Erith Manor House.

Work has finally begun on repairing the fire damaged roof of Moat House in James Watt Way Erith; as you may recall, back in early August there was an extremely serious fire which destroyed much of the roof and top floor of the very recently opened block of apartments for affordable rent. All of the residents of Moat House were successfully evacuated from the building, and have subsequently been put up in temporary accommodation. The fire story made the national news. Things went very quiet since then, and my attempts at investigation had met with very little in the way of new information. I had heard contradictory reports regarding the standard of the temporary accommodation that the tenants had been moved into, but even those stories turned out to have little in the way of new information. Now things are finally moving. Over the last week scaffolding has been erected around Moat House, and preparations have begun to repair the damage the fire has caused have begun, as you can see in the photo above - click on it for  a larger view. Moat House is one of the most notable buildings in the centre of town, and the building is high enough to make itself a local landmark. It is also an important building in terms of providing much needed, high quality housing for affordable rent. Erith ranks only second to Dagenham in being the cheapest place to live within an hour's commute of central London. It is therefore becoming an increasingly attractive place to move to. I have to be honest, twenty years ago, when I first moved to Erith it was not because of the scenery or the local amenities, it was because it was very cheap at the time. That was in the days of the old hideous concrete monstrosity shopping centre, before Morrison's had opened on the old Erith Deep Water Wharf site, and when the only supermarket in the town was the small Co-Op in what is now the Farm Foods shop. Back then Erith had little in the way of amenities - what it did have however was extremely cheap housing. I was able to to buy Pewty Acres for a very reasonable £42,500 - a figure completely unimaginable now. The intervening two decades have seen Erith change hugely for the better - the refurbished Erith Riverside Shopping Centre, the Sports Centre, the Health Centre and the forthcoming new Fit4Less gym, to name but a handful of many other local amenities that have arrived in the town over the last two decades. Erith is now in a better shape than it has been for over fifty years - new homes and businesses are opening up left and right, and an influx of new people are moving into the area. There is a fair way still to go, but in my opinion things are getting steadily better, and there is more improvement to come. One mixed thing that is coming out of the gradual "gentrification" (I hate that term) of the town is that property prices are on the up. The News Shopper are reporting that research has looked at how difficult it is for someone in London to buy their own home without help from the ‘bank of mum and dad’ or a partner. It took the average salary in the capital of £34,320, banks lending buyers up to four times this figure and the average cost of a flat in London being £457,000. It then calculated that if prospective property owners put 10 per cent of their net salary away each month it would take a typical Londoner 121 years to buy that first home. Even saving 20 per cent of take-home pay, it would still take 60 years to get the keys to an average priced flat. In Bexley it would take just under 36 years to £94,311 – start now and you’d be there around this time in 2052. There currently is simply too little property being built; and whilst the London Borough of Bexley does not suffer from the absentee owner / investors as some other parts of London does, as the Elizabeth Line opens, property investors will undoubtedly hit on the area. Also on the subject of property, a tenancy fraud has been uncovered, and a man has been found guilty at Bexley Magistrates Court. The Bexley Times have reported that on October 19th, Faruq Hameed, of Bainbridge Road in Dagenham, pleaded guilty to two charges of dishonestly sub-letting his social housing flat at Cobham House, Boundary Street. Evidence collected by investigators showed Hameed was making a profit of almost £200 a month from one sub-letter, charging monthly rent of £650 - significantly higher than the £482.71 charged by Orbit Housing. An investigation By Orbit's fraud team revealed Hameed was not living at Cobham House but had been sub-letting it to others between May 2014 and December 2015, and from January 2015 to August 2015. For each charge Hameed was given six weeks imprisonment suspended for 12 months, to run concurrently; a community order for 80 hours of unpaid work and an Unlawful Profit Order for £4,800. He was also ordered to pay £500 costs and £80 victim surcharge, and a collection order was made. It would appear that the fraud did not take very long to detect and prosecute, which is good to know. I believe that Cobham House is part of the proposed Arthur Street redevelopment which Orbit plan once they have finished the second phase of the Erith Park development on the other side of Northend Road is completed. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The photos above both shows Pier Road, Erith and how it looked in the past. Many thanks to the person who wishes to remain anonymous who sent me the upper black and white photo which shows the road in what appears to be the 1930's, and to Martin Barnes of the popular FaceBook group - Bexleyheath, Crayford and Erith, past, present and future, who sent me the lower colour photo of the same location, taken in 1966 shortly before the block of shops was demolished to make way for the much hated brutalist concrete shopping centre. 

