The bane of BrightHouse.

The photo above shows the former Erith Trades and Social Club building in James Watt Way, which is currently being demolished (click on the photo for a larger view). It will be replaced by a block of flats. Some of the nearby Sycamore trees will have to be cut down in the process of the construction work; my understanding is that the developer has applied for the tree preservation orders that they are currently under to be removed. To be honest the trees are not that healthy looking anyway, so I don't think that they will be too great a loss. It may seem strange to build yet more flats in the local area when so many have already been constructed recently; there must still be still be a market for new build properties at the entry level of the market. I suppose it could have something to do with Erith being one of the cheapest places to live within easy commuting distance of central London. The fact that the new apartment block development is going ahead, joining the massive Erith Park residential redevelopment, the new Bexley College building, and on a smaller scale, the comprehensive refurbishment and conversion of the old Cross Keys pub into office space, all means that Erith is seeing a lot of high quality investment - something that it has sorely needed for years. The town is growing, and its' population demographic changing. As long as services such as schools and social care grow in proportion to cope with the new influx of residents, it could be the start of a very interesting period in Eriths' history.

Over the past few months I have written about my concerns for Bexleyheath Broadway, and how the town is turning into a retail desert; around a third of the shop units are currently standing empty. My worst fears were compounded when I discovered that a large Brighthouse store has recently opened, almost opposite the Asda superstore. To my mind, the definitive indicator that a town has gone to the dogs is when Brighthouse move in.  I was reading an article recently, in which Karl Dayson, an academic who specialises in the study of affordable finance said that “I can think of no better marker of social deprivation than having a Brighthouse store open in your area”.  If you have not heard of the Brighthouse  stores before, let me explain. Brighthouse are a chain of retailers specialising in household goods such as furniture, washing machines, televisions and cookers. Their unique selling point is that you can purchase goods on credit with no deposit, and with very low weekly repayments. The store is designed to appeal to young families – the aisles between goods on display are wide enough for a child’s buggy to be wheeled easily along them. Brighthouse offer credit to those who would otherwise be unable to qualify for it – mainly people on benefits. This all sounds great – helping those otherwise unable to afford the basics of a home to get what they need. The downside of it is the eye wateringly high interest rates that Brighthouse charges. Several debt charities have expressed dismay at the high charges. A basic washing machine that costs £399 in Curry's will cost £1,560 from Brighthouse, albeit broken down into “affordable” £10 weekly payments at an interest rate of 69.9% APR. Just like the notorious pay day lenders, the poorer you are, the more you pay for goods and services. Debt advisor Anne Young, who has advised many former Brighthouse customers said “These companies are preying on people who cannot afford to go anywhere else. I do think that they are robbing the poor, when you look at their prices. They are charging a ridiculous amount for goods you can buy on the high street for a third of the price”.  To give an example, a small television which costs £99.99 in Argos would cost a total of £606.84 paid over a total of 156 weeks. Brighthouse argue that their TV is covered against malfunction and accidental damage over the course of the repayment period, but this needs to be set against the fact that you could buy six similar televisions for that amount of money elsewhere.  Brighthouse claim that if you can find an identical product anywhere on the high street, that they will match the price. This is actually quite difficult, as Brighthouse have a lot of “own name” brands, such as Baird; these are simply not available anywhere else; they also include a number of options that other retailers on the high street don’t, and the pricing structure is so bewilderingly complex that direct comparison is rather difficult. Brighthouse are looking to aggressively expand their stores – Bexleyheath is merely the latest opening. They plan to open another four hundred stores to add to the 288 that they currently operate, which are usually located in areas with high levels of poverty. The demographic for Brighthouse customers is fairly straightforward; a majority are women between 26 and 45 years of age; they earn less than £13,000 a year, and around fifty percent are receiving at least part of their income in the form of benefits. You can really view Brighthouse as a cross between somewhere like Argos and loan company – and its’ customers are overwhelmingly people who do not qualify for a credit card or score too lowly for a conventional, lower interest loan. The kind of goods that the company sells (furniture / consumer electronics) do tend to depreciate over the course of the loan period, to the point that by the time the loan is fully paid off, the goods are essentially worthless. On top of this, Brighthouse have a policy of repossessing goods if payments are not met, even if the customer is only one or two payments away from completing the purchase.  Normally a court order is required to repossess goods when more than a third of the credit payments have already been met. Brighthouse have a nasty habit of sending round bailiffs without such legal niceties – exploiting the fact that many of their customers are ignorant of the law. All in all, Brighthouse succeed because they can – their target customer does not qualify for a loan from a conventional source, and is not aware of low cost resources such as credit unions. They rely on the customer being sucked in to the colourful, brightly lit and shiny shop with the promise of low repayments, even if they do end up paying for what seems like half a lifetime. The appeal of the “here and now” rather than waiting and saving to buy from a store that offers no credit, but a consequently far lower purchase price is something that Brighthouse encourage – many of their customers have little academic education, and don’t necessarily realise that they may only be paying back a tenner or so a week for their 3D television, but doing so for several years means it is costing them a pile more money than it should. In my opinion, Brighthouse operate a legal business; whether they operate a moral one is open to debate.

