The clothing thief.

At around 4.45pm on Wednesday afternoon, I took some cardboard and glass to the Council recycling facility behind Morrison's supermarket in Erith. I caught a man breaking into the charity clothes and shoes hoppers; he was stealing the donated clothes and shoes - he had a series of large carrier bags - he was separating and grading the clothes - those he did not want, he threw on the ground. He took five bags of stolen material in total. I went into Morrison's to alert the security guard, but he was nowhere to be seen. The perpetrator was of South East European appearance, about 5,10" tall, slim with a straggly moustache and olive skin. He had a dark blue hoody and grey jogging pants on. He appeared to be in his late 20's / early 30's in age. From the casual way he was operating, I suspect that this was not the first time he had raided the donation hoppers. There is a dedicated Council CCTV camera in the vicinity of the recycling centre - it is possible that footage of the incident will have been recorded. After this disturbing incident, which I have reported to both local Police and Bexley Council, I did some research on the subject, and what I found was most worrying. Clothes donated by members of the public to charity are being stolen by organised criminals and sold abroad, depriving leading charities of millions of pounds for good causes. Gangs from Eastern Europe are believed to be responsible for a growing number of raids on doorstep collection bags and clothing banks, attracted by a trebling in the price for old clothing in the past three years. The lucrative thefts – a single clothes bank can contain a haul of £150 to £200 – come as the country's 6,800 charity shops struggle to cope with a drop in donations during the economic slump as people move house less often and keep old clothing for longer. According to Britain's biggest charity shop operator Oxfam, police have shown little interest in investigating the crimes because of a perception that donated clothing is worthless and because of a lack of firm evidence. As a result of the price of used clothing rising from £200 to £600 per sorted and graded tonne, the public's donation of 480,000 tonnes of clothing to charity annually is worth £280m. But when volunteers try to empty metal clothing banks in car parks, they often find they have been emptied. Thieves are also stealing toys, clothing and books left out by householders in sacks, and are making bogus doorstep appeals, sometimes using a real charity's name, logo and registration number. In an interview recently, Oxfam's trading director David McCullough, who looks after the charity's 704 shops, said:- "There has been a huge growth in the commercial rag trade. What was once a market that didn't have much resale value now suddenly has a very serious commercial value. We are seeing a huge amount of legitimate and illegitimate companies collecting house to house, setting up clothing banks, collecting on behalf of charities. We are also seeing a very substantial increase in thefts by what appear to be well-organised criminal gangs. They are emptying textile banks in supermarket car parks in the middle of the night, so when volunteers go to empty these banks they are empty already. The less sophisticated fish the clothes out of the banks from the hatches. Some of them send kids into the hatches to throw the stuff back out. Others take bolt cutters and take the padlocks off and lift the banks onto lorries, unload them somewhere else and take off the sides with thermal torches. Evidence suggests it's being taken into the commercial market abroad, principally in Eastern Europe. Some of the people who have been stopped and cautioned are predominantly Eastern European." The charity has fitted electronic sensors to some of its 700 clothing banks to identify when they are ready for collection and when a theft has occurred. According to The Textile Recycling Association, gangs steal clothing from donation banks – in some cases, even taking the banks themselves. In one instance, thieves in south east England were stealing around 30 tonnes of clothing every week from charity and local authority banks, which would have raised about £500,000 a year for the crooks, instead of going to good causes. *Update* - On Thursday afternoon, I had occasion to pass by the recycling centre; Any fly - tippers or clothing thieves will be in for a shock if they try anything in the Erith Morrisons' car park recycling centre. Over the next ten days, the Metropolitan Police firearms unit are running a series of exercises in and around the recycling centre. I spoke to one of the instructors who told me about the series of simulated interceptions they would be making. Apparently they do not do training in public very often. I told him about the theft incident on Wednesday afternoon - I somehow think that the thief would be ill advised to make a comeback whilst the armed team are around! What do you think? Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Some thoughts from local IT guru and software developer Miles, and his opinion of the newly launched free WiFi for several towns in the London Borough of Bexley, as I outlined two weeks ago. The graphic above shows existing publicly available WiFi spots in and around Erith - the Bexley WiFi is in addition to these spots indicated. Miles writes:- "#BexleyFreeWifi. I took the opportunity to explore the terms and conditions today, and as we expected it's a data gathering exercise. They have been fairly transparent about the information they collect which I suppose is good - mind you I wonder how many people will immediately click the "Agree" button that covers a large portion of the page. One aspect of the Privacy policy which is a concern, all information collected it shared with the venue owner - is that the host of the WIFI access points? Or just any location you can receive a signal? There is one aspect where I think they dropped the ball, you can make up any old garbage and still use the services - OK that doesn't stop them gathering other information, or storing cookies for tracking but at least it offers a measure of anonymity (just make sure you enable MAC Address rotation in your devices settings). As for the service itself, I was quite impressed. I picked up a very strong signal all the way to the pier. The speed of the internet connection was very respectable, at around 20Mbps down, and 10Mbps up - I'm sure the local kids will make, well I would say good use, but use nonetheless. May even save the local residents the cost of an internet connection, assuming they don't mind the privacy trade off". You can see the existing free use WiFi hotspot map of the London Borough of Bexley by clicking here. The operators of the website must have war driven around the streets of Bexley in order to compile the very detailed map. What is war driving? Well, War driving, also called access point mapping, is the act of locating and possibly exploiting connections to wireless local area networks while driving around a city or elsewhere. To do war driving, you need a vehicle, a computer (which can be a laptop), a wireless Ethernet card set to work in promiscuous mode, and some kind of an antenna which can be mounted on top of or positioned inside the car. Because a wireless LAN (Local Area Network) may have a range that extends beyond an office building, an outside user may be able to intrude into the network, obtain a free Internet connection, and possibly gain access to company records and other resources. Some people have made a sport out of war driving, in part to demonstrate the ease with which some improperly secured wireless LANs can be compromised. With an omnidirectional antenna and a geophysical positioning system (GPS), the war driver can systematically map the locations of 802.11 b / g wireless access points. Companies that have a wireless LAN are urged to add security safeguards that will ensure only intended users have access. Safeguards include the use of the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption standard, IPsec, or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), together with a firewall or DMZ. The term derives from a somewhat similar approach to breaching the telephone system called war dialling. Breaching a private network may be illegal and at least one person has been prosecuted for it. You have been warned. 

