Erith market to return?

The photo above was supplied by one of my team of anonymous informers; it was taken on Thursday afternoon, and shows the state that the demolition of the old Bexley College site in Tower Road has reached.  If you take a look at the additional photo below, you can see that the construction of the new housing on the site has begun even before the demolition of the old buildings has been completed. I have heard from a couple of sources that the condition of the site was far worse that the developer realised, and that far more levelling of the ground has been required - this is one of the reasons the whole project has been running behind schedule. Erith really is one large building site right now, but in a couple of years time the town should really be transformed. More on this transformation later. 

I have certainly had a busy time since I published last week’s blog update.  I have had an encouragingly large amount of support for my piece on right wing extremist Joshua Bonehill, and his campaign of intimidation against anyone he considers to be an opponent of his repugnant views, myself included. One thing Bonehill repeatedly emphasises in his warped writing is how he (in his words) is being persecuted for exercising his right to free speech. This strikes me as supremely ironic – he wants the right to write and speak his racist, homophobic, misogynist and antiSemitic views, but then threatens anyone who also uses their right of free speech to challenge his warped and offensive opinions. It seems to me that Bonehill thinks that there should be one law for him, and one (his) law for everybody else.  He also has a very strange attitude to the two sentences for Malicious Communication that he has already been awarded. In both of the cases that have so far been undertaken, Bonehill got a prison sentence that was suspended for a period of time; in the most recent case, he was found guilty of six counts of malicious communication and handed a three month prison sentence, suspended for eighteen months, when he appeared at Yeovil Magistrates Court on the 9^th of February. Bonehill posted a message on his Twitter account saying “Joshua Bonehill emerges victorious and defiant in legal battle over his liberty”. It would seem that in Bonehill’ s eyes, a non-custodial sentence is in some way a victory for him; the fact that legal restrictions have been placed on his activities, he’s got community service to perform (not a problem for him time - wise, as he’s long term unemployed) and he now has a criminal record. Since his online harassment of Labour MP Juliana Berger, the shadow minister for public health, Bonehill has been arrested yet again on the charges of Racially Aggravated Harassment and Malicious Communications; he was bailed on the 16^th February; the conditions of his bail forbid him from travelling anywhere inside the M25. He is due in court on the 26^th March to answer the charges. He’s going to be busy. Once that court case has been decided, it will not be long until he’s back in court on the 5^th May where lawyers working on behalf of Tesco are bringing charges against him after he posted online statements that food sourced from locations in Africa by Tesco and sold in the UK was infected with the deadly Ebola virus. I cannot believe that Joshua Bonehill will escape custody forever; the ironic fact is that he would almost certainly revel in the notoriety a jail sentence would bring – in his own warped world – view, he would become a martyr to his Nazi cause, much in the same way his idol Adolf Hitler portrayed himself in “Mein Kampf”. I just hope Bonehill does not write his life story if he does end up in chokey.  One thing is pretty much certain after the anti-Jewish acts of terrorism that have been occurring recently, is that Bonehill will have attracted the attention of the Security Services. I would not be at all surprised if he was already under surveillance. I get the feeling that this story will run on for some time. What do you think? Does Joshua Bonehill deserve to go to jail, or is he just a deluded no - hoper who should be ignored? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com

The Bexley Times have reported that David Evennett, MP for Bexleyheath and Crayford has been shown around the new Urgent Care Unit at Erith Hospital. The unit is intended for use by patients who have an urgent but not life-threatening illness or injury such as broken bones, sprains and strains, burns and scalds and bites and stings. It is open 365 days a year between 8am and 10pm. I must admit that for such a welcome addition to the local health facilities, the launch of the Urgent Care Unit has been done in an exceptionally low – key manner. If I was manager of the unit, I would be shouting about it from the rooftops – especially as the online reviews in respect of it are so uniformly positive; one visitor, who used the pseudonym “Sunny” left the following comment on the NHS reviews and ratings website when describing their experience of the Erith Urgent Care Unit “I visited the urgent care centre after work on Wed 21 Jan 2015, and was greeted by a pleasant and efficient receptionist who's personable approach put us at ease. Within 10 minutes we were seen by on call doctor who was fantastic and was very careful when examining my ankle. They recommended an x-ray to make sure and gave me the option of going to A and E for this or returning the next day for an x-ray at the urgent care centre. Given the convenience, speed and friendly nature of the staff I opted to return the next day rather than endure a long wait in A and E. They gave me use of crutches to help and we were on our way within 15 minutes of arriving. The next day I went straight for an x-ray and this was completed in 10 minutes. There was a longer wait to get the results given the department was busy, but this will still all done within an hour. The receptionist was the same person working the night before - he recognised me and remembered that I had to have an x-ray - a really nice touch. They were clearly overworked during a busy morning, from checking numerous people in, cleaning up a child's vomit, and making calls to a local hospital for one doctor to confer with another about a potential medical issue. Despite all of this they went about with a smile and was particularly good with the young girl who was unwell - assuring her it was not her fault. Finally, the on call nurse practitioner who I saw to look at the x-rays was great - polite and friendly. The only comment I can make is that he had to leave to look at the x-rays, rather than viewing them in the room together. It would be better if the facilities were in the room as this would help the patients to understand what is wrong with them. Overall a fantastic experience in the circumstances - to be open until 10pm is great and I will definitely think twice before using A and E again. Thank you for helping!” What a positive review – and this was one of a number, all with very good things to say about the new unit. With all of the horror stories one hears in the press about patients waiting all night at Accident and Emergency, because they have been unable to get an appointment with their G.P, it is very reassuring to discover that for many injuries and illnesses, a short trip to the local cottage hospital would be all that was required to get prompt attention and treatment – in many ways it appears that history is repeating itself – the original purpose of small local hospitals was to treat people who had relatively minor or easily treatable injuries or conditions, to save them taking up a bed in a major hospital more suited to complex or serious illnesses. In recent years Erith Hospital looked to be on the verge of outright closure; I am extremely pleased that the Urgent Care Unit is now available to help local residents – how nice it is to be able to say something positive about the National Health Service in a time when it is otherwise getting a bashing.