It would seem that some serious consequences have come from the recent riot that took place in Northumberland Heath, that made the national news. Schools inspector OFSTED have made unannounced inspections of several local secondary schools, and have published a pretty damning report on their findings. Inspectors visited St Catherine's Catholic School, St Columba’s Catholic Boys’ School, Woolwich Polytechnic School for Boys and Erith School. The report’s author, Sir Michael Wilshaw wrote:- “I found it difficult to comprehend how the individual schools did not pick up, at an early stage, that a significant number of students were plotting and planning a fight at the end of the school day.  The pastoral and welfare systems of the schools should have been finely tuned to issues of this nature and particularly to the changing atmosphere in classrooms, playgrounds and corridors as students became excited and agitated by the prospect of trouble with other schools.  All my experience has taught me that in good schools, when trouble is brewing, staff intervene and take action very quickly before events take over and escalate. This is worrying.  Leaders do not ensure that the promotion of tolerance and respect towards pupils from different groups and cultures is effective.  They do not ensure that staff consistently challenge pupils’ misconceptions and stereotypes. Good behaviour, both in and out of school, is not promoted well enough. Pupils do not receive enough information about how to keep themselves safe outside school.  Leaders therefore do not fully prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.” The report follows the riot, which took place on the evening of the 19th September, involved more than a hundred youths; there were seven arrest made by the Police, and two people were taken to hospital as a result of injuries received during the mass disturbance. After extensive investigation, it would appear that the riot initially started in Bexleyheath Broadway. Even on a normal day, hundreds of pupils from schools in the area congregate here to catch buses home. There were rumours that teenagers from rival gangs were meeting to fight after the brother of one of them had been attacked. On school days, a couple of PCSO’s stand in the square to keep an eye on the children and to encourage them to move swiftly on to buses and out of the area. On the Monday of the riot, however, shopkeepers noticed a growing crowd of children. Soon skirmishes began, and when the PCSO’s and Police officers intervened, the youths used their free bus passes to travel to Northumberland Heath, where the main violence really kicked off. Initially it was thought to be inter – school rivalry, but subsequently evidence has come to light that there was almost certainly a racial element to the violence. Two local gangs – the Thamesmead based RA (Racial Attack) gang, which is composed of white youths were pitched against members of the Woolwich based black gang, T-Block. Several national tabloid papers have engaged in some pretty lurid speculation, but at the end of the day, the riot does not seem to be very much more than the usual lawless kids kicking off – aided by social media. Now the policing situation in Bexleyheath Broadway around the clock tower have changed markedly; instead of two PCSO's, there are ten PCSO's and full Police officers commanded by a sergeant who patrol the area from early afternoon until all of the school children have left the area. This must cost an utter fortune, and stopos officers from carrying out other duties. If you have any experiences or insight into this issue, please leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Bexley CAMRA have just published the following announcement regarding popular pub magazine "Draught Copy" :- "Given that "Draught Copy", which circulates to the majority of Bexley Branch pubs as well as to Maidstone/Mid-Kent and Gravesend and Darent Valley branches, urgently needs production hands, the editor has posted the item below in the latest pages. We would like to add our voices to the appeal for assistance. If you think either of the roles listed might be the thing for you or someone you know and you might like to try your hand at it then let us know in reply here and we will coordinate as appropriate. This is a first-class CAMRA campaigning opportunity. Last Copy? It is with considerable sadness that we tell you that with the departure of editor, Tim Mathews, to Emsworth, your free local newsletter must take a break until a new editor and production team can be mustered. Thank you for reading us over the many years that this publication has been available. Thank you, too, to our advertisers who have kept the production costs viable for us within the Maidstone & Mid-Kent branch. It has been an enjoyable time putting together Draught Copy and it will be missed. But we trust that this will only be a hiatus and not a funeral. If there are any members from the three branches Draught Copy represents, who would like to take on the role(s) of editor and typesetter, then do please let us know". It would be a real shame to see the end of "Draught Copy".

Many security organisations use high definition video cameras linked to sophisticated computer based facial recognition systems to detect and record the comings and goings of people in public areas and elsewhere. Facial recognition technology has improved markedly over the last decade. Although well-trained machines can recognise objects more quickly and accurately than most humans, they can’t handle change very well. Humans can still recognise the same faces even if they appear slightly differently, but for machines it’s more difficult because they process images by searching for particular features. Slight changes to images can mislead neural networks. Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill announced. Results from their paper “Real and Stealthy Attacks on State-of-the-Art Face Recognition” were presented at last week’s ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Austria. Criminals and ordinary people wishing to avoid being recognised simply had to be mistaken for some arbitrary face. For impersonation, the identity must be recognized as someone the system already knows. The team trained neural networks to recognize 2,622 celebrities, three researchers and two volunteers. During the trials, one of the researchers – a South Asian woman – was incorrectly read as a Middle Eastern man 88 per cent of the time. Her paper spectacles hoodwinked the artificial intelligence into simply not recognising her. Impersonation is a little tricker. Although one male researcher wearing the paper glasses could pass as Milla Jovovich, an actress and supermodel, almost 90 per cent of the time, another male researcher had a hard time trying to impersonate Clive Owen, an actor – only succeeding around 16 per cent of the time. There isn’t anything special about the spectacles themselves. The frames were just printed on paper and overlaid on proper glasses. Obviously there are simpler ways to trick facial recognition systems. People can wear face masks or heavy makeup, but the authors of the report wanted to look for ways to trick the system inconspicuously, without tampering with the facial biometric software before or during the training process. “Facial accessories, such as eyeglasses, help make attacks plausibly deniable, as it is natural for people to wear them,” the security research team said.