Following a freedom of information request, Bexley Council have released information as to how many publicly sponsored trees have been planted since the project began - and it does not make for good reading. The question asked went as follows:- "Last year Bexley council ran a campaign where residents could sponsor the care of a tree. Could I be so kind to ask the result of this campaign? I would like to know the expenditure of the campaign and the take up plus any associated costs. This request is being handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000". This not unreasonable request was met with the following Council response:- "I can confirm that the information requested is held by the London Borough of Bexley. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you. The campaign was run in the Bexley Magazine and with press releases - no advertising was paid for. There was no actual expenditure other than officer time, which was not recorded. For 2018/19 planting season 4 trees in Bexley parks were sponsored. A further 8 trees were provided by a local trust but the Council was not approached directly. For 2019/20 planting season 2 trees in the parks has so far been sponsored. 1 tree in the highway has so far been sponsored". It would seem that as many local residents had already suspected; the whole tree planting project was a box ticking exercise, so that Bexley Council could vaunt its' green credentials, when in fact it was doing nothing more than playing lip service to the whole thing. What do you think? Please feel free to send feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

As regular readers will be aware, I have written extensively in the past in regard of Smart utility meters, and how in my opinion in many cases they are not fit for purpose. Last week, fellow local Blogger Malcolm Knight of the excellent "Bexley is Bonkers" published a story of his experiences with a smart meter over the Christmas holidays, and it makes for instructive reading. The following account originally appeared on the Bexley is Bonkers update published on the 29th of December, which I republish here with the full permission of Malcolm Knight. He writes:- "I have been resisting the siren calls of the energy companies to fit a smart meter. They cannot actually save any money if you are already careful with usage and I already have phone apps which tell me how much solar energy is being generated and where it is going. Do I really want to give my energy supplier the ability to cut me off on a whim or tell me when I cannot charge my car? Probably not but I wasn’t sure I would resist them for ever. I am now. I drove down to my son’s place in Malmesbury on Christmas Day, got there in time for breakfast. The main meal was scheduled for 1 p.m. At ten o’clock I complained that his wi-fi was no longer working and a couple of minutes later we realised why. Nothing was working. The energy distribution company, the Western equivalent of our local UK Power Networks very quickly diagnosed a Smart Meter problem by which time my son and I were coming to the same conclusion. The problem then was that Octopus Energy had completely closed its emergency phone system for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The distribution company advised that they were supposed to be monitoring their web form and provided the link. What if you have no access to the web during a power cut or your mobile’s battery was flat? By about 11:30 a.m. the form was located and filled in. Just before 4 p.m. the Octopus Energy technician arrived with his diagnostics kit having come from Newbury. By 4 p.m. the power was on again. The not so Smart Meter had rebooted itself for reasons unknown and decided to come back to life as a pre-payment meter. Not finding any credit balance it promptly cut the power. No questions asked as would be the case with the old technology, just ruin Christmas Dinner instead. It’s total madness to accept a Smart Meter while there is no obligation to do so". This mirrors my own thoughts on Smart meters - the technology is unreliable, if you change electricity supplier, it is likely that you will have to have your Smart meter changed, and they are very vulnerable to hackers, as has previously been demonstrated. They are a solution in need of a problem in my opinion. What do you think? Contact me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