The photos above show the old Erith Market in Pier Road back in 1980. They have previously been displayed on a couple of local history themed FaceBook pages hosted by both Martin Barnes and Ken Chamberlain - thanks to both of you for the use of the photos. Apart from the historical interest, the reason for featuring Erith Market is that a consultation session is scheduled for Wednesday the 11th March between 10am and 2pm in the new Erith Library building in Erith High Street. "The aim of the event is to get feedback as to whether shoppers and students would like to see a market in Erith and the types of stalls they would be interested in.  Please pop into the library to give your views". This is great if you are a student at Bexley College, or are retired, but it does exclude a great many other people who have to go to work. I hope that Bexley Council offer another consultation session that will give a wider chance for locals to express their views on bringing back the market.

Local football correspondent Brian Spurrell has submitted the following report on Erith and Belvedere FC, and their bid to win the FA Vase - story below:-

DERES' VASE DREAM DIES

Erith and Belvedere 0 North Shields 2

Erith and Belvedere’s FA Vase run ended at the quarter-final stage with a fair-and-square beating by a very good team.  It was the furthest either club has reached in the competition, and the attendance of 503 was the Deres’ biggest since moving to Park View Road and their biggest home crowd for 22 years.  North Shields had the longest trip any club has ever made for a game against the Deres - around 300 miles with the first supporters’ coach leaving Tyneside at 5am.  Their fans were noisy but well-mannered and made friends among the home support. Shields were bigger and half a yard faster than the Deres, and although the passing styles of both teams cancelled each other out it was the Robins’ physical superiority plus a superb display by defensive midfielder Michael McKeown that ultimately was the deciding factor in the tie, with two early second-half goals settling it. The Robins controlled the first quarter of the game but only had a bad miss from right midfielder James Luccock on 25 minutes to show for their early dominance. Goal machine Gareth Bainbridge (34 in 30 games before yesterday) and left midfielder Dean Holmes spurned further chances before half time. The Deres were stunned when Holmes opened the scoring in the fourth minute of the second half, pouncing on a mistake twenty yards out on the left wing to beat goalkeeper George Kamurasi. The Deres’ response was to bring on two substitutes, Isa Hussein and Taser Hassan, four minutes after the goal but before they had the opportunity to settle into the game the Robins sealed the tie with a second goal after 58 minutes. In a mirror image of the first goal Adam Forster pounced on a mistake on the right wing and buried the ball in the net from a similar distance. As hard as Deres tried they created few clear cut opportunities, the closest being on 76 minutes when Michael Robinson had to save from Deres' leading scorer Alfie May. To the Deres' defensive credit they restricted Bainbridge to two misses before he forced Kamurasi to make a save in the second minute of added time. At the end of a closely fought tie the Robins went home to look forward to tomorrow’s draw for a two-legged semi-final.  Deres meanwhile return to the league campaign: they have 15 games to go, and Barnehurst’s Phoenix Sports are 11 points ahead from two games more but yet to visit PVR.  The next two months will be interesting. Deres: Kamurasi, Matthews (Springett 88), Wilson, Richmond, Craig, Johnson, Hales, L May (Hussein 53), A May, Marsh, Walker (Hassan 53). Shields: Robinson, Donnison, Lancaster, McKeown (Wrightson 88), Parker, Hughes, Luccock, Forster (Coppen 75), Bainbridge, Richardson, Holmes (Morris 69).