Local amateur investigative journalist, blogger and owner of the excellent “Bexley is Bonkers” website, Malcolm Knight has hit the headlines this week; he is featured in the Bexley Times in an article about how much of the tax payers’ cash Bexley Council has paid in hush money to departing employees to prevent them from spilling the beans about the council’s practices. Over the last three years, Bexley Council have spend more than a million pounds split between fifty five former employees  - that is an average of just over £18,000 per case – a not unsubstantial amount of dosh, especially since it actually comes from our pockets. The information concerning these large payouts only came to light after a freedom of information request was submitted on the subject. You can read more by clicking here.

I was asked earlier this week what benefits I saw about Bexley College, and their forthcoming move to their new campus site in Walnut Tree Road; well, I think that this is quite straightforward. The college will bring a lot of potential customers to the shops in the Riverside Shopping Centre - over a thousand students a day will be coming into the centre of town - the old college building is over a mile from the new location, and very few students currently come into central Erith. The biggest places to benefit will be the takeaways and other food shops - although the refectory in the new building will no doubt be good, the appeal of the fast food shops will be there. Also, most of the students will be using public transport, as many are under 21 and would find affording a car (and getting insurance) a real problem. This will mean that the footfall through the town centre will go up markedly in my opinion. The college also will be offering evening classes - which tend to appeal to an older demographic - which will also mean new people travelling into the town. These people will need parking; it is my understanding that there will be little or no on campus parking, as the college are keen to encourage the use of public transport (which is pretty good to be honest). I anticipate the car park in Cross Street will get a lot of use, as will the car park by The Running Horses, as these are the two in closest proximity with the new college. Potentially the whole of central Erith will be exposed to a lot of people who would otherwise have no reason to visit the town. This has got to be a good thing, and something that should be encouraged.

One subject that is allied to the piece on Brighthouse is the whole vexed subject of people on a low income who have a very large flat screen television. Some academic studies have been carried out on the subject, and the results have been actually quite surprising. It has been noted for some years that wealthier, middle class people tend to have fewer televisions in their houses, and they tend to be older models with smaller screens.  The reason for this is thought to be that middle class people generally spend less time watching the television, as they are likely to attend theatre, cinema, sports and the arts, as well as eating out and socialising on a regular basis. The television is regarded as an incidental item. Researchers found that people with lower incomes tend to be more home – centric; their social lives are more likely to revolve around their living rooms and the television; they tend not to go out much, and when they do, it is more likely to be local to them – to a friend or neighbour living nearby. Thus they place a far higher value on items for the home like a large television or games console, which is their principle source of leisure and entertainment. This certainly seems to make sense – and would no doubt drive the Daily Mail into a frenzy should it come across the story.  I suppose that there are exceptions to this though; I can afford to go out as much as I like, but I am a real home lover and would rather spend time indoors, in my home office or living room; the world has changed greatly in the last decade or so; fast broadband connections mean that all sorts of media content can be streamed to the home; you no longer need to go to the inconvenience of a cinema visit, when you can see the movie in full HD quality in the comfort of your own home. I personally have little time for the theatre, and all of the hassle that it entails. I do like a live gig every so often, but nowadays it has to be something really special to entice me out of Pewty Acres on a cold and wintery evening.