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

Now for the return of the weekly local safety and security reports from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association, after the break for the Christmas holiday last week. Firstly the report from Barnehurst ward:- "Only one burglary to report and that was in Cumbrian Avenue overnight on the 24th December. Car keys and vehicle taken. Vehicle later recovered. Any burglary is too many but Barnehurst has done really well especially being Christmas. There are three vehicle crimes to report. Theft from motor vehicle in Twigg Close overnight of the 27th December where the victim had alcohol and toys taken from the vehicle. Theft of motor vehicle overnight of the 28th December from outside Locals off license in Barnehurst Road. Finally a theft of motor vehicle overnight of the 28th December in Colyers Lane where a white transit van was taken. Please remain vigilant for the forthcoming year and help reduce crime and we will continue to support our community. Happy New Year from Barnehurst SNT". Belvedere ward:- "There were recent reports of graffiti damage caused to garages in Standard Road – we are pleased to inform you that this was promptly removed by Bexley Council and there have been no further reports of this nature since. We have (when possible) continued our hi visibility burglary patrols in varying areas of the ward over the Christmas period – this will also continue into the New Year. However – there have been recent burglary reports in Walden Close, Upper Park Road, Edwards Road and Abbey Road. A property in Lower Park Road has once again been subject to attempted burglary and criminal damage for the fourth time in 2019. Most recently, a group of males made efforts to gain entry to a garage, causing extensive damage and also damaged a vehicle belonging to the residents in the process. Items were also taken from the vehicle by this group. PC Marc Smith has been continuing to patrol Ruskin Road on a regular basis after reports of ongoing anti-social behaviour and drug use at the location. Most recently on Christmas Eve a male was stopped and searched – and found to be in possession of four bags of ketamine". Bexleyheath ward - no report this week. Crayford ward:- "Two burglaries over the festive period. In the early hours of the 24th December a house was entered in Gascoyne Drive through the front door and the house keys and vehicle keys were stolen, a white C220 Mercedes was stolen. It was later found within a mile of the address. The other burglary took place at sheltered accommodation in Wolsley Close between 10.00 25th December and 23.45 on 27th December, the TV was knocked over, there was an untidy search and some coins were stolen. It is believed the suspect is known to the victim. A timely reminder to all to ensure the door handle is pulled up and key used to lock the door securely and to check before retiring to bed. It was reported on 22nd December that in the previous two weeks a lock had been sawn off a garage in a block of garages to the rear of Glebelands and items including an air compressor had been stolen. At Tower retail park on 19th December between 15.15-16.15 a blue disabled badge was stolen from a Mercedes parked near Currys, the victim is quite sure the vehicle was locked. The padlock was broken off an outhouse in Grazeley Close between 10.00 on 25th December and 20.00 on 26th December, tools and toys were taken. Two separate incidents in Hillside Road whereby tyres were let down or slashed over a period of days, all three vehicles were parked on driveways. Criminal damage was caused to the school mini bus at Haberdasher Askes Academy by three youths between 13th and 16th December, the incident was captured on CCTV. A Carrera Hell Cat bicycles was stolen from outside McDonalds on 19th December between 15.30-16.00 whilst the victim was inside. Please ensure bicycles are chained and padlocked to something secure if leaving them unattended, even for a very short time. On 24th December between 13.55 and 14.40 a black Jaguar F Pace was keyed down one side whilst parked at Tower Retail Park. Windows were smashed and a hard top was stolen from a Mazda MX5 Mk1 Convertible on 27th December between 01.00-01.30 whilst parked at Chapel Hill. A moped was stolen from Ridge Way between 22.30 on 27th December and 02.00 on 28th December. It was later found by police. Criminal damage was caused to a 96 bus on 28th December at 13.55. The suspect pulled the whole wing mirror off the bus. A tyre was slashed on a Peugeot whilst parked at Town Hall Square between 00.30 and 10.30 on 25th December. It seems this may have happened to other vehicles parked nearby but these have not been reported to police. A white BMW 218 was stolen from Lakedale Court on 29th December at 22.01 with keys. It was found on 30th December nearby in Green Place with no damage and there is CCTV of the suspect. There are no community contact sessions in the next week but we will be out and about patrolling. Wishing you all a very happy New Year".

Erith ward:- "Crimes of note from the 17/12/19 – 31/12/19 Theft of motor vehicle 17/12/2019 Pier Road, Theft from motor vehicle 17/12/2019 Winifred Road, Theft of motor vehicle 18/12/2019, Europa Trading Estate Fraser Road, Burglary Residential 20/12/19 Winifred Road – Items stolen from address access gained via rear door Burglary Residential 20/12/2019, Thanet Road – rear door opened items taken Theft from motor vehicle 20/12/2019 Morrisons, James Watt Way, Theft from motor vehicle 20/12/2019 Fraser Road Theft from MV 21/12/2019, CHANDLERS DRIVE – MV taken from address Burglary Residential 22/12/2019 Park Crescent – door opened untidy search doesn't seem to of been anything taken Burglary Residential 19/12/2019 Holly Hill Road – front door opened items stolen from house including car keys. Burglary Residential 27/12/19 Galleon Close – Rear door opened no items stolen but an untidy search was carried out Theft mail 27/12/2019 Victory Lodge Chichester Wharf – Items of mail stolen from community letter boxes. Burglary Residential 19/12/2019 Winifred Road – Items stolen from shed and kitchen". Northumberland Heath ward:- "Unfortunately over the Christmas period we have a slight increase of Burglaries over the Northumberland Heath and Erith Ward. The roads are listed below: 02/12/19 Burglary at on Colindale Road. 04/12/19 Burglary at Bedonwell Road. 03/12/2019 Burglary at Dalmeny Road 19/12/2019 - 20/12/2109 ,Carlton Road Nothing stolen from the address. Entry through the front window. 30/12/2019 Burglary at Beechfield Road . 30/12/2019 Burglary at Hurst Road. 30/12/2019 Attempted burglary at Frinstead Road 31/12/2019 (3920133/19) Shinglewell Road - Burglary - Suspect has gain entry through the front door and stolen car keys and taken victims Land Rover Evoque. Victim has been visited by LPT and been issued a smart water kit. A report of criminal damage on Sussex Road and Lawrence Road Erith. Graffiti tag marks have been sprayed on garages and on a side wall of a property. Northumberland Heath LPT have been able to complete a successful arrest on an outstanding suspect on Emes Road. Female was wanted for fraud offences . Your Local Policing Team have now started issuing Smartwater to Northumberland Heath residents. Beechfield Road have now been issued with the kits including all Burglary victims. If any residents would like a SmartWater pack please contact us. Officers have also been on lots of AID during the Christmas period which has prevented Officers from Patrolling on their Wards". Slade Green and Northend ward:- "Over the festive period we suffered one burglary and one attempted burglary. At 2am on Christmas Eve a suspect tried the front door handle of an address in Hazel Road, they did not gain access but sat watching the house for a while. The RingDoor system did pick up what seemed to be 4 males approaching the door but all had their faces covered. CCTV was viewed at Bushey Court but again was negative. At 2.45am on 29/12/2019 in Peareswood Road a victim was injured after a male broke into his house and stole his car. He is still in hospital. This is an ongoing investigation so no more details can be released at this time. Please ensure that if you have a UPVC door you lift the handle AND turn the key to lock the door properly. Several other vehicle thefts have taken place across the North of the borough whereby entry was gained to properties by UPVC doors not being locked correctly. We would like to wish all our Coordinators and residents a very happy New Year. Please keep your eyes out in future emails for details of SmartWater kits and how to get them for your roads". Thamesmead East ward - no report this week. West Heath ward:- "Theft from Newlyn Road Sunday December 15th. No further details at this time.Unfortunately we have had two burglaries on the ward. The first one took place on Thursday December 19th between 3.30pm – 1900 hours in Stapleton Road. Entry to the property was gained via damaging the front door. It is unknown at this stage if anything was stolen from the property. The second burglary also took place on Thursday December 19th between the hours of 00.01 – 1900 hours in Milford Close. A rear patio window was smashed, again it is not known if any property was stolen. One report of attempted burglary at 4.20am on Christmas Morning December 25th In Berkeley Avenue. A hooded suspect was seen on the ring doorbell trying the handle to access the property. Thankfully entry was not gained. A Land Rover / Range Rover was seen in the road following closely behind the suspect at the time of the incident. One residential burglary in Long Lane on Saturday December 28th between 4.30pm – 10pm. The occupants arrived home to find a rear side back door forced. An untidy search of the property was conducted and a tablet and several pieces of jewellery was stolen. No vehicle crime has been reported to us over the Christmas period".