Erith has cropped up a few times in the course of the greater history of the United Kingdom, most famously as the place where Alexander Selkirk – the real life “Robinson Crusoe” came ashore after being shipwrecked and living on a desert island. Something that until now has been less known is that Erith is thought by some historians from Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre to have played a pivotal role in the Gunpowder Plot. In some information they released just in time for Guy Fawkes’ Night back in 2012, when they indicated that their research showed that in the summer of 1605, Erith Manor House, which was located on what is now Erith High Street, was rented under a pseudonym by Anne Vaux, the daughter of Lord William Vaux, the head of one of the wealthiest and most prominent Catholic families in the country at the time. Anne Vaux was known to arrange for safe houses to be made available for Catholic priests to hide up and hold underground church services – Catholics were widely persecuted in England at the time. Erith Manor House was considered an ideal location for Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other plotters against the King to hide up, as it had, according to Catesby “a secluded but convenient location” on the banks of the Thames, which had the added benefit of offering an easy escape route by boat, should the situation arise. What the plotters did not realise was that the intelligence service of the time was aware of them – spymaster Sir Anthony Standen, first assistant to Sir Francis Walsingham, who was then head of the English Secret Service, working directly for King James I, had broken up a plot (The Bye Plot – click here for more details) eighteen months before hand, and was now acutely aware that other Catholic activists had designs on the life of the Protestant monarch. Sir Anthony had informants all over the place, and soon became aware of the small group of men who were acting very suspiciously in and around Erith. Several of the plotters had also been seen in a number of taverns in Southwark, and it is possible that they were followed back to Erith, where their safe house was then discovered. When agents subsequently raided the house, the conspirators had already made their escape, and the place was deserted. Some of this is extrapolation from verified facts – it is certain that Anne Vaux did indeed rent Erith Manor House using the cover name Mrs Perkins, though it is not certain the Gunpowder Plotters did use it as their primary base of operations – there may well have been an underground Catholic church in the house, which in itself would have aroused suspicions. Unfortunately there is no opportunity for Erith Manor House to become a tourist attraction, as it was demolished in the 19th century after falling into a state of disrepair. Personally I think the story is somewhat fanciful. A group of wealthy gentlemen taking residence would stand out like a sore thumb in a small fishing village, as Erith was back at that time. Their fine clothes and expensive horses would mark them as outsiders, and this would be certain to at the very least provoke curiosity from local people.  I think it far more likely that their base of operations was located in Southwark, which in those days was effectively lawless.

I know many law abiding local motorbike riders are heartily fed up with the illegal activities of Bike Life TV UK – the gang of feral scumbags who congregate on their stolen, uninsured and unlicensed mopeds, motorbikes and quad bikes and who criminally ride, pulling wheelies and other idiotic stunts on public roads, causing distress and danger to civilised local residents. They have seemingly ridden with impunity for the last couple of years, but it would appear that this is now thankfully changing. The gang (who laughingly refer to themselves as a “family” on their website – which may be true in a sense, as many of their members would appear to be knuckle dragging inbreds). Bike Life TV UK held a get together in Blackheath last Sunday, where over a hundred illegal riders raced along roads, many not wearing helmets; this time the Police were present, and a total of seventeen illegal bikers were stopped by the Police using stinger tyre deflation devices when the riders refused to stop when ordered. Four riders were subsequently arrested and charged with a variety of offences, including disorder and anti-social behaviour – a fact I find hard to reconcile with the fact that seventeen illegal bikers had to be forcibly stopped by puncturing their bike tyres – I would have expected all of them to have been arrested under the circumstances? Still – it is a start. The Police regularly confiscate and crush illegal bikes – the trouble is, the criminal bikers just go and steal new ones. It would seem that the events of Halloween eve in Blackheath may be the start of a well – overdue crackdown on the gang. Their principal areas of operation are Thamesmead, Lower Belvedere and the Slade Green Marshes, although Bike Life TV UK are now such a large criminal group that their activities spread to a far wider area nowadays. Several of the group have been injured in carrying out stunts on public roads, and two have actually been killed. This needs to stop.

Bexley Brewery have announced their real ale lineup for Christmas - you can see their order form above - click on for a larger version - please feel free to download the form to print out and place an order with them. If you have not sampled their ales before, they produce extremely high quality beers made with locally sourced ingredients; I am  regular customer at their brewery and shop, located on the Manford Industrial Estate at the Slade Green end of Manor Road, Erith.