In just over a year of production, the Raspberry Pi Foundation have manufactured in excess of one million Raspberry Pi computers. This is an astonishing amount, and proof if it be needed that there is a huge market for a simple, cheap computer running open source software that can be used by children to learn programming. The Raspberry Pi is the modern equivalent of the BBC Micro from the 1980’s – a machine that introduced many children of the time to Basic programming and (at the time, more importantly, games) – like the groundbreaking Elite. Schools around the UK were equipped with BBC Micros, and they became the de facto standard computer in education for many years. The situation was different in the home, however. The BBC Micro, was at the time highly capable computer, one of the first with the ability to add a second processor and also equipped as standard with a basic form of networking. These kind of features were great to have, but added greatly to the expense of the machine. Kids were far more likely to have a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 or even a Amstrad CPC464 in their bedroom. All of these machines (and a great many other models) were “good enough” – for example, the Spectrum had a very limited technical specification, but it was very easy to program, had bright and colourful graphics, and an absolutely huge library of software of varying quality available for it.  The fact that the UK has such a thriving software industry today is directly as a result. A lot of the kids who spent hours in darkened bedrooms playing games, then learning to write their own software code are now adults who are guiding lights in the UK software industry. Recent blockbuster games such as Grand Theft Auto 5 may be American themed, but was actually conceived and developed in Scotland. The game has earned over a billion dollars in revenue within mere weeks of release, more than any Hollywood movie. This one area where Britain really does still lead the world. The Raspberry Pi is designed to be the BBC Micro for today; hopefully the next generation of hit software makers will be nurtured by using the Pi. Only time will tell. More on early computing further down.

I have an apology to make; it would appear that in last weeks’ update I made a factual error.  Thankfully I was corrected in the week by this note from Joan McCarthy, the secretary of the Friends of Riverside Gardens Erith (FORGE). "I read your blog on the Erith Town Forum meeting which was quite pleasing.  However, I have one correction, the Forum do not supply flowers and gardeners, etc., for the Riverside Gardens but these are supplied by Friends Of Erith Riverside Gardens Erith ("FORGE") which is an entirely separate organisation - although a lot of the people attending the Erith Forum are also FORGE members.  This is by no means a criticism of you as I can understand that attending the meeting for the first time and having to speak to a load of strangers you were not to know who is who and who belongs to what!  I was at that meeting and I thought you spoke very well.  I have followed your blogs for some time and it was nice to see you in the flesh so to speak. You may like to know that FORGE entered the Bexley Environmental Challenge competition again this year (we won a Bronze Award last year) and I am pleased to say that we won two awards this time.  The ceremony took place at the Civic Offices on Monday 7th October.  We were presented with a framed Silver Gilt Award and a cheque for £40 in the Environmental Project section; and a framed Community Environment Award and a cheque for £100 in the Special section.  The Community Environment award also came with the Silver Rose Bowl Trophy (which we keep for one year) and a "Jeannie" trophy which is ours to keep.  The "Jeannie"  trophy is a beautiful engraved glass globe on a glass stand.   The Jeannie trophies were donated by former councillor Jean Attenbring who is now 94 years of age.  She was present at the award ceremony and is a grand old lady.  Regrettably, this is the last year of the Bexley Environmental Challenge.  When we return the Silver Rose Bowl next year it will be placed in a show cabinet in the new Bexley Offices and the legend  "FORGE 2013" shown as the last name engraved on its stand, the first being in 1998".

On top of this, I was contacted a couple of days ago by Maggot Sandwich reader, and fairly recent Erith resident John, who made the following observations on something that I wrote recently. "I regularly read your blog, which for the most part I particularly enjoy. This week's instalment had me spitting teeth though. The bit where you write about the food hygiene stars and then go on to name and shame those establishments which have a zero rating. Whilst I appreciate your intentions which I think are noble perhaps you might want to visit and speak to the owners of those establishments. I have one particular establishment in mind and that is Foods 4 U. If you go down to the shop and speak to the owner you may discover why they have said rating. I suppose though I best declare some sort of bias. The establishment concerned is a wholesaler of South African foods etc. I am a regular visitor to the shop and every time I go it is always neat, clean and tidy and undeserving of its zero rating. The reason I suggest you go visit the owner is because they have had a long running feud with Bexley council re: The wind turbine that went up overnight amongst other things. The cynic in me says their rating has absolutely nothing to do with the hygiene and more to do with the vindictiveness of Bexley council (Which I more than most in Bexley have experienced first hand). I have been in places in Erith that deserve that zero rating more. Anyway, keep up with the blog I do enjoy it, especially the bits about Erith being a newcomer to that part of Bexley." Interesting feedback John; it appears that observational reality and Bexley Council may be at variance in this case.