The end video this week is a long form recording of the demolition of the old and unloved brutalist concrete Erith Shopping Centre and the rebuilding of is as the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre back in 2003. If you look closely you may see a few familiar faces in the vintage footage. Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Erith Riverside Festival 2013.

As you can see from the photos above, this years' Erith Riverside Festival was a great success, with a very good turnout indeed, unlike last year, when the abysmal weather, including almost horizontal rain, drove people away to leave the event a washout. Through lots of hard work and dedication, and some luck with the weather, the event was back with a bang. Local schools, charities and voluntary groups all had stands, including one for FORGE (Friends Of Riverside Gardens Erith), who are almost single handedly responsible for the gardens still being there at all. If certain members of Bexley Council had their way, the gardens would now be multi story flats, and Erith would have lost its' title as the only place in the whole of the London Borough of Bexley where you can get access to the River Thames. Click on any of the photos for a larger view.

The last photo (below) shows two very prominent local residents. To the left is Malcolm Knight, blogger, campaigner and rightful scourge of Bexley Council. He almost single handedly holds the council to account for its' actions on his excellent website - Bexley is Bonkers. To the right is Gary "Tadge" Taylor, the man responsible for organising the Riverside Festival, and a tireless worker for the local community. Tadge does not seem to get the credit he deserves for all of the work he does, which is often funded by himself (as typically Bexley Council have very deep pockets and very short arms when it comes to funding anything in or around Erith).  Congratulations to him on organising a very successful, fun and well attended 2013 festival. I happen to know that plans for the 2014 festival are already under way. The man never stops!

Whilst I was on Erith Pier watching the clearance work by Thames 21 a while back, I got talking to four chaps, who were all some way past retirement. One of them regaled us with a story that harked back to the mid 1960’s. Apparently there was a murder in a property that used to stand on the site of the town houses in Rutland Gate (off Erith Road). Apparently a man murdered his wife; he decided to bury her in the back garden. He dug a small pond and secretly buried her, wrapped in a distinctive dark red floor rug. Once he had done this, the story goes that he took a ship to the continent from Erith Deep Water Wharf (what is now the site of Morrison’s) and when it got into the middle of the North Sea, he jumped over the side, taking his own life. Eventually the authorities caught on to what had happened, and the body of the wife was exhumed from her under – pond grave. Once the investigations were completed, the red rug was given a thorough clean, and then had pride of place on the floor of the office in the old Erith Police Station! I know a chap who was a police officer in the Erith station in the mid 1980’s; I asked him if he knew anything about the story, and if it had any basis in truth. He had not heard the tale, though he did comment that knowing the black humour of a lot of coppers, he would not be at all surprised to find that it was true. If you know more about the story, or have information about the background, do drop me a line; indeed, I am interested in any tales about the areas’ past – the more scandalous / controversial the better!

I know that some sections of the popular press have been getting quite upset over the price of computer printer toner, and it is indeed a complete rip – off. I think that they were missing a trick, however, as there is something that is an even bigger con; I know it is something I have mentioned before, but I do feel strongly that it needs to be revisited. Why is the cost of men’s wet shaving razor blades so extortionate? Some are close to £10 for a measly four blades. The materials involved in their construction and the labour utilised is minimal – the production lines are almost completely automated, and the materials are high quality, but there is little metal involved in reality. The only conclusion that I can come to is that the reason razor blades are so eye wateringly expensive is that the companies that produce and sell them seem to have the market completely sewn up. They charge so much just because they can. I think the only solution to this would be for a new player to enter the market to produce blades of an equivalent quality and durability (don’t get me going as to how quickly blades wear out – you are lucky to get four shaves out of a blade, nothing like the month of use that the manufacturers’ claim) at a fraction of the cost. I cannot believe that this would be technically or financially impossible. It takes someone with the kind of business expertise and audacity that have caused Ryan Air to overturn the short and medium haul air travel industry, to be able to challenge the big players in the men’s grooming market.  I bitterly resent being held over a barrel when it comes to shaving. On a side note, does anyone have a clue why there are no mousse or gel hair removal products targeted at men? A facial “Immac for Men” or similar might be an interesting product. I don’t know if there are any technical or medical reasons why such a product could not be brought to market. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment below. All comments will be moderated and published within 24 hours of receipt.

Word reaches me from a usually reliable source that the shopping experience in Welling High Street is shortly due for a fairly substantial change. Rumour has it that the large Tesco store is due to close. Welling Tesco has never really done the level of business that was expected of it. I think this is at least partially due to the large Morrison’s store that opened directly opposite around a year before the Tesco’s opened its’ doors. In that year, local shoppers who had maybe not experienced Morrison’s got to try the Northern based supermarket chain – some may have changed supermarket allegiances at this point. Others, like me, just plain don’t like the corporate beast that is Tesco. On top of this, Tesco are due to take over the site of the current Bexley Council Offices in Bexleyheath, to build an absolutely huge hyper – store. I imagine that the corporate bean counters at Tesco may well have looked at the results for the Welling branch and seen that although it was not doing spectacular business, it was still ticking over and likely to take trade away from a new store only a mile and a half away.  I reckon that this is the most likely scenario for a closure of the Welling branch, though it will be a bit of a spectacular failure from a local trading perspective. My sources have indicated that the Welling building is to be taken over by Wilkinson’s as one of their flagship stores for the entire South East. At present this is all rumour, albeit from an impeccable and reliable source; as always, time will tell.