I have previously written at some lengths about by opposition to the government’s proposed roll – out of smart utility meters. News was published earlier this week that the IT system designed to underpin the smart meter roll – out remains unfinished. The last time it missed a smart meter deadline, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) promised that “the new infrastructure is planned to go live at the end of September”. That did not happen. The IT system was initially planned to be up and running in April 2015, but was subsequently delayed until December 2015, then April 2016, then August 2016, and has now missed its September 2016 deadline. The project is being run by a subsidiary of Capita called The Data and Communications Company (DCC), which responsible for providing the communications infrastructure for smart meter readings. The smart meter infrastructure project was subject to an impact assessment back in 2014. The result of that assessment was that the project would come with an £11 billion bill to be paid by customers, and was described as “in danger of becoming a "costly failure" by a government report after a farcical number of delays and internal government warnings that it would most likely not be completed for another 50 years. Last year, the Institute of Directors warned that the smart meter project would add billions to consumers' bills and that the rollout "should be 'halted, altered or scrapped' to avoid a potentially catastrophic government IT disaster". As of today, the “timely rollout” of the smart meter system promised by the government has remained anything but, and the requirement to see domestic suppliers using the DCC by 1 August of next year seems as if it may not be met. The potential annual cost savings that energy companies claim, are frankly minuscule compared with an average household’s  other outgoings, and certainly too small to warrant drastic changes like replacing the fridge or oven, or less drastic ones like pre-emptively changing the lightbulbs. The irony of course is that those who would benefit the most from reducing their energy bills are generally those without the cash to do something about it. I am sure a lot of people on the bread line would like to save £20 a month by upgrading their electrical appliances, but they are a bit stuffed by not having the money to do so. The best most of them can do is to turn things off, and you don't need a smart meter to tell you that. Germany has already cancelled their own domestic smart meter programme, on the grounds that forecasts showed that it was going to cost far more money than it would have saved, and that is aside from any personal privacy or network infrastructure security worries that I have outlined in the past.

Concerns are growing in respect of the future fate of Hall Place, the borough’s stately home located conveniently close to the A2 at Old Bexley. The trust which has run the historic house and formal gardens has announced that it is no longer able to operate.  Cuts to the trust’s council grant and the prospect of becoming self-sufficient by 2020 mean the Tudor house and gardens will be handed back to the council as of April 2017 after a unanimous vote by trustees. Bexley Council have announced that the historic site is safe, but I share the concerns of many local residents. Speaking in the Bexley Times, Councillor Peter Craske said it was  “a ‘difficult decision’ caused by the gradual removal of funding from central government. The council recognises the significance of Hall Place and Gardens - an important and well-loved heritage site – which is not only an impressive historic destination for residents and tourists, but also provides a premiere wedding and event venue. In recognition of its value, I would like to make it absolutely clear that it will be ‘business as normal’ for Hall Place House and Gardens – both as a visitor attraction and also as a wedding/event venue.” From the experience these reassurances may count for little, though at present it is too early to say for certain. I doubt that anything drastic will happen to Hall Place – I don’t foresee it being converted into a Travelodge, for example (Hall Place is a Grade 1 listed historic building) but I do think that changes are likely to take place. If you have any insight into this, please leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The ending video this week shows Erith Pier - the longest pier on the River Thames, and one of the most overlooked and underrated features of the town. The video shows the pier both with the tide out, showing the extensive mudflats, and at high tide. When the weather is nice there are few better places to be than strolling on the pier. Have a watch and see what you think.

YouTube - you fool.

The photo above was taken by me recently; it shows the traveller pony that lives on the parcel of land between Morrison's car park and the Thames side walk. Various ponies have been kept on the land for the last few years. They seem generally well looked after, and many parents with small children take them to visit, usually taking a couple of carrots or an apple for the pony. The area is adjacent to the recycling centre that has been the root of so many problems. When I have mentioned the recycling centre behind Morrison’s and next to the terminus of James Watt Way, it has usually been to bemoan the problem of commercial fly – tippers, who habitually dump materials which should really be taken to a proper tip like the one in Thames Road, Crayford. This time things are different; the Morrison’s recycling centre has been a victim of its own success over the Christmas period. It would seem that local people have been taking their Christmas wrapping materials, cardboard and plastic and disposing of them responsibly at the site. The problem has been that the dedicated waste hoppers in the recycling centre have not been emptied over the holiday period, and the place has become overloaded with waste material. This has been especially noticeable with regard to the bottle banks on the site – Christmas is always a time when more glass bottles get used than during the rest of the year, and it is easy to understand how the bottle banks could get overwhelmed. This situation got me thinking – recycling glass bottles is far better than making brand new ones from raw materials, but it is still a very energy intensive process – a hell of a lot of electricity gets used to melt down the glass and reform them into new bottles or other glass objects. Would it not be far preferable to return the bottles to the manufacturer to be stripped of labels, steam cleaned and then re – used? This was the old way of doing things, and I wonder why the practice was ever stopped? My feeling is that we should look to reintroduce a deposit charge on glass bottles to encourage them to be returned to the original supplier for sterilisation and re – use. I reckon  a 10 – 15p deposit charge would do the trick, and it might even encourage the old children’s trick of scouring the streets for old bottles to return to collect the deposit as a way of generating extra pocket money. This would have the secondary effect of partially clearing the streets of rubbish. It might be a long shot, but potentially I can see it working. What do you think? Is this too ambitious, misdirected, or is it the way to go? Do leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