The ending video this week features a trailer for a brand new observational comedy movie that is being released in America in a couple of weeks. It was shot on thirty year old black and white analogue video cameras in the old 4:3 video format. It is a fictional account of one of the earliest computer chess competitions in America - where amateur hackers and professional programmers alike pitted their home written chess playing programs at each other, to see who could write the strongest chess playing computer program (before anyone points it out, the accepted spelling of the word when related to computers is actually program rather than programme - I don't make the rules, merely obey them). The film is actually a character piece, featuring a number of eccentric, oddball characters alongside some interesting and sympathetic ones. Much of the film was improvised in a similar way to the excellent "This is Spinal Tap" (see the Glastonbury live video clip above) - one could say that "Computer Chess" is trying to do for the tech world what "Spinal Tap" did for the music business. Watch the trailer and make up your own mind.

Kebabs and college.

I recently wrote about the derelict and long abandoned building in James Watt Way that used to house Erith Trades and Social Club (see the photo above - click for a larger view). The club closed down about three years ago, and the building has been empty ever since. Thieves have stolen all of the electrical cabling and both the gas and water piping from the place, and it is in very poor shape indeed. One of my sources has discovered that a planning application has been submitted for the location.  The application involves the demolition of the existing club building (this was always going to be close to inevitable – the structure is in such a state that it is beyond economic repair).  The proposal is for a six storey block of flats, with forty individual flats. Of these forty, six will be one bed, thirty one will be two bed, and the remaining three will be three bed. This is to be accompanied by twenty nine parking spaces, a refuse disposal facility and a communal garden. Quite how the developers are going to fit all of this on the site is beyond me; the parcel of land is of modest dimensions and is sandwiched by the KFC drive through on one side, and the Morrison’s petrol station on the other.  Quite who would want to live with the smell of frying chicken mixed with petrol and diesel fumes, not to mention the almost 24 hour noise from the sites is a mystery. I am guessing that the Council planning team will probably refuse this application on the grounds it is too many flats on too small a piece of land. This well may be a ploy on the part of the developer – put in an over ambitious application initially, only to “revise” it to that which they actually wanted all along. Time will tell. Over the last few years – basically since the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre opened with flats above the shops, the population of central Erith has ballooned.  It is understandable in a way, after all, Erith is one of the cheapest places to live within relatively easy access of London. That’s why I moved here, along with I guess quite a lot of other people.

Am I alone in noticing a local trend in womens’ hair styles? There seems to be a fad for having hair tied up in a very tight bun right now. Some of the ladies I have seen out and about have buns that look so tightly woven that they look like they were made of fibreglass and glued into place. They remind me of the BMW multi function selector iDrive system. I doubt twiddling the hair bob would change any functions however, other than to get you a smack in the mouth, or worse!

The Maggot Sandwich updates keep growing; I originally intended for each weekly submission to be no more than two thousand words a week. It then rose to two thousand five hundred words, and at present it hovers at a little over three thousand words. I am concerned that the length may start to put off causal readers, who may see a dense mass of text, and then think "I cannot be bothered to read all of this", which I can fully understand. As it is, I have had to carry over a couple of stories I would have liked to feature - they will now be recounted in the next update. Apologies to Erith and Belvedere football club, and the Blues Brothers International - you have not been forgotten about. 