A very welcome story broke late this week; one that has been rumbling under the radar for some time. It is one of the best piece of news that the area has had for quite a time, and really shows how Erith and Lower Belvedere are getting some serious investment. Online supermarket Ocado have just got planning permission to build a £185 million "Customer Fulfillment Centre" (who thinks up these descriptions? - It makes the warehouse sound like a Shanghai knocking shop!) The facilities will be the largest of their kind in the world, and will employ around 3,500 people, mostly in full time jobs, and no zero - hour contracts are promised. Recruitment for roles including operational managers, warehouse operatives, LGV and delivery drivers, engineers and support staff will start in 2016. Construction of the Erith CFC is planned to start in the summer, with the facility expected to open during 2017. As well as direct deliveries to homes in the region, it will support a network of existing centres around the south east of England, handling around 200,000 orders per week. This does strike me as not only great for the local area, but also quite possibly a way for the area to climb socially - once the vanloads of organic Kumquats, jars of Fair Trade coffee and other Waitrose products start heading out of the warehouse, Erith could end up finding itself becoming middle class. Who would have thought that a few years ago? What next - a Waitrose store in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre? You never know. Joking aside, it is excellent news for the local economy, and could have not come at a better time.

It is not often that the London Borough of Bexley gets compared with somewhere like Milan (in fact, as far as I can tell, it has never happened before), but a recently published report by the London Assembly Environment Committee has praise for Bexley, comparing the levels of rubbish recycling with other successful European cities such as Milan. The London Borough of Bexley gets rightly bashed for many things it is utterly hopeless at, so just for once it is a pleasant change to be able to report that Bexley has come top of the London – wide league table which measures levels of waste recycling.  Bexley currently recycle just over fifty five percent of all household waste. The report says “London urgently needs to improve its performance in recycling food waste from its high-density housing stock.  Positive examples exist, such as Bexley in London or Milan in Italy, which provide best practices that may help others”. What is also really notable is that nearby other local authorities such as Lewisham come at the bottom of the league, with only seventeen percent of household waste going to be recycled. This low performance can lead to a vicious circle – recycling contractors pay good money for steel and aluminium cans, and glass bottles, money which can then be ploughed back into providing better resources for further recycling. When such recycling levels are low, it is difficult for a council to find the money to fund improvements. Bexley have not fallen into this trap, though in my opinion yet more needs to be done. Whilst domestic recycling levels are encouraging, there are plenty of other areas that need improvement – for example, the level of fly – tipping that goes on in the Borough, which is still shockingly high. Erith especially suffers from this problem, as I have written about extensively in the recent past. The prosecution and jailing of Romanian national Anton Munteanu for fly – tipping pallets of rotten bananas at the Council recycling facility behind Morrison’s Supermarket in Erith – one of seven offences of Fly tipping, which included two offences which were witnessed, and four others captured on the CCTV Camera at James Watt Way. Additionally he pleaded guilty to an offence at another set of recycling banks in Dartford. He also pleaded guilty to two offences of failing to have a Waste Carriers Licence and one of Collecting Scrap Metal without being licensed. He was sentenced to 26 weeks imprisonment (6 months) on all the fly tipping offences to run concurrently. No separate penalty was awarded for the Waste Carriers Licence offences or The offence under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013. He was ordered to pay £1000 in clear up costs which was broken down to £800 to the London Borough of Bexley and £200 to Dartford Borough Council. He was also in breach of an existing twelve week suspended prison sentence, The court decided to activate six weeks of that sentence, and he was given a further six weeks imprisonment to run consecutively to the 26 weeks making a total of 32 weeks. The court also ordered the forfeiture of the vehicle concerned (a long wheelbase panel van) in all of the offences, which was worth roughly £4,000.  I feel that this sent out a strong message to local fly – tippers, though it has in no way stopped offences occurring. Most of the materials fly – tipped locally seem to be from small scale building works such as kitchen replacement – sole trader builders seem to be one of the worst offenders. I think much of the reason for this is the high charges that Bexley Council exerts for processing commercial waste at the Thames Road, Crayford recycling centre. A van load of rubble can set back the honest builder something in the region of £100 to responsibly dispose of. This cost gets passed onto the customer – whereas the dishonest builder can undercut the honest one and still make a profit. Personally I would always wonder what other corners the cheaper, dishonest builder would cut – local Police say that when stopped, many unlicensed waste carriers are also guilty of other offences; it would seem that if they are prepared to commit an environmental crime, then they don't have many scruples about getting involved on other criminal activity. This issue will run and run unless drastic steps are taken to change the situation.