A new business is moving into Welling High Street, just as Tesco are (allegedly) contemplating moving out (who says I don’t plan these things?) A new “micro pub” has recently opened. The Door Hinge is located in what was formerly an electrical goods store on Welling High Street, in the area between the Welling United / Erith and Belvedere shared football stadium and the main part of Welling. The pub is a “one man band” at present, and is open for limited hours (currently Sunday 12-3, Tuesday to Thursday 3-9, Friday and Saturday 12-10 and Monday closed all day, but this may be subject to change). It specialises in real ales served directly from the barrel, and has no music or television to distract the visitor from its’ main concern – serving the highest quality ale to discerning drinkers Please note that The Door Hinge does not serve lager.  Plans are afoot to extend the bar area, as the place already gets filled to capacity at times.  A “proper pub” is good news; after all the borough has so few decent pubs that any new concern is a welcome addition; on top of this, when one considers the number of public houses that are going out of business and being converted into flats or shops (such as the Trafalgar in West Street, Erith, or the Stile and Winch in Boundary Street, Erith, (which is now a Tesco local store) it is good to see an independent local businessman try and reverse the trend with an ambitious new venture. Hopefully The Door Hinge will be a great success; pubs can still be profitable and not run on the Wetherspoon “pile it high and sell it cheap” approach, as has been proved by the excellent Robin Hood and Little John, who also plow their own furrow, yet run a very successful pub. I will be visiting the Door Hinge in the near future – purely in the course of research, you understand. I will write a review once I have got my feet under the table in the place. You can see another reviewers thoughts on the pub here. The Bexley Times also wrote about the place here. One thing almost all micro pubs have in common is that they don't serve Lager, and many have signs in their windows, with the acronym "NFL" - which stands for No Fizzy Lager (or something fairly similar!) Personally whilst not a lager drinker, I do recognise that there are some very well produced Lager beers; the image and reputation of the whole lager beer genre has been seriously sullied by the gassy and chemical laden, massed produced brews such as Foster's and Stella Artois (better known locally as "wife beater"). Still, you pay your money and take your choice.

I have written on many occasions that I personally have no time for social media websites. I am not anti them in general, I just don’t have any personal interest in them. The Maggot Sandwich is my primary outlet in the online world, and I am very careful as to exactly what I publish. Many people are less cautious, and the stories of people going for job interviews only to find themselves confronted with photos of their drunken antics that the prospective employer has pulled off FaceBook or Twitter are legion. It seems that the general public are beginning to clock onto this at long last; the total number of active accounts on FaceBook has dropped by a little over ten percent in the last year. Users cite concerns over privacy and the selling of their data to third parties, along with intrusive advertising and being strong reasons for terminating their accounts. In a sense it is difficult for FaceBook – on one hand they are a publicly listed company with shareholders to satisfy (and let’s not get started on their legendarily disastrous stock market floatation).  On the other hand they famously say “FaceBook is free, and it always will be”.  This means that they have a limited selection of revenue streams, and the most obvious of these is online advertising.  I reckon that FaceBook is on the downwards spiral now, just as MySpace, Friends Reunited, AOL, MSN and CompuServe before it had a heyday that eventually expired. I am deeply suspicious of all “walled garden” services such as those just listed. A free and open web seems far preferable to me. I would be interested in readers thoughts on the matter. Please leave a comment below.

Poor old Crayford has been taking a right old battering over the last few weeks. First the town centre suffer catastrophic flooding caused by a major water main bursting. The flooding was so bad that the entire retail park was out of bounds for the best part of a week, and all the buses in the area had to be extensively re - routed. The financial harm that it must have done to local businesses must have been serious. Only a handful of days after the final repairs had been made, and the clear up completed, when another mini crisis hits the town - the discovery of yet another World War II munition - in this case a twelve inch mortar round, was discovered by builders. The area was cordoned off after the builders scooped up the round and put it in a bucket of water(!) For reference, never ever touch any suspected explosive device - call the Police, who will call in the Army EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team. Apart from moving it, putting it in a bucket of water was also a mistake. If the device had been fitted with an electrical fuse, the ingress of water could have caused a short circuit and detonated the mortar round. As it turned out, the thing was inert and of no danger to anyone - but it took an EOD Officer to be able to determine this. More disruption that the area could really have done without.