Have you noticed that most mobile phones and portable MP3 players make great stock of the sheer number of tracks that they can store and play. It does seem to be that in the last decade or so we have regressed dramatically in terms of what is deemed acceptable audio quality. Back in the eighties, as CD gradually overtook vinyl, compact cassettes were the preferred portable audio medium. Other, superior formats such as DAT and Mini Disk came and went, but never really competed. With the advent of digital downloads popularised by the illegal likes of Napster and LimeWire, the emphasis switched from the quality to the quantity of music that could be acquired. Instead of owning a curated library of hand-selected albums, 21st-century listeners have seen their music libraries become repositories of multiple thousands of song - often downloaded or transferred in bulk, often without any particular attention being paid to what was arriving. The more that our new century's music fans were obtaining for free (typically via illegal file-sharing on peer-to-peer networks) the less they tended to pay close attention to what they were hearing. There were just too many songs to deal with. And more arriving by the day. If listening to music was once a purposeful, attentive act, it has become over the past 10 or 15 years a random and distracted act. People often listen to whatever their iPod wants to shuffle into their earphones, and are usually doing a couple of other things at the same time. Online commenters boast about their "massive" libraries - rarely about the quality of the music they're listening to. Meanwhile, streaming services, such as Spotify, brag about the many millions of songs available, and assure us that we should be regularly sharing our hastily assembled playlists with both friends and strangers via social media. As if the constant over-feeding of our ears is now music's primary goal. Music, basically, has become the aural equivalent of fast food: consumed quickly, in super-sized portions; users get filled up but not necessarily nourished. The act of taking a record out of the cover, removing the paper sleeve and placing it on the record deck (in my case, my highly prized Linn Sondek LP12)  became like an act of supplication – a ritual to be performed with care and devotion. The spinning of the record, and the gradual motion of the tone arm and stylus across the face of the vinyl could become almost hypnotic; one did not stick on a record and go off and do something else – at least I never did. The value of music via digital downloads seems to be to have been diminished – the look and feel of the sleeve, the notes and credits were to me all part of the overall experience. How can you ever replace the thrill of reading the cryptic messages left on the run – out groove of the record by the cutting technician? It turns out that there are a couple of websites dedicated to recording this unusual phenomenon – click here.

Now that construction of the new Bexley College campus has begun on the site adjacent to Walnut Tree Road, I think it is high time for the businesses in Erith to step up to the plate in order to be ready for the influx of students, most of whom will have money to spend locally. The most obvious contender for improvement is Town Kebab in Bexley Road (photo above - click for a larger view), as it is the fast food outlet located closest to the campus site, just on the opposite side of the hideous fish statue roundabout. The problem that Town Kebab currently has is that it currently only has a single “Scores on the Doors” star, so has a woeful record of food hygiene. One would think that the prospect of over a thousand hungry students on his doorstep would encourage the proprietor to raise his game to compete with the likes of Domino’s Pizzas, or both Macdonald’s and KFC, which are a bit of a longer walk for the hungry teenager. If the place was tidied, given a deep clean and a lick of paint, it might do much to improve its’ image - historically it made most of its’ money on a Friday and Saturday evening when it fed clubbers after they had spent the evening in the nearby T’s (later Tease) nightclub. When that closed down, much of their revenue stream was lost, and the place now looks to be struggling. If they can hold out to the end of this year, and invest a little in fabric of the shop, they could well find themselves sitting on a small gold mine.

Much of the mainstream press (specifically the Guardian, which has worked itself into quite a tizzy) have been writing at length about Google Glass – the beta test version of Google’s new wearable computer / enhanced reality headset that has gone on limited release to a number of U.S based testers, who have each paid $1,500 for the privilege. The problem that some security analysts see is that you cannot readily tell when a Glass user is taking video or photographs. In one example, a journalist was demonstrating a Glass headset to a film crew in a Starbuck’s coffee shop. The shop manager asked the film crew to stop filming, but ignored the presenter, who was also shooting video through the Glass headset. I think this is the crux of the privacy problem; when someone is using a DSLR or even a mobile phone to take video or still photographs, it is obvious that they are doing so, and if you don’t want to be filmed, you can take action to avoid it. With devices like Google Glass, it is impossible to determine what the wearer / operator is doing. Mobile phones make a synthesised and quite loud shutter “click” when they take a photo to make certain that surrounding people are aware that a photograph has been taken. The reason for this? Some early camera phone users in Japan were using their phones to covertly take photos up women’s skirts on the Tokyo Underground. The shutter sound was added to make this far more difficult. Not only this, but Google Glass video and still photo content is automatically uploaded onto Google’s servers – potentially for the world to see.  Much in the same way that Google Street View has suffered from the law of unintended circumstances, catching people up to all sorts of humorous / criminal / dangerous activities, what will Google Glass end up doing? I have a few ideas, and I am sure that others have too. It does seem that Google senior management have the attitude of “sod the consequences, let’s chuck this technology out and see what happens.”