Bexley Brewery have had some extremely good news this week - message from them here:- "Well, what a week we've had and it's one that has made us sure that we made the right move in starting up Bexley Brewery! One Monday we heard from the organisers of the Pig's Ear beer festival that BOB (Bexley's Own Beer) had been voted Beer of the Festival! It was a close run contest and we were only a few votes ahead of another brewery. We were both delighted and surprised, but had got quite a few messages from people saying they had tried our ales at the beer festival and how much they liked them.  Finally the icing on this weeks cake (well probably this years cake) happened last night at the Bexley Business Awards. We were nominated for two categories; Made in Bexley and Best New Business. We were excited to get a Commended in the Made in Bexley, but over the moon to win the Best New Business award! Considering we've only been brewing since September we are amazed at how Bexley Brewery is developing. It is hard work and we are both in a learning curve, but are passionate about our business and want to make it the best it can be. Thanks to all of you who have bought and drunk our ales, we've got more planned for this year! So as they say, watch this space". Excellent news indeed. Unfortunately Pewty Acres is just a bit too far from Bexley Brewery to run a garden hose from the brewery to my kitchen; the thought of having an extra tap fitted with a beer meter had crossed my mind...

Network Rail are never exactly the most popular of organisations; I imagine that their staff, if asked what they do at a party, would probably say “I'm an undertaker” or something similar, rather than risk the ire of the interlocutor. The Crossrail Project is a massive undertaking that involves many companies and organisations in what is one of the largest engineering works currently under way in Europe. Network Rail are responsible for much of the temporary  infrastructure that is in place whilst construction is in progress. The temporary station at Abbey Wood – which has attracted a fair degree of criticism over the last few months has now been featured in the News Shopper, due to complaints about the passenger lift, which I was led to believe was supposed to have a dedicated member of staff operating it. The reality would seem to be that if a member of the public requires the lift, they have to ring a bell and wait up to ten minutes for an operator to turn up. The lifts themselves are tiny – how one would manage if using a large electric wheelchair or mobility scooter, let alone a parent with a with a double buggy I do not know – it does appear that the lift is more of a “box ticking exercise” than a concerted effort to address an ongoing access problem. Of course, in relation to this, the whole issue of the lack of step – free access at Erith Station once again comes to light. Since MP for Erith and Thamesmead Teresa Pearce started the campaign back in August 2011 to persuade Network Rail to install a lift at Erith Station; at present if you need to travel in the direction of London and you are a wheelchair user or have small children in a buggy, you have to travel in the opposite direction to Dartford (which is outside of Zone 6, and could tender you liable to a penalty fare), then use the lift at Dartford to cross to the London – bound platform and come back on yourself back up the line towards London. Not only does this involve additional cost, but considerable additional time is added to any journey. This all contravenes the Equality Act 2010, as disabled people are being treated differently (demonstrably worse) than able bodied people. Not that this seems to cut much ice with either Network Rail or Southeastern Trains, who continue to ignore the whole situation, probably hoping that it will go away. The demands on Erith Station are bound to go up sharply over the next couple of years, as the population of the town grows. Erith Park, Erith Quarry, the Riverside Baths redevelopment and the redevelopment of the old Bexley College site I mentioned at the start of this update, along with a handful of smaller scale building developments will increase the local population by something like twenty five percent in a relatively short space of time; pressure to improve public transportation is inevitable. It may even mean that one of the property developers may wish to fund or part fund the installation of a passenger lift at Erith Station as a means of “adding value” to potential buyers. This news coincides with the announcement that the London Borough of Bexley is the only part of Greater London where demand for homes is still increasing. Bexley was also judged to be in the top ten most affordable places to live in Greater London. Historically within the borough, Erith and Slade Green have always topped the affordable housing leagues, though as Malcolm Knight of the excellent “Bexley is Bonkers” blog recently wrote, the definition of “affordable” seems to have become somewhat stretched over the last few years. It is possible to get a small flat on the Frobisher Road Estate for something in the region of £100,000, which seems to be pretty much the first rung on the local property ladder. The amount of new builds going on in and around Erith is astonishing – and I would surmise that to an extent it will control prices, as so many new properties either are now on the market, or shortly will be. Erith has excellent public transport links (the lift situation notwithstanding), it is thirty minutes from Central London by train, you have excellent bus connections; we are only a few minutes from the M25, the A2 and the South Circular, and have the added bonus of being situated on the banks of the River Thames – the only town in the London Borough of Bexley to be so fortunate, with the excellent Erith Riverside Gardens.  We have a brand new, state of the art college, a modern shopping centre and a very large Morrison’s supermarket. The town has an active local forum, and a newly founded Friends Association for the parish church. Once work on the Cross Keys Centre is complete, and it opens to the public, the area really will have undergone a much needed regeneration. For many years Erith has had awful P.R – pretty much since the original town centre was demolished in 1966 to make way for the much hated 1970’s concrete monstrosity (that I recall as a child always smelled of a mix of Jeyes Fluid and stale wee) Erith has had a reputation as somewhere that you lived because you had to, not because you wanted to. This seems to have been crystallised in an oft told joke by the late Erith – born comedienne Linda Smith – “Erith isn't twinned with anywhere, but it does have a mutual suicide pact with Dagenham”. I feel that this joke has unfortunately done more to harm the reputation of the town than any single other thing. I feel that relatively more affordable housing prices may be the initial motivation for outsiders moving in to the new housing that is springing up all over the town, but in time the newcomers may well start appreciating the place for the more intangible things it offers – where else within a half hour train journey of central London could you see the classic “Big Sky” – an Erith trade mark – being able to see from horizon to horizon? I have had talks with a couple of very prestigious economists whose professional view is that Erith is on the brink of a new time of prosperity, and that “it could well become the next Hoxton”. Whilst time will tell, it is an intriguing possibility. What do you think? Is Erith on the edge of a boom, or would you resent the area becoming “gentrified”? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The end video this week shows the driverless cars that are currently on test in and around the O2 Arena in the North Greenwich Peninsula. They are purely an engineering experiment, but could well be a pointer towards advanced vehicles of the future. Give the video a watch and see what you think.