I am aware that humour is a very personal thing, and what appeals to one person may not appeal to another. Nevertheless, I have been astonished at the success of one programme in particular, which I just cannot understand the appeal of, as it seems to hark back to early 1970’s sit coms like “Bless this House” and “On the Buses” whilst to my mind lacking the wit or charm of those shows. On top of all this, the show managed to rack up the highest viewing ratings of the Christmas period – so a lot of people must like it. What show am I talking about? “Mrs Browns Boys”. It really seems to be a Marmite show for a lot of viewers – you either love or loathe it, and I am firmly in the latter group. It does seem to be a “guilty pleasure” programme, as when I have mentioned it to people, all I have asked have said that they detest it, but some at least must be lying, as the viewing figures have been so high. I won't bother a critique of “Mrs Browns Boys” as others have done far better than I, and I know my personal views are extremely unlikely to sway the opinion of someone who actually likes the show. I am mystified.

You may recall that last week I had an article comparing Pier Road today with what it looked like back in 1972, just before the old Victorian row of shops were demolished on what is now the site of Farm Foods and the Erith Police Office. Local Historian Ken Chamberlain has kindly supplied the following two photographs; the upper one shows the Victorian shops in Pier Road when they had been stripped and were awaiting demolition. The shops, from left to right were:- Randall Press, Collins Dry Cleaners, H.M.L. Miles. Shoe shop, Penton and Deans Gents outfitters, Turntable Record shop, George Gilbert Photographers, A (name unknown) Dry Cleaners, Barclays Bank, then an alleyway. Two semi-detached Villas, Solicitors and Doctors Surgery, Then the two semis that faced towards Bexley Road.

The second photo (click on it for a larger view) may look exceedingly unfamiliar to anyone who only knows the modern Erith – it was taken from the opposite end of Pier Road, where it met with Bexley Road, adjacent to Christ Church – which is just to the right of the scene, but out of the photograph. The building in the picture was the Wheatley Hotel – a popular pub that had overnight accommodation for travellers from the nearby Erith Station. The pub was located roughly where the hideous fish roundabout now resides. I can tell that the second photograph was taken at some point between 1964 and 1972, as the car at the turning of the road is a Morris 1800 mark one, better known colloquially as a “Land Crab” – a very popular model at the time. Since the premises in Pier Road were demolished in 1972 / 73, and the car only went on sale in 1964, hence the approximate ago of the image. Nevertheless it is quite difficult to visualise the location bearing in mind how much the basic geography of central Erith has changed since the horrendous 1970’s Brutalist Concrete shopping centre was built – the roads in and around the town centre were re – sited, renamed and in some cases totally ceased to exist. I have a couple of maps from the late 1940s’ that bear little resemblance to the town we see today. I suspect that much of the changes to the roads were quite necessary – the main aim of the work seems to be to permit far higher levels of motor traffic to pass through the town without causing a traffic jam – though the Bexley Road Bridge has historically always been a local choke point for traffic – an issue the Council have talked about addressing by widening the bridge to allow two lanes in each direction, instead of the current one lane. Whether it actually comes to pass is now debatable, as Bexley Council are cutting back their expenditure yet further. The only way I see the work now being done is if a body like Transport for London takes up the task.