In the mid nineties, I worked for a company that was based in the East End of London, very close to Cable Street, the location of The Battle of Cable Street.  Due to the proximity with Brick Lane, I would invariably head to the lane for lunch at least one day a week. Nowadays Brick Lane and the surrounding area has become gentrified, with media companies moving in, and the widespread restoration of the Spitalfields area; back then it was a slum; nowadays the Huguenot period houses sell for millions.  Brick Lane back then was still dominated by wholesale clothing shops, and the side streets were full of illegal sweat shops. Now it is smart and feels a lot safer, though it has definitely lost the edge. I used to be one of the few European faces seen walking down the road at lunch time, especially so if the service at the Brick Lane Mosque had just finished. The huge number of “tourist trap” curry houses had yet to spread. Nowadays waiters tout for business outside many of the restaurants, offering passing visitors unbelievable deals if they choose their restaurant over the plethora of others. I detest this – many, maybe most of the restaurants on Brick Lane are poor quality, and certainly not worthy of your patronage; they exist mainly to fleece the tourists, who won't be back to complain. One place that stands head and shoulders above the rest is one of the oldest restaurants on Brick Lane, and a place I used to be a regular at. It is an unpretentious cafe style place located on the junction of Brick Lane and Chicksands Street called Sweet and Spicy – you can read a recent review of the place by clicking here.

This week the Maggot Sandwich plays host to Richard, a local resident who has picked up on my comments concerning the apparently illegal parking notices in the B and Q car park in Lower Belvedere, and I suspect all over the country. The story was first broken by Malcolm of the Bexley is Bonkers blog, but Richard has carried out some quite extensive research into the legalities of the situation. I should point out that Richard is an enthusiastic amateur, not a legal professional, so your mileage may vary. Here is his take on the situation:- "A company calling itself 'Vehicle Control Services Ltd' have placed signs in the car park of B and Q in Lower Road, Belvedere. They say “24 hour parking enforcement in operation”.  The notice in it's present context is meaningless as the car park is on privately owned land. Parking enforcement procedures can only be carried out by an approved local authority enforcing a Penalty Charge Notice:

Penalty Charge Notice (Local Authority) 
This is NOT a fine but a civil debt recoverable in the county court.

Traffic Management Act 2004.
The regulations made under Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 enable a Local Authority 
in England, provided it has been given the relevant power by the Secretary of State, to enforce 
parking contraventions within a particular geographical area (CEA) and to enforce other 
contraventions such as double parking and parking across a dropped footway within a Special 
Enforcement Area (SEA).

The signs then go on to state “maximum stay 3 hours”. This statement is totally ambiguous and could mean anything, 3 hours a day, a week, forever. Who knows? The notice continues to list conditions that, if not complied with will result in a series of what it calls 'enforcement procedures'. (See above). These conditions are interesting. To paraphrase, “if a valid ticket/permit is required it must be shown in the front windscreen of the vehicle”. No valid ticket/permit is required as it is a free car park so none of the penalties would apply even if they were legal. A Parking Charge Notice charge is only enforceable by the court. In order to get such an order the car park operator would have to establish that a contract existed between themselves and the motorist. A contract requires an object (something the car park operator provides) in exchange for a consideration (something the motorist offers in exchange). No consideration, void contract. End of story. A Parking Charge Notice is a claim of civil debt governed by contract law and property law. While this may look like a penalty charge notice it is no such thing and can be treated as a speculative invoice for a breach of contract. Other penalties they threaten refer to wheel clamping and towing. This became a criminal offence under the Protection of Freedoms Act on 1st October 2012. It may also be considered a threat to commit a criminal offence with the intention to obtain money which is an offence under the Public Order Act, S4.

Section 4  Fear or Provocation of Violence 
A person is guilty if he either 
a) uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or 
b) distributes to another person any writing or sign which is threatening, abusive or insulting.

The above would also apply to the land owner for allowing the sign to be displayed. 

Contracts with unlawful objects are also void.

PARKING FINES

There is no such thing as a parking fine.  Although the term is widely used it is almost always incorrect. A 'fine' in English law is issued as a punishment for a criminal offence. The only time the term could be considered is when a fixed penalty notice is issued by the Police for a traffic violation such as:-

parking at bus stops 
parking on pedestrian crossings 
parking in safety zones outside schools 
parking on yellow lines. 
Anything else is only a civil penalty which can be challenged in the county court."