The old college comes down.

Bexley is Bonkers author Malcolm Knight is doing a first class job of documenting the construction works currently under way between Abbey Wood and Plumstead stations as preparations continue for the launch of Crossrail in 2018. The station will allow very fast rail access to large swathes of greater London and the outer boroughs that have until now been difficult to reach by public transport. It will also make travel into business areas such as Canary Wharf much speedier – the new Crossrail station at Canary Wharf is utterly huge – I work in an office building right next door, and have watched it go up over the last four years. When it opens, it will have six storeys of shops, a cinema, numerous restaurants, bars, a landscaped park and a roof gardens located over the rail tracks. The aim is to increase the working population to two hundred thousand people over the next fifteen years. Abbey Wood and Woolwich are cited as being two of the areas which will most benefit from the huge increase in cross – London travel capacity that will result from the huge capital project. The work being undertaken at Abbey Wood will be the largest addition to the local train network since the North Kent rail line originally opened back in 1849. As I have previously mentioned, the whole area between Woolwich and Erith / Slade Green is likely to experience a strong increase in house prices, as commuting times to both Central and West London will be cut considerably. It will be instructive to observe what actually happens; for example, Woolwich has been labelled as an “up and coming” area for over a decade, with nothing much actually happening. I think that when the Woolwich Crossrail station opens in 2018, things will finally get moving. When the realisation that Woolwich based commuters could be in Canary Wharf in eight minutes, the City in fourteen, Bond Street in twenty two minutes, and door to door at Heathrow in fifty minutes, I think new residents will flock into the town. I just hope that the whole of Woolwich benefits, and not just those fortunate enough to be able to afford  a place in the Royal Arsenal Riverside development, which to my mind is too isolated from the town proper – it is a high end gated development that to my mind is too introspective. Matters may improve if moves to migrate Woolwich Arsenal station from Travel Zone Four to Zone Three actually come to pass (the word is – “don’t hold your breath”). Whilst modern flats have been built over the giant Tesco superstore (which I understand is safe from the Tesco cutbacks I featured last week), most of the relatively affordable accommodation in Woolwich comes in the form of former council properties. It does beg the question, if former council / housing association housing stock is being sold off, where can people find somewhere to affordably rent? The usual answer is that people in that position end up moving further outwards and into the suburbs – into places like Abbey Wood and Thamesmead, where the Peabody Trust is investing £200 million to create what they call a new “garden suburb” that will include apartments along Thamesmead’s three miles of River Thames waterfront, and be connected to the new Crossrail terminus at Abbey Wood. As I have previously written, Erith is also in the middle of the largest boom in house building for at least a generation; we have Erith Park (a mix of social and commercial flats and houses on what used to be the old Larner Road estate), The Erith Quarry development (high end housing, a new Primary School and environmental landscaping), along with further housing on the site of the old Bexley College campus in Tower Road (more on this shortly). There are also housing developments in Slade Green – the upmarket Ratio housing scheme in Slade Green Road, along with the Howbury Centre rebuild project. The latest in this long and extensive list of newly built housing is one that many locals have been worried about, due to the potential implications to Erith Riverside Gardens. London and Quadrant housing association are holding a public exhibition on Wednesday the 11^th February from 4pm until 7pm  in the new Bexley College building in Walnut Tree Road. L and Q propose building a total of seventy one homes for people on a range of incomes on the former site of Erith Riverside Baths, which has been empty since the old swimming pool building was demolished due to vandalism after the replacement pool was opened at Erith Leisure Centre.  The main concern that many locals have is that any development of the old Riverside Swimming Baths site has will involve building on part or possibly even all of the Riverside Gardens – an area that is sacrosanct to Erith residents, but not seemingly to some Bexley Councillors. It will be instructive to see what plans London and Quadrant have for the prime riverside location. I will be attending the exhibition at around 5.15pm – as soon as I can get to the college after work; fortunately though I work in Docklands for much of the time, I start very early, and can normally get away at or around 4pm.