The last few years have seen a media phenomenon really take off, both on TV and cinema.  The reboot. That is, taking an existing popular TV show or movie franchise and reinvent it. The first show to go down this route was Battlestar Galactica which was successfully re – imagined in 2003 / 2004 and ran for four series. The original 1978 show was really aimed at children, and was campy and cheesy, exploiting the science fiction craze that had been started by the original Star Wars movie the year before. The rebooted show was most definitely not suitable for children; it was dark, gritty and more akin to “Band of Brothers” in space. It played down the technology to the point where it was hardly mentioned, and instead was far more character and plot based. There were no clear cut good or bad guys – even the Cylons (the original alien baddies) were sympathetic and nuanced, whilst still being malevolent. Something similar has happened with Batman and even the Bond franchise, to a high degree of success. The audience include people who were kids when they saw the original versions – as adults they still love the situations and characters, but the original execution is not credible to an adult – a reboot can circumvent this, if properly written and directed. *Update* - Since I wrote this piece earlier in the week (the Maggot Sandwich no longer gets written as a whole on a Sunday, as it is too long, complex and in need of lots of time consuming research nowadays - it now gets written bit by bit over the course of the week preceding its' publication), I see that the BBC have announced that Matt Smith is stepping down in his role as the Doctor, and that the producers are now looking for a new actor. This strikes me as an astoundingly good time for a partial reboot of the whole Doctor Who franchise. I have not watched the show for the last two seasons, and the overall viewing figures have been dwindling steadily for a couple of years. I have no problem with Matt Smith's take on the Doctor, I think he is a fine actor, and works very well with the material he is given; the trouble is the scripts have ranged from barely adequate to outright dire, and the stories have become little better than the stuff of soap operas. Stephen Moffat, who was an excellent script writer for the first few series when the show made its' return in 2005, has proved to be a woeful show runner. The series lacks drive and direction, and is now haemorrhaging viewers. Better for Moffat to hand over the baton to another producer at the same time as Smith moves on to pastures new. What do you think? Leave a comment below. The latest show to get the reboot treatment is one that does not surprise me. 1970’s ITV children’s Sci Fi teatime thriller “The Tomorrow People” has been remade as a big budget U.S TV series for the C.W network, and should be screened on Sky later this year. I have no idea what it will be like, but even my memories of the original version as a kid were not kind. The idea was excellent – a group of children and young adults who start to develop special powers as they hit puberty, and they become Homo Superior – the next stage of human evolution. They have super powers such as telekinesis, telepathy and the ability to teleport themselves at will – something they refer to as “jaunting”. The group use their powers to fight baddies and also keep themselves secret from the authorities – as they fear that if they become known, the government could use them as super soldiers, which conflicts with their strictly pacifist philosophy. The American reboot seems to follow the basic premise pretty closely, though by the looks of the trailer, the cast were chosen for their looks, rather than their acting ability.

On a similar thread, I was doing some research into the history of Chislehurst Caves this week; I knew that they had a very strong link to the 1960's and early 1970's London live music scene, and bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Status Quo all played on the small stage within the caves, not to mention my own Dad's skiffle band, the Stone Agers, who appeared regularly. Chislehurst Caves are not naturally occurring; it would be more accurate to call the place Chislehurst Mine, as it was originally a chalk and flint nodule mine, the earliest reference to which dates back to at least 1215AD. Pretty much everyone knows that it was a huge and impenetrable bomb shelter during much of World War II, but what is less known is that in the years shortly before the war it was Britain's largest mushroom farm! The caves have also been used as a location for a number of TV shows and some big screen movies, of varying budget and quality. The classic Doctor Who story "The Mutants", the spectacular flop that was the 1986 film "Biggles - Adventures in Time" and possibly most notably, the 1981 micro budgetted British sci fi horror movie "Inseminoid" were filmed mainly in the cave complex. "Inseminoid" was like a very low budget version of Ridley Scott's recent film "Prometheus" - a movie so atrocious I dedicated a large chunk of a blog update to pulling the abomination apart. "Inseminoid" is better than "Prometheus", as it can be excused a lot of problems, as it had a budget of less than £1 million and CGI had not really appeared in many films in the early 1980's, whereas by 2011, even with a budget of around £130 million and the latest in digital effects technology, "Prometheus" stank like a month old kipper. The end video this week is the full length feature film of "Inseminoid". There is a link to the last two weeks' videos of "Danger - UXB" which you may have already watched. The main protagonist / villain of "Inseminoid" is played by British actress Judy Geeson - who appeared in Danger UXB as the girlfriend and eventual wife of the main character, Brian Ash. The role she plays in "Inseminoid" is about as far away from the prim and proper WWII Army WAG as you could get in early 1980's cinema. Have a watch and see what you think - and just remember, every underground scene was filmed in Chislehurst Caves. Give it a watch, and feel free to leave a comment below.

High Street implosion?

Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that my powers of prediction are rather better than they really should be. As you may well know, the days of me sitting down at my computer on Sunday afternoon to write the latest update to the Maggot Sandwich are long gone. The amount of research, and the sheer work involved putting together a weekly update that averages 2,800 words, means that I now start the next entry within hours of the previous one being published. By Monday evening, it is not uncommon for me to already have around a thousand words written for the next entry. The down side of this, is that sometimes my musings can be overtaken by events. On Monday evening I wrote that I thought that Blockbuster, who have a large store in Erith, would be one of the next retailers to go broke. By Wednesday afternoon my prediction was proved correct rather more quickly than I anticipated. More on this shortly.

There has been a lot of fuss in the press this week about horse meat being found in cheap and nasty burgers from Tesco, Aldi and a few other high street outlets. Personally I don't have a problem with eating horse - I have done in the past, and it it not very dissimilar to lean steak; I have also eaten Ostrich (very tasty indeed - like a cross between turkey and fillet steak) and Wildebeest (not very nice - it tastes like the smell of new leather) I fail to see what the problem is. Teresa May was quoted in the week, saying that "this was an issue of concern to all consumers" - not to me it isn't - I shop at Waitrose.