This week is the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the Sinclair C5 electric vehicle. As some may know, I had a very minor part in the history of the C5, as I used to know Adam Harper, Belvedere based inventor, engineer and businessman - the photo above (click for a larger view) shows him with his record breaking customised C5 at Silverstone race circuit in the summer of 1995, where he was able to open it up on the main circuit as part of a series of public demonstrations of the Guinness world record breaking machine. You can read more about Adam Harper in an interview here. More on him later. Sir Clive Sinclair dominated the home computer market in the UK and much of Europe in the early 1980’s. His ZX80 and subsequent ZX 81 barebones computers introduced many people into the world of computer programming, and the subsequent colour Sinclair ZX Spectrum became the computer of choice for untold millions of people – it was a simple computer with adequate, if not particularly outstanding specifications for the time. It was easy to program, and had very bright, colourful graphics. This, along with the relatively cheap retail price meant it was extremely popular, and there was a huge amount of software available for the ZX Spectrum, including thousands of games. Many of today’s programmers learned their first code on a ZX Spectrum. Emboldened by huge commercial success, Sir Clive Sinclair turned his attention to another of his areas of interest, personal transportation. In a project that illustrates how wild success in one realm can build over-confidence that leads to utter failure in another, the Sinclair C5 was to forever tarnish the Sinclair name. The C5 was a battery-assisted tricycle (not an electric car, as elements of the press kept saying) that was intended to revolutionise personal transportation. On paper it was able to drive up to twenty miles on a single battery charge for just a few pence,  the C5 was supposed to be the solution to urban congestion and the high cost of owning a car. Unfortunately the design fell short of the market requirements and the machine was savaged by the press following its launch. Among the issues:- The open concept and exposed driver position meant the C5 was only really practical in dry weather, although a wet weather kit including a fitted poncho for the driver was soon available. It had no reverse gear and was difficult to turn around in confined spaces. Even modest hills were too much for the C5’s battery to handle and the design meant that using the pedals to assist was hard to do effectively. There were quality control problems at the factory, and early reports of components failing further dented the machine’s reputation. Perhaps most importantly, the public did not feel safe driving such a small and open vehicle in real traffic. In the end 17,000 were sold, but this was far short of projections. To many, the C5 was seen as a novelty item rather than a serious mode of transportation and just eleven months after the failed launch, Sinclair Vehicles went bankrupt. As long term readers of the Maggot Sandwich will be aware, I had some involvement with the story of the C5; when Sinclair Vehicles went bust, the entire remaining stock of unsold C5’s, along with component parts and tooling was bought by a company based in Upper Belvedere called Harper Cycles, which was run by Adam Harper. He correctly realised that the C5 had been given a mauling by the press, which had effectively ended its chances of success, but nevertheless seventeen thousand of the vehicles had been sold. The owners would require spares, servicing and repairs. Harper also correctly surmised that the C5 would become a cult vehicle, and mint, unused vehicles would appreciate considerably in price. Adam Harper made a steady income supporting C5’s for many years, and supplied new vehicles to Princes William and Harry at Kensington Palace, and created a one – off solar powered model for science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke for use on his estate in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Many of the press “facts” about the Sinclair C5 were made up, and in many cases just plain wrong. It became an urban myth that the C5 used a washing machine motor – in reality the motor was built in a Hotpoint factory, but it was a specially designed, high efficiency unit that was even studied by NASA as it had such an impressive power to weight ratio. It was also said that the rider sat too low to the ground, making the machine dangerous – in fact one sat at the same height as if you were sitting in a Ford Capri MK III. The separate aluminium alloy chassis the C5 used was designed and built by Lotus Cars at their Hethel factory, and was capable of far more performance than the C5 had. The poor road speed of the C5 was not down to any technical limitation – it was restricted to fifteen miles an hour in order to comply with UK traffic law – any powered vehicle capable of more than this speed required a licence to use, which would have essentially killed the project before birth. This is not to say the C5 did not have problems – the short battery life being one of the biggest challenges – a rider would not get anything like the claimed twenty mile range, even when pedaling to assist the electric motor. Adam Harper invented an improved battery and power management system which cured this weakness, which was available as a retrofit to existing machines. Adam also sold considerable numbers of the powerful and efficient C5 motor to competitors in BBC 2’s series “Robot Wars”, and many of the winning robots were powered by his products. Because of this connection, Adam Harper ended up as one of the “Robot Wars” competition judges; I used to regularly accompany him to filming, which took place in an old warehouse next door to the Excel Centre in East London. As I have previously written in some detail, Adam Harper also set a Guinness World Record for the fastest electric three wheeled vehicle in a hugely modified Sinclair C5 that could hit 0-60 in under four seconds, and exceed 150 mph. The main reason for the creation of the C5 racing machine was to scotch the incorrect stories about the normal C5 and give the much maligned machine a bit of a publicity boost, though nowadays the C5 has a reputation as a gigantic white elephant. It was certainly not perfect, but it was  way ahead of its time, and nowhere near as bad as the press would have you believe. 

Not too long before Christmas I was walking through Soho on my way to a meeting at an office just off Berwick Street. It had been some time since I had passed that way, and I was pleasantly surprised at how the area has been cleaned up and made a lot more visitor friendly. I had cut through St. Anne’s Court – once a very seedy and run down area, but now a pleasant and very up market office and residential location I really did not need to walk the route that I did, but there were personal reasons, as the area holds some memories for me. Back in the mid 1980’s St. Anne’s Court was the home to Shades Record Shop. This was a basement shop over which was built a structure that somewhat resembled a large garden shed that was plastered in posters advertising bands and films. Alice’s Restaurant was a pirate radio station operating out of East London, which played an esoteric mix of mainly rock based music – the record shop was allegedly nothing to do with the radio station, but pretty much everyone knew the opposite. To enter the shop you had to go through a slightly forbidding (at least to a thirteen year old) doorway and down a flight of stairs to the shop itself. The first thing one noticed about the shop was the huge number of rock and heavy metal albums the place contained – albums from bands I had never heard of, and exotic imports from Japan and elsewhere; the second thing was the fact the ceiling of the shop was covered in black bin liners held in place with drawing pins. Initially I thought this was some kind of post punk arty design, but I soon found out that they were there for a far more prosaic reason; they stopped the rain from leaking through from the upstairs. It was that kind of place – initially it appeared quite intimidating, but the staff were knowledgeable and friendly, and every so often a rock star would pay a visit – Lemmy from Motorhead was a regular, and many rock and heavy metal bands would hold album signings in the shop. When I was working for Radio Caroline I did not have time to visit, and by the time I turned up in St. Anne's Court a couple of years later, I was only to find it boarded up and empty. Their lease had run out and the landlord had decided to sell the site to a property developer; shortly thereafter the shed was demolished and a new office building constructed on the site.  To be honest the area needed improvement, but nevertheless it was a shame to see the shop  disappear. Not long afterwards the radio station closed down, with some of the staff going on to form the excellent and ground breaking RFM Rock Radio, a station that nearly got a commercial licence, but ended up losing out to KISS FM. Shades record shop was a one - off place. You can read more about it here.