Bexley Brewery are going from strength to strength; they are now wholesaling draught real ale to a large number of pubs and clubs, not just in the local area, but as far as outlets in Margate and Dover. You can see a map, along with a list of Bexley Beer retailers by clicking here. They have also diversified their range of quality real ales to include a Golden Ale and a Porter, as well as their existing Red House Bitter and BOB (Bexley's Own Beer - my own favourite). They are holding a publicity session and "meet the brewers" at the Penny Farthing micro pub in Crayford next Wednesday evening. I have yet to visit the Penny Farthing, and unfortunately have to be elsewhere on Wednesday evening (all will hopefully become clear in the update next week). I would strongly encourage you to pop along to the local micro pub if you can; not only are such independent hostelries the best way to sample quality real ale and cider, but with Bexley Brewery staff on hand to answer questions, it is bound to be an excellent evening. 

The News Shopper reported earlier this week that a rather unsavoury lady called Sandra Okoh was sentenced to five years in prison for running an Erith based employment agency “Blue Feathers Guarding” which employed security guards and paid them only around £3 per hour, often on 24 hour shifts, whilst still charging their clients the full going rate. The employees did not complain or seek employment with other agencies as many if not all of them were in the UK illegally, and liable for deportation if they were found out. Okoh and two of her fellow company directors (who were prosecuted and jailed last year, as I reported at the time) used this fact to treat their employees as virtual slaves. Employees could not complain, as doing so could see themselves prosecuted and subsequently deported. It is thought that Blue Feathers Guarding actually turned away legitimate applicants for guarding vacancies on the grounds that they were not able to exploit such workers as they could with the illegal migrants. This sorry situation was only discovered when staff at the Cross Street Law Centre were alerted by a former Blue Feathers employee who acted as a whistle blower on conditions of anonymity. The employment agency was subsequently raided by The Home Office’s South London Criminal Investigations team, supported by the Security Industry Authority, raided the company's Viridian Way offices in October 2012.  When they searched the premises they discovered a large quantity of forged identification documents relating to staff who they had illegally employed. The game was up, and the people behind the company were suitably punished. All this is well and good, but unfortunately the News Shopper then dropped the ball – they completely missed the bigger picture. The Cross Street Law Centre was forced to close due to cuts in their funding in March last year – a fact reported on by the News Shopper at the time. This means that future detection of illegal employment practices is considerably reduced now, as there is nowhere in the area that a whistle blower could turn to. Secondly it raises the issue of the number of people that found work, albeit illegally in the past, and what has subsequently happened to them? It strikes me that we have a vibrant underground economy that is passing under the radar of both the benefits agency and the immigration service. Whilst not the most desirable of situations, it occurs that in a pragmatic sense this is not always a bad thing. Local people living illegally still have to eat, heat their houses and travel – all of which means returning money to the local economy. From conversations I have had in the past from people well – placed to know, it is entirely possible that if all the people illegally working in the UK were able to be accurately identified and deported, that large parts of the British economy and infrastructure would crumble. It is an interesting theory, and not something I would wish to see tested in practice. What do you think? Comment below, or Email me directly at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

I recently discovered that South East London and North Kent once suffered from a serious earthquake. On April the 12^th 1884, and powerful earthquake shook an area from Woolwich to as far as Margate. Initially residents thought that one of the armament storage warehouses at Woolwich Royal Arsenal had exploded – as had happened back on Saturday the first of October 1864, when two massive gunpowder stores on the marshes in Lower Belvedere detonated – which was one of the largest non – nuclear explosions in British history. It was understandable therefore that almost twenty years later many who experienced the massive explosion would automatically assume that the earthquake was caused by another accident whilst handling explosives. You can read more about the Belvedere explosion by clicking here. The earthquake was a different beast altogether; the epicentre of the quake was in South Essex, from there the shock waves spread out causing disturbance over an area somewhat in excess of 53,000 square miles. It measured 6.9 on the Richter scale and caused buildings to sway and develop structural cracks, chimneys to collapse, slates to cascade down roofs, and several fires were caused. In North Kent, well away from the epicentre, the effects were still profound. People were understandably terrified – the ground beneath their feet was moving, and great clouds of dust rose into the air. Some people were knocked over, whilst others were sick with fright. Some even wondered if the day of judgement had come, as the motion of the earthquake caused many church bells to ring spontaneously. Eventually the earthquake passed; fortunately there were few serious injuries and no reported deaths. To date the Kent earthquake of 1884 remains one of the most serious geological events to have taken place in England. Let’s hope we are not scheduled for another, as the potential damage both to life and infrastructure would be proportionally worse nowadays – there were few gas mains, almost no electricity cables and certainly no fibre – optic lines for an earthquake to destroy back in 1884 – the same most certainly could not be said of today.