Many thanks to Richard for his work in clarifying this; it would appear that B and Q and their security sub contractor have dropped a massive clanger. It will be interesting to see if either the Bexley Times or The News Shopper pick up on the story, as it certainly has legs. Time will tell. *Update* Since I was sent the piece above in the midweek, I had to attend a conference hosted at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as part of my day job. One of the other delegates was a lady called Margarita McNee, the Legal Policy Manager for B and Q. I bent her hear at some length about the parking warning sign issue at Lower Belvedere (she knew the shop well). She said that in general, B and Q does not own the land its' stores are built on, it is merely a tenant - apparently there are tax reasons for this. The land owner has responsibility for the car park, and B and Q pays a fee to use them. Any enforcement of the parking rules is outsourced by the local landlord to a third party enforcement company. I explained that the general public don't know this, and the current signs obviously damage the B and Q brand. She was very interested, and promised to investigate. Hopefully something positive will come out of this fortuitous meeting.

Whilst I was at the Foreign and Commonwealth office, I walked past the office door of the Minister for Europe, currently the role is held by David Lidington MP. The door was open, and he was sat at his desk with his head in his hands; I have no clue as to what sort of crisis he was managing, but he did not look too happy. I get a good idea of the esteem the Minister for Europe is held within the FCO - his office is right next to the toilets!

The row over the proposed road bridge over the River Thames between Beckton on the North bank, and Gallions Reach in Thamesmead on the South bank seems to have stepped up a gear. Councillor Gareth Bacon of Bexley Council said that building a bridge would be “disastrous” and that “Bexley will not stand by and let the bridge back in with all the congestion that would entail in our borough. It has been proven to be a fundamentally flawed idea and would be disastrous for local people. There are other locations which would be clearly much better suited, such as Woolwich”. Politics aside, there would be powerful engineering and legal challenges preventing a bridge at Gallion’s Reach.  Under international aviation law, it is illegal to build any structure higher than fifteen metres within one kilometre of an airport. Any bridge between Beckton and Gallion’s Reach would need to be substantially taller than this in order to allow enough rooms for ships (including large passenger liners which will be using the new facility on the banks by the O2 Arena) to pass underneath. Guess what? London City Airport is directly adjacent to the proposed bridge site. I think for this reason alone, a bridge at this location is a non – starter.  Environmental concerns, as expressed by Darryl of the 853 blog, and my own worries that the sleepy residential area of Gallion’s Reach would get turned into a rat – run for heavy goods vehicles may come to nothing due to the simple fact that it is forbidden to build tall structures close to airport runways – a fact that those involved don’t yet seem to be aware of.

The ending video this week is from a 1973 BBC live recording of Mike Oldfield and a host of very talented musicians playing the whole of "Tubular Bells" with no studio trickery or overdubs, something that you just would not see nowadays. Maximise the video window and sit back to enjoy a piece of classic Prog Rock. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

Pavement pizza season

The photo above was taken by me this morning; it is an update of the posting from last week in respect of Erith Trades and Social club in James Watt way. The place has closed for good, having originally opened in 1908. Apparently it has been hanging on by its' finger tips for some years, but what finally tipped the balance was the recent theft of lead roofing, copper water pipes and electrical wiring from within the building, which I understand they were not insured for. Once again the scumbag metal thieves have caused grief in their search for a dishonest quick buck. I had originally thought of suggesting to Bexley Council that they invite one of the large African churches to use the building instead of the industrial units that they have recently been banned from occupying. Unfortunately I feel that the cost of re - plumbing and rewiring the building to make it habitable once again would probably be prohibitive. I get the feeling it will stay empty for a period before being demolished. Since we already have a KFC and McDonald's drive - through adjacent, I would not be at all surprised to see the site eventually occupied by a Burger King, in order to complete the junk food triumvirate. I wistfully wonder if we are really lucky, we might get a Nandos or Gourmet Burger Kitchen instead, but the chances of that are probably the same as seeing Elvis riding Shergar up Erith High Street.