In 2014 medical institutions and healthcare providers made up nearly a third of all hacking attacks and other data breaches, according to records from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse campaign group. While attacks on financial services are slightly more prevalent, consumers should be much more concerned with getting their medical insurance or NHS health records ripped off. In the first place, banks tend to cover consumers in instances of fraud. If someone steals your Visa card number and uses it to buy a round-trip ticket to Kazakhstan, and you will easily get those charges reversed — plus the bank will issue you a new card. But even in the worst case scenario, your personal well being isn't threatened. Not so with medical fraud. As the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance points out in its report on medical fraud, the patient often doesn’t find out their identity has been stolen until they notice a discrepancy in their own records. For instance, a man goes into to a hospital to get treated for a back injury. Upon being X-rayed the doctor also notices that the man has a swollen lymph node, for which he prescribes penicillin. The man says he is allergic to penicillin. The doctor asks, then why did you come into this hospital a week ago for penicillin? The man says, I didn't come into the hospital a week ago for penicillin. Now imagine that same scenario except the patient is unconscious and his/her record has been altered to remove the reference to his penicillin allergy. Now we are talking about a scenario where the patient’s life is potentially in danger. In addition, it can be really hard to prove that you didn't receive the medical services indicated on your record, which can cause all sort of confusion to GP’s and their practice administrators. Medical identities can sell for as little as $50 U.S, according to a report issued earlier this year by the FBI. With more and more hospitals moving to electronic health records and healthcare breaches on the rise, it is hard to see how this problem won’t become more widespread in the coming year. When I received a notification from my G.P that they were moving to electronic records, I completed and returned the denial of request form; whilst my medical records are very boring, I really don't want to see them being bandied about for sale online by some Bulgarian hacker collective. The threat is not just to your records from a medical perspective, but that they also may be used in identity theft, or even for blackmail purposes.

Just as the Maggot Sandwich was about to go to press, one of my occasional contributors, Brian, dropped me the following story concerning Erith and Belvedere Football Club, which local football fans may well find of interest. "The Deres are at home to Yaxley FC on Sunday 18 January in the fourth round of the FA Vase.  Both teams are thus four wins from Wembley! - where the Vase final will be played on 9 May.  The game kicks off at 3pm at Park View Road, where the Deres groundshare with Welling United. The FA Vase is for teams below step 4 of the non-league Pyramid, and Erith & Belvedere's league (Southern Counties East) is the best represented at this stage, with 5 teams in the last 32.  Near neighbours Phoenix Sports, based in Crayford, have a long trip to Bodmin Town, and have decided to make a weekend of it with an overnight stay in Newquay.  Another Kent-Cornwall clash sees Greenwich Borough host St Austell, while further down into Kent Ashford United host Norwich United and Tunbridge Wells (Vase finalists in 2013) visit Highworth Town."

You may recall that I have mentioned the fight against illegal bike riders in and around the local area; some months ago Erith Watch announced a success against one such rider who was photographed carrying out an offence, and subsequently identified and dealt with by the Police. This has not stopped a gang of illegal riders who regularly terrorise pedestrians and motorists around Northumberland Heath, Erith and Belvedere. The gang have made a major tactical error however - they have posted a video to YouTube which clearly identifies one of the ringleaders of the group that you can see in the screen capture above. One would think that a balding thirty - something would have better things to do than pull wheelies on an asthmatic 50cc scooter with a puny engine that sounds like an angry wasp in a biscuit tin, but it would appear not. Below you can see the entire video of the gang illegally riding their bikes in what would appear to be the Northern end of Norman Road / Mulberry Way in Lower Belvedere. If any of the gang are reading this - don't bother taking the video down from YouTube. It has already been downloaded and sent to the Police as evidence - oh, and by the way, I know you knew what you were doing was illegal - as you have digitally obscured the number plates on the bikes in the clip. You did not do a very good job however - and the owner of one bike in particular will be having his fat and sweaty collar felt before very long. How anyone can be so stupid as to film themselves carrying out illegal acts, and then publish them to the world on YouTube amazes me. See for yourself, and leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Yesterday and today.