I may use an Apple iMac as my main home computer, but I am most certainly no Apple fan boy – I don't have an iPhone (or any mobile phone whatsoever, for that matter), I don't have an iPad or other such portable device. I like Apple computers because they are very well made, ergonomic and mainly because Apple OS X is based on BSD Unix – a rock solid, industrial strength operating system that has been around since 1977. It predates Windows and Linux (love Linux, not so keen on Windows) and was a wise choice when Apple were looking for an alternative operating system after they realised that their own proprietary Mac OS9 was not cutting the mustard. Many of Apple co – founder Steve Jobs quotes on life the universe and technology are enshrined by Apple fan boys as some kind of gospel; personally I find much of what he said at public meetings to be crass and somewhat self – serving. One thing I most certainly do agree with him, is his stance on the multimedia web browser plug in Flash. Flash has been around for nearly twenty years and it has always been a vector of malicious computer attack, and also the cause of many crashes – back in 2010 Steve Jobs said “Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first-hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash. To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other video streaming companies. Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained. When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads”. Since Jobs made this speech, Google have removed Flash use from YouTube and exclusively use the H.264 codec – which all modern web browsers support natively. Having said all that, Adobe (who now own the Flash brand and technology) persist in publishing new versions of the now outdated media player. Flash has serious security flaws which malicious attackers exploit to do nasty things to your computer, and however regularly Adobe issue patches and updates, the insecure design of the underlying architecture means that hackers soon find a loophole and Flash is once again compromised.  My advice to you is to Uninstall it and see how you get on across the web. If you really need it, go into your browser settings and make it click-to-play. That means Flash files aren't automatically opened on every page, reducing the risk of being owned by a dodgy advert or malware injected .swf file. In Google Chrome, go to Settings, click on the Advanced Settings link, click on Content Settings under Privacy, scroll down to Plugins, select "Click to play" and save. In Safari, open Preferences, go to the Security tab, click on Website settings alongside Internet Plugins, select Adobe Flash, and alongside "When visiting other websites", select "Ask" or "Block". You can whitelist certain sites in the box above. In Firefox, type “about:config” (minus the quotation marks) into the browser address bar and press “enter” and click on the "I'll be careful" button, and search for plugins. click_to_play. If it says "false" in the Value column, double click on it to change it to "true". Then restart Firefox. You now have true control over your web browser, and thus your computer.

The photos above were sent to me by a local photographer who chooses to remain anonymous. The shots show the demolition of the old Bexley College campus in Tower Road. I understand that the demolition has not been straightforward, and it is taking longer than was initially anticipated. The site will be ready for re - use for housing once fully cleared. More on this in a future update.

As regular readers will be already aware, I have been warning of the pernicious nature of bookmakers and their Fixed Odds Betting Terminals – often referred to as the “Crack Cocaine” of gambling, as it is possible for a gambler to lose up to £100 every twenty seconds. Betting shops are limited to five such terminals in each shop location; it is said that the main reason there has been an explosion in the number of betting shops on most high streets is that the betting shop chains open extra shops just so that they can get more Fixed Odds Betting Terminals out there – and until recently, cash strapped local authorities have accepted the extra bookmakers outlets, as they would rather get council tax payments from a working business, than leave an empty shop unit that earns no revenue. Things now do appear to be changing, however. The government recently raised the rate of duty on gaming machines, which has had the knock – on effect of making many bookmakers far less profitable, as the FOBT machines have historically been the most lucrative source of income from betting shops. Traditional gambling on sports events has lost a substantial amount of ground to the electronic machines. The number of betting shops is being slashed on many high streets; Ladbrokes, the second biggest gambling chain in the UK closed ninety of its 2,250 stores in the last year, including the one that used to be located in Erith High Street, which nowadays still stands empty. It expects to close more this year, as does its rival William Hill, which recently cut 420 jobs and closed 109 betting shops. Whilst the loss of jobs is to be regretted, the employment situation is not all bad; in many cases the old betting shop units are being converted into restaurants – this trend has been strongest in central London and the West End, but there are indicators that it may spread to other areas. If we really have weathered the recession, but the betting companies are now laying higher taxes and rates of duty, we may see a real retreat of them from the high street, and hopefully the return of healthier alternative businesses.