Talking of fast food, I saw a surreal sight earlier this week as I walked onto the Kent bound platform at Plumstead railway station. The platform was empty, apart from myself and a large grey squirrel, which was sitting on one of the passenger benches, calmly eating a fried chicken drumstick - which it had picked up, and was munching as a human would. Someone had discarded a half eaten box of fried chicken and chips on the seat, and the squirrel was making the most of it. Over the seven or eight minutes I quietly watched as I awaited my train, the squirrel demolished two full chicken pieces and several chips - a huge blow out for an animal of that size. I have never seen anything like it before. I was under the misapprehension that squirrels were strictly vegetarian.

The title of this weeks' entry comes from an observation I made when walking along the pavement from Erith station on Wednesday evening. It was the first pavement pizza of the festive season. Some drunken oik had honked their guts up, making a perfectly symmetrical chunder circle, complete with obligatory diced carrot. The idiots drink too much and cannot handle it. They travel back from a night out in London on the dizzyade by train, but when the cold air hits them when the emerge from the station - bingo - full reverse thrust kicks off. Not a pleasant job for the street cleaners; though most likely the local foxes will clear it up first (yum!)

Around a year ago, a police office was scheduled to open in Erith town centre. It got unveiled for a week or so, then mysteriously closed again, to be re - covered in hoardings. My contacts tell me that originally the office was only intended for the use of the Northumberland Heath Safer Neighbourhood police team (why not Erith? I never got an answer to that one). Anyway, once work was completed, the top Brass in Bexley Police realised that the office was huge, and had enough space to house the North End, Erith and Northumberland Heath teams. The place was closed up to allow the internal modifications to take place, and that was the last I heard of it. I made some enquiries a few months ago, and I was told that the project had been put on the back burner due to budget cuts. I am happy to say that this decision seems to have been reversed, and the police office looks ready to open, as you can see from the photograph above - click to see a larger version. I will consult with my contacts and update you next week when I have some more details.

I notice that all round the local area, the new migrant residents such as the Nepalese community in and around Plumstead, and the mainly Nigerian community in Erith and Slade Green open restaurants that cater for their national cuisine. They seem to only target their fellow country people; I think this is a real mistake and that perhaps it might be a good idea to take a leaf out of the business model used by the Bangladeshi and Indian migrants of the 1950's and 1960's. Open up cheap eateries serving simple recipes, and target the indigenous population. This made many Indian and Bangladeshi families a lot of money, as the Brits discovered the joy of curry, and spent their cash on this, then novel style of food. I reckon that African cuisine could take off in a big way in the U.K if it was marketed correctly. Erith has a dedicated Nigerian takeaway (photo above) - Oyin's - you can see their website here. The trouble is, they don't market themselves to the local non Nigerian population, which I think is missing a trick. They should be leafletting the local area and maybe holding an open day to allow people to try samples to see what they have been missing. What do you think? Are you interested in trying different national cuisines apart from those that you are already familiar with? Leave a comment below.

Morrison's supermarkets have engaged in an exceedingly well - timed and clever project to replace their fleet of hand held shopping baskets with newer ones. The clever bit is in the psychology. The new baskets are between ten and fifteen percent larger than the old ones. This makes your purchases look smaller and lesser in number, subconsciously encouraging you to buy more. This is similar to the technique recommended to people dieting. You serve your food on a smaller sized plate, fooling your system into thinking you are giving yourself a bigger portion. All clever stuff.

Do check out the following,  really outstanding landscape photos I found on Flickr. Click here for a look. You can see my own Flickr photo stream by clicking here. 

I see that the technical press have recently picked up on something that I have suspected for quite a long time. Blu - Ray picture quality is frequently no better than standard DVD. It will not be long before the story makes it into the popular press - someone like the Daily Mail is bound to feature it soon. You heard it here first. You can read more about the story by clicking here. I detest 3D - a fad that will go the way of the Rabbit phone system, and don't think much of HD television either - most Hi Def content on Sky is so compressed that it looks terrible. I fear that it will not be too long before my huge, ten year old Toshiba standard definition 36" CRT television meets the end of its' life and I will have to buy a new model. Suggestions as to what I should go for would be more than welcomed.

The video this week shows the observation module on the International Space Station, and give the viewer an idea as to what the crew get up to. I notice that unlike NASA who use Nikon cameras, the ISS crew use Canon cameras.  Watch and comment accordingly.