I have come to the conclusion that Matalan in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre only sells garments in Small, Medium, or Extra Extra Extra Large. I can never find anything in sizes to fit me, whatever it is that I am looking for.  I have heard the same complaint from others; it strikes me that if they don’t give more attention to both stocking levels and customer service (Matalan never seem to have any staff, other than on one or two tills) they will end up going the way of HMV, who famously went bust last week. HMV have been a “zombie company” for quite a while, despite posting record profits only two years ago. To my mind HMV were always an “also ran” in the entertainment media market; they never had the breadth of stock of somewhere like Virgin Records, and they could never offer the keen prices of the long gone and much lamented Our Price Records, a store chain I am sure I am not alone in missing. Digital downloads are only part of the reason for the demise of HMV; until their very recent ruthless price cuts they were always an expensive option. Many people still want a physical recording, rather than a download, but put off by the previous high prices in HMV, they inevitably end up buying from Amazon instead. This change in content purchasing behaviour from a majority of physical purchases now changing to a majority of downloads is set to continue.  Blockbuster famously also bit the dust last week. The American owned chain was the death knell for nearly every independent video store in the early 90’s. You may recall that in the 1980’s, almost every village would have a family run video hire store, stocked to the gunwales with VHS video cassettes. These shops were very successful for a number of years – before the advent of satellite and cable TV, the terrestrial television stations showed very few new movies, except a small handful at Christmas. VHS video machines were incredibly popular at the time, due I suspect at least partly to the lack of movie choice. The independent video hire shops fed this market with a diet of a sprinkling of Hollywood blockbusters, padded out with an incredible number of B movies and low budget direct to video films usually starring Chuck Norris or Cynthia Rothrock (who I suspect was actually a shaved Chuck Norris in a wig, as you never saw the two of them in the same place, a la Batman and Bruce Wayne). Quite often, groups of kids would hang around the shops, playing arcade games and waiting for one of the scarce copies of the premium movies to be returned by the previous renter - there would often be a scrum to get to the counter to snatch this precious cassette and bag the rights to take it home for the evening. Happy days. All this came to an end when big hitter Blockbuster arrived across the pond from the USA, building large stores on the edge of towns where you got free parking and discounts on multiple film hires – they were even fairly flexible about returning movies. The downfall also coincided with the advent of DVD. Many family run video hire shops could not afford the overheads of restocking with the (then) very expensive DVD format, and quietly closed up. Blockbuster effectively became the only significant player on the block, a position it has held until relatively recently. Now it has been being assailed by the likes of Netflix and Lovefilm. Blockbuster launched its’ own online movie rental service, but it did not seem to have made much difference to its' market traction. Blockbuster had an extensive estate of large and expensive physical stores. The shop in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre was seldom busy, and must have cost a small fortune to run; I doubt it ever made a profit. I feel sorry for those who will lose their jobs in the liquidation, but the whole physical media hire business model has become unsustainable now that fast broadband network access has become ubiquitous and cheap. To mourn for the loss of jobs in the video hire industry is akin to mourning the loss of lamplighter jobs in the late Edwardian era – it is something inevitable now that technology has changed, and business practices are forced to change to accommodate it.  Better to get out before the physical hire market collapses completely, and to get into another line of work. It is going to happen, it is merely a question of how long before the business finally goes down the tubes. Now that Blockbuster have crashed, there is little left for physical media hire. We are most definitely seeing the end of an era.

Blog comments, like buses seem thin on the ground, then suddenly a bunch of them will turn up at once, as was the case following last week’s update regarding the noisome Pizza Hut takeaway in Northumberland Heath. It would seem that I struck somewhat of a chord with certain readers. The unanimous opinion seems to be that Bexley Council Environmental Health Department should automatically shut any food outlet scoring zero stars on the “scores on the doors” points system. Bearing in mind that there are currently fifty such unhygienic establishments in the borough, that would be a lot of enforcement for them to carry out.

Over the past year or so, I have been reporting on a number of technological anniversaries, and this week is not an exception. It it the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Lisa computer. The Lisa was the first generally available computer to have a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Xerox had produced a couple of earlier models, the Xerox Alto, and the later Xerox Star computers, both of which had a GUI in the mid 1970's. Neither was a commercial product, more of a research project with a limited production run. Apple did licence the desktop analogy and aspects of the overall look and feel from Xerox, which they then developed into the Lisa. The Lisa cost $10,000 in 1983 (an absolute fortune), and to be honest it was a slow and underpowered machine, even by the standards of the day. It is generally regarded that the Lisa was a flop, but it did make Apple $100 million profit, even though relatively few units (100,000) were shipped. The Apple Macintosh was developed in tandem with the Lisa (in fact, most of the original Mac software was developed on Lisas). What the Lisa did do was bring the concept of the GUI to end users and the general public, and completely shape the face of modern computing like no other single product. Apple Lisas are now exceedingly rare indeed. There is a complete, fully working one in mint condition on EBay right now - and look at the price of it! You can read more about the Lisa by clicking here. The video below is a very rare American TV commercial for  the Lisa; it features a very young "before they were famous" Kevin Costner as the Lisa using businessman. Those of you with very long memories may recall I featured this clip about four years ago, but I feel that it could to with a a swift re-showing, just for the cheesy eighties feel of it. 

Word reaches Pewty Acres that E4 have given the green light to the producers of sci fi comedy series "Misfits" for a fifth season of the show. I suspect that this may well be the final season, as many of the locations that are key to the look and feel of the show are shortly to be demolished. "Misfits" is filmed in and around Thamesmead, principally at Tavy Bridge and Southmere Lake Community Centre. Much of the area is being redeveloped, and the current, late 60's brutalist concrete architecture which features so heavily in the show will be no more.