The Erith and Belvedere Football Club correspondent Brian Spurrell reports:- "Erith and Belvedere FC are among the last ten teams left standing in a national competition whose final takes place at Wembley!  Their FA Vase fifth round tie at Holbeach United was postponed yesterday, which means they’re still in the hat for the quarter-final draw to be made by the FA tomorrow lunchtime.  The Deres’ Barnehurst neighbours Phoenix Sports were soundly beaten 4-1 at North Shields, so E&B are the south-east’s last presence in the competition. The Deres, currently 2nd in the Southern Counties East league, travelled to Holbeach (8 miles east of Spalding in Lincolnshire) on Friday, staying in a hotel to prepare for the tie.  Many of their supporters were en route to the game when news broke that it had been postponed owing to a partially frozen pitch.  So they’ll try again next Saturday. Holbeach United are 3rd in the United Counties League, and the other postponed tie was between Glossop North End (2nd, North West Counties) and Dunston UTS  from Gateshead (3rd, Northern League).  The six teams already through to the quarter-finals are:
Ascot United (5th, Hellenic League)
Highworth Town near Swindon (8th, Hellenic League)
North Shields (2nd, Northern League)
St Austell (3rd, South West Peninsula)
Shaw Lane Aquaforce from Barnsley (4th, Northern Counties East)
Tadcaster Albion (1st, Northern Counties East)
So tomorrow could either bring us a massive home game or a very long away trip!  The FA website will have the news tomorrow afternoon.  Meanwhile the Deres face Canterbury City in a league game at home (Park View Road, Welling) on Tuesday night".

The news that Ocado are building a large distribution centre just off Bronze Age Way is very encouraging news indeed. Three thousand brand new jobs for an area with a higher than average level of unemployment is excellent news. The location of the new warehouse complex makes good sense – there is plenty of unused land in the area, it is relatively cheap, especially when one considers its relatively close proximity to central London, along with excellent road links to the A2, M20, M25 and the South Circular. Coincidentally Ocado have just published their first quarter showing profits, so hopefully business is picking up for the online retailer. Construction of the new distribution centre is due to begin later this year, and should be fully operational early in 2017. There has been no word yet as to when the company will start recruiting for roles in the local area. Ocado will be joining Tesco, Asda and Lidl, all of whom already have warehouses and distribution centres in the local area – underlining the combination of relatively cheap real estate and excellent communications that the area between Erith and Lower Belvedere offers to the retail and service industries.

I was perhaps a little premature when I announced the formation of a new ten officer Police squad to patrol Thamesmead after the recent spate of drug and gang related violence, there has been yet another shooting last week. Police were called to Erebus Drive in West Thamesmead after gun shots were reported at around 4.30am on the 1^st February. This is one of the upmarket areas of Thamesmead, which is adjacent to the Woolwich Royal Arsenal Development, and not where one would normally expect gang related shootings. A chap called Clive Massi was found with a number of people in a couple of cars – he was suffering from one or more gunshot wounds. Ambulance staff tried to stabilise him and got him to hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries two hours later. The usual talk – backers on the News Shopper website have made assumptions as to what had happened – and I must admit that the circumstances reported make the situation look like it had some kind of gang involvement, but until the Police complete their investigations nobody will know for sure. Whatever the specifics of the event, locals will understandably continue to not feel safe walking the streets.  I am unsure if the new Police team have actually started work yet, but it would seem that they are desperately needed in an area which is getting an unenviable reputation for lawlessness. Until September 2011, I used to spend a great deal of time in the area in and around Erebus Drive. My late Dad’s nursing home was (and is) in Pier Way, which leads in Erebus Drive, and the river frontage with some very nice (and expensive) riverside apartment buildings. Not quite as fancy an address as the Woolwich Royal Arsenal next door, but desirable nonetheless. Whether the residents will feel the need to club together to hire private security to patrol their estate, as already happens in the Arsenal is debatable.

The end video this week is something that you may not have seen before. It features a singer / songwriter who really ought to be a lot better known. He is a blues / rock guitarist of amazing virtuosity call Joe Bonamassa. The music press have dubbed him "the new Eric Clapton" - though personally I think he sounds a little more like David Gilmour. The video shows him playing at the Royal Albert Hall. He's well known to musos and listeners to the DAB radio station Planet Rock, but thus far has not broken through to the mainstream. Incidentally, the somewhat dilapidated Fender Stratocaster that Bonamassa is playing in the video was lent to him by the family of the late Irish blues master Rory Gallagher, who was a large influence on the playing style of Joe Bonamassa. The track "Sloe Gin" is a Bonamassa trademark - listen to the blistering solo at the end. The guy is a master craftsman of the guitar. Comments below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.