacy. Unfortunately, Elcaset's arrival in 1976 coincided with the year that sales of several other innovations took off. One of these was the chromium oxide (CrO2) cassette which, while not quite matching the finesse of the Elcaset, did greatly improve cassette sound and could crucially be used in any existing cassette player. The CrO2 cassette cost 40 percent more than a normal tape, but for the audiophile or the discerning pop fan, there was now a premium recording-cassette that didn’t require a whole new deck. The leading tape manufacturer Sansui eventually started to make Elcaset tapes after Sony belatedly brought out a chrome tape of its own for the new decks. But this was already too late. For the compact cassette player there was also Dolby B, which looked and sound fairly fresh on the scene. Dolby B (which funnily enough followed after Dolby A) took out the hiss, reducing noise without overly affecting the sound, again adding value to the existing, cheaper, format. Another innovation, aimed purely at the Hi-Fi market, was a superb range of cassette players from Japanese firm Nakamichi, which had been making them since the autumn of 1973. These slowly gained a great reputation as they squeezed every last drop of sound from a compact tape and, when used with a chrome cassette, almost gave vinyl a run for its money. Decent examples of the legendary Nakamichi Dragon player still command three and four-figure sums today. And, speaking of money, one minus point amid a splash of mainly good reviews was the Elcaset’s exorbitant initial price—coming in at over £1,200 in today’s money. So when indie sound studios realised that the sound was going to be, in some cases, a little worse than a cheaper, used, reel-to-reel deck, that market started to shy away. The convenience of Elcaset would have saved a little studio time, but not enough to warrant the outlay. On top of this, reel-to-reel was comparatively easy to splice—to edit with, literally, razor blades - a technique I was taught back in the late 1980's when I was an intern at what was then BBC Radio London. Elcaset on the other hand could only be dubbed, and recording drop-ins could never be as accurate even if the cue system were ever completed. As for domestic sales, Hi-Fi was costlier back then anyway, but such a price was a big leap for all but the most dedicated audiophile. No way was the average person going to spend such an amount on what many just saw as a glorified cassette. The last straw, domestically speaking, was the failure of Sony and the others to provide pre-recorded tapes. Many people, even Hi-Fi enthusiasts, didn’t always want to have to record their own material. Some just wanted to buy Top 40 albums off the shelf of their nearest music store—but they couldn’t with Elcaset. This would prove to be an error that Sony barely noticed, and repeated with the Betamax video format—their last such content mistake; subsequently they bought up CBS Records as well as shares in various film companies. Elcaset tech was undoubtedly ahead of its time though, and the extra-shell tape handling that it featured would go on to dominate the video market for the following 25 years with VHS and S-VHS. The people behind the "biggest, bestest" cassette just hadn’t considered the public’s price limits, their love of prerecorded material, or even the possibility that existing rival formats could still develop their own innovations. In 1980 the Elcaset itself officially died, the last few thousand unsold players auctioned off at a fraction of their worth to the highest bidder. Incredibly, there were virtually no serious bids from the US, Japan, or even Western Europe, and the highest bid actually came from a Scandinavian distributor. So the last Elcaset players ended up in bargain basements in Finland, blasting out at the snowy forests while the rest of the music world began to forget about their beloved cassette’s short-lived big brother. There’s also no denying that these machines were built for the ages; there’s many a tale of Elcaset players being found in attics this century, after 25 or 35 years in storage, and still playing perfectly. Analogue audio fans still swap "elcassy" tips on sites such as tapeheads.net, and if you ever need to lube your belt and two spools—and you probably will with the older Sony tapes—this is definitely the place to find out how. There is now a niche but steady market in secondhand Elcaset players and unused Elcaset tapes, not just on eBay, but in Finland, the UK, US, and Poland. Bexleyheath hifi dealer Whomes used to sell Elcaset machines - especially the very high end models - I recall visiting the shop with my Dad and being given a demonstration - though Dad was never going to buy a machine - but a free look was something else altogether.

As if any local traveller did not already know it, Southern and Southeastern trains have been jointly ranked as the UK’s worst rail services. Passenger satisfaction dropped for both rail services since autumn 2015 in terms of both value for money and reliability of services, according to the National Rail Passenger Survey (NRPS). Punctuality ratings for Southeastern were an appalling fifty six percent. The rail company had one of the lowest levels of satisfaction when customers were asked how they felt about trains running on time. A third of people described the service’s punctuality and reliability as ‘poor’, with a 17 per cent drop in customers claiming they were satisfied. Nearly 40 per cent of those surveys also criticised how both companies handled delays. No surprises there then!

The widely reported experiment Bexley Council made in Welling to switch off street lights between 1am and 5.30am had thankfully been dropped. In a press release published on Friday, the following announcement was made:- "After considering the feedback from its recent, part-night lighting trial‟ in Welling and trials of LED lighting, the Council has decided to implement alternative energy efficient lighting technology, rather than turning street lights off between 1am and 5:30am. The street lighting trials took place as part of the borough's wider savings proposals to balance the Council's budget in the face of cuts in government grant and the rising cost of key services. They involved switching off street lights during the early hours of the morning. At the end of the trial feedback from residents was collected and other data reviewed, such as any changes in the level of crime or accidents. During the trial period, the Council also looked at alternative options for converting lighting to LED for reducing costs. After considering the feedback from residents, a programme to install LED lighting in Bexley's streets wherever possible will start later this year. We've listened to what our residents told us," said Cllr Alex Sawyer, Bexley's Cabinet Member for Traffic and Transport. "The consultation following the trial told us that they would prefer to have their lights on for as long as possible. We were also looking into different methods and found that improvements in LED lighting make it a viable and cost effective alternative. "I thank all of the residents who gave us their feedback after and during the trial period. Our newly elected colleague, Cllr Ray Sams, had the opportunity to discuss the issue with many local residents during the St Michael's Ward by-election campaign and they were pleased we had listened to their concerns.” LED lights are approximately 40% more energy efficient than traditional sodium lighting. They also require less maintenance. Overall the change in lighting methods is expected to achieve an annual saving of more than £300,000. The works are expected to start in Autumn 2016 and will be completed during 2018". I could have told them this from the outset! LED lighting quite plainly is the way forward - it strikes me that Bexley Council have carried out a divisive and expensive "pilot" scheme that was entirely without merit.

The ending video this week is a look around the exterior of St. John the Baptist Church - far and away the oldest church in Erith, which predates The Magna Carta by at least a couple of hundred years. Please feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.