Last week’s video of the documentary about the Avro Vulcan raid on Port Stanley airport during the Falklands War in 1982 has brought some very interesting feedback from an unexpected source. More of that in a bit; my own memories of the Falklands War are still strong. I had been given a poster featuring the crest of every ship in the Royal Navy some time before the conflict began, and I dutifully crossed out each ship as it was sunk or badly damaged. By the end of the war there were a depressingly large number of black crosses. I was still at school at the time, and smack bang in the middle of the Falklands War, I went on a geography field trip to Barry Island in Wales. The school party stayed at Barry Island Butlins – at the time a scruffy and run – down place with indifferent staff and greasy, inedible food. During the evenings the school kids were given pretty much free rein of the holiday camp, providing we did not leave the premises. There was a kids disco run by a very dubious looking Welsh Jimmy Saville clone. One evening he was playing some terrible records (“Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners seemed to be on almost constant rotation) when one of a large group of Spanish school kids that were also staying at the camp ran up onto the low stage and grabbed the DJ’s microphone. He began a chant amongst the Spanish kids of “Malvinas, Malvinas!” It had to be said this ended in pretty short order when Phil Peskitt, school bully and all round hard man, leapt onto the stage and punched the Spanish kid on the nose, knocking him over. A small riot then ensued. All of the teachers from my school who were supervising the event seemed to be looking in the opposite direction during the whole incident! There was plenty of military activity around much of South Wales at the time; mainly due to the fact that the army used the area for training. We got to see lots of Harrier jets and military transports rushing here and there, and when we visited Pen Y Fan, the second highest peak in Wales, there was a small group of scruffy and very tired looking blokes in old fashioned army greatcoats and hob nailed boots climbing up and down the mountain. We did not really think very much about them, but with hindsight, these were almost certainly troops training for SAS selection. Anyway, for more memories from that dark time in our recent history, we have a guest contributor to the Maggot Sandwich – Malcolm Knight of the Bexley is Bonkers website, who had a very important role in the Falklands conflict. Here are his memories of the time:- From 1979 until 1984 the phone line to Port Stanley was entirely my responsibility. Not many calls and no one was very interested in it. It only operated for 2 x 2 hours a day and Stanley/London was their only public comms to the outside world. In Jan 82 the number of calls started going up and I upped the hours of operation eventually to 24/7. I didn't monitor the conversations, in retrospect I wish I had broken the rules and done so. I reported up the management chain that something weird was going on but was ignored and to be honest I never suspected an invasion or I might have kicked up a bigger fuss. Before the Vulcan raid the MoD got twitchy about the local small population on Ascension telling their relations abroad about the RAF build up. Ascension Is. comms was entirely mine too and they had no other access to the outside world - so I stopped the potential leaks by the only method I could think of. I pulled the appropriate plug. The day after the Vulcan raid the MoD called me to say I could stick the Ascension plug back in again and I asked if they were going to bomb Stanley again. Probably they said (with appropriate reticence) so I said in that case I wasn't going to restore the Ascension plug. They took some persuading that pulling the plug before the night of a raid was going to send a signal to the outside world. The pattern would be detected, if not by someone in Argentina but certainly by the Spanish nationals I employed in the exchange and whose loyalties could not be trusted. They got the point eventually. I spoke to the manager of the Falklands telecoms during the conflict and met him afterwards. He said his staff worked with machine guns pointing at their backs so they didn't try to send 'coded' messages abroad. One of the things the Argies did as soon as they got on the island was set up a public phone service to Buenos Aires. The Falklands had no satellite link at the time - it went in pretty quickly afterwards! - so the Argie link was HF (Shortwave) radio, no encryption, nothing, so I sat a Spanish speaking Englishwoman on the end of a suitable receiver connected to British Telecom's aerial system at Rugby, so I could know what was going on. Not official, just me being nosey. All we got was government talk about changing the currency and putting Argentinian postage stamps in the post office. They certainly intended to stay. Half way through the war the Argentinians came up on the Stanley circuit, which had been dead since they took over, and asked to speak to me and together we arranged to re-establish normal telephone services immediately. This was standard practice between nations at war, just carry on regardless as far as possible. The agreement was that on our single circuit one call would come from them alternating with one from us.  In typical British fashion we had queued the UK requests for calls and proceeded to connect them in that order. Unfortunately that meant that all the calls came from newspapers and the Argies got very stroppy with me accusing me of some underhand trick when none was intended. I had to agree that all calls would be inbound from then on. Most were from worried Falklanders anxious to call friends in the UK as there had been no telephone service for several weeks. Sometimes the calls got No Reply and when the Falklander claimed special urgency I got in the habit of phoning the appropriate local radio station if available and getting them to put out an SOS to get back to their phone quickly! All very unofficial of course but in most cases it worked a treat and the radio station staff were always pleased to do it. I met the Falklands' comms manager because Mrs. Thatcher invited him to London for the victory parade. The Ascension Island people didn’t get their service restored until the war was over.  What a fascinating story. Not something I have seen recorded in any history of the Falklands conflict. Thanks for letting me re-tell your memories Malcolm!

A story that seems to have thus far got under the radar of most local news outlets is that the owners of the famous, and now decommissioned cruise liner the Queen Elizabeth II are hoping to be allowed to permanently moor the vessel at Carlsberg Wharf, directly opposite the O2 Arena on the  banks of the River Thames. They want to convert the ship into a luxury floating hotel with 550 cabins, seven international restaurants and a cinema. If the plans get approved (and Boris is backing it) the ship would employ a crew of around 1,500 people, bringing permanent jobs to what is an otherwise economically depressed area. It would also add a touch of glamour to Greenwich Peninsular – not the most aesthetically pleasing place at present. Bearing in mind the cruise liners and gigantic luxury super yachts that filled the South Quay in Canary Wharf at the time of the Olympics (click here to see my photos) I think that this project could well be a winner. The QEII is currently moored in storage in Dubai; whilst the work to convert her into a floating hotel would be extensive, I think that the kind of publicity the project would bring to the region could only be a positive thing. I am sure the novelty of a luxurious floating hotel would add a sparkle of glamour to a part of South East London that could surely use it. If the project does not take off, there is a strong possibility that the QEII would be scrapped. Not a pleasant demise for what is one of the World’s best known passenger ships.

Erith Model Railway Society have their annual exhibition at the Bexley Business Academy in Yarnton Way, Thamesmead on the 26th and 27th of January. Over eighty stands and twenty five different model railway layouts will be featured. The entry price will be £6 for adults, £5 for concessions and £3 per child. You can read more about the exhibition by clicking here. You can see some HD footage of last years exhibition in the video below. It certainly looks like a hell of a lot of work goes into the event; I wish them well. Comments below, as always.