The photo above was taken on Friday; it shows one of the lower profile housing developments that is taking place in Erith. This new apartment block is located in James Watt Way; it is being built by Moat, and consists of six one bedroomed apartments, twenty nine two bedroomed apartments and five three bedroomed apartments, all for affordable rent. The development has been partly funded by Boris Johnson and the Mayor of London's Housing Office. Affordable rental housing is to be applauded - there is just not enough of it coming onto the market right now. The downside for the future residents of this particular block is that it is sandwiched between Morrison's petrol station on one side, and the KFC drive - through on the other. Residents will be assailed by vehicle fumes and the smell of fuel on one side, and the pong of frying chicken oil on the other, and constant noise from both sides. Still, overall the development is good for the town - I guess that beggars cannot be choosers when it comes to affordable housing - if the site had been more pleasant, a developer would have wanted to build expensive apartments to sell at a greater profit.

Not long ago I read an excellent book on the recent history of Kent by historian Bob Ogley which recounted an event that I had never even heard about, that happened quite locally back in 1968. In those days Chatham dockyard was still being operated by the Royal Navy as an active base. It employed hundreds of local civilian workers, as well as military personnel. As a side note, the location of the dockyard at Chatham is one of the main reasons the North Kent rail line was built as early as it was; whilst it did serve the then new phenomenon of commuters from South East London and North Kent into central London, the main impetus behind the creation of the rail line so soon after the invention of the steam engine was clear – it was to connect the dockyard with both the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, and the Admiralty buildings in central London. The whole of the military operation of Victorian Britain (and thus the Empire) was dependent on the North Kent railway line – something few people nowadays are aware of; I digress – back on August the 17^th 1968, a fire broke out on HMS Valiant – a Royal Navy submarine that was in dry dock undergoing a refit. The specialised submarine dock had only been opened in June 1968, and the Valiant was its’ first customer. The submarine dock was constructed between numbers six and seven docks, and was designed for the refit and refuelling of the non-Polaris class nuclear attack submarines employed by the Royal Navy. The base had a huge cantilever crane for the removal of nuclear reactors, an office block, underground workshops and a health centre. The Valiant-class was the first fully British nuclear fleet submarine (the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, used an American nuclear reactor). There were only two boats of the class, HMS Valiant commissioned in 1966 and Warspite the following year. Both were built by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness, and based at Faslane during the sixties and seventies.. The class was based on Dreadnought but twenty feet longer and nine hundred tons greater submerged displacement (4900 tons). They also had a Paxman diesel-electric generator for emergencies. In 1967, Valiant set a then Royal Navy record of sailing 12,000 miles (19,312 km) submerged in twenty-eight days, from Singapore to the UK. Whilst in refit, a fire broke out aboard the Valiant, and extensive damage was caused. Both the dockyard fire department, and the civilian Chatham Fire Brigade attended the blaze; there were immediate concerns that a release of radiation could be resultant of the blaze, and nuclear contamination crews were summoned with protective clothing, respirators and Geiger counters. No release of radiation was found, despite intense speculation on the part of both local and national press at the time. The Valiant was successfully repaired, and later returned to active service. Valiant re-commissioned at Chatham in May 1972, later returning for a second refit in 1977. By 1975, Chatham Dockyard was the only Dockyard in Britain to undertake the refitting work of two nuclear submarines - Churchill and Dreadnought - at the same time. This was known as 'dual streaming'. In October 1975, the Dockyard even entered into 'triple streaming'; Churchill awaited re-commissioning at the end of the month; Dreadnought remained in refit and Conqueror entered refit for the first time at Chatham. The older nuclear-powered submarines of the Valiant / Churchill classes were prematurely withdrawn from service as a result of serious cracking in the primary cooling circuits of their nuclear reactors. The Swiftsure class had similar power plants and experienced the same problems. One, HMS Swiftsure, was decommissioned for this reason – if the components affected happen to be located in areas where high radioactivity is present, it is often too dangerous to make a repair - instead that have to be scrapped. HMS Valiant was finally paid off from naval service in 1994. Nowadays HMS Valiant has been decommissioned from the Royal Navy and is stored afloat at Devonport. The defuel (removal of the reactor and all radioactive materials) of HMS Valiant, which was docked in 14 Dock for Dock Down and Lay-up Preparations, was successfully completed and the submarine left 14 Dock on the 6 March 2003. It had been moored in 3 Basin along with other de-fuelled submarines. The problems encountered with the engineering works on the Valiant and other early nuclear submarines was not the one expected – no radiation was released, and no radioactive materials lost. The problem was far more prosaic, but arguably just as deadly. All of the submarines, and pretty much all of the surface vessels refitted at Chatham in the 1960’s and 1970’s used large quantities of Asbestos, both as pipe insulation, and for fire – proofing. Many of the civilian and military personnel were exposed to Asbestos dust during engineering works. As is now well known, exposure to Asbestos particles over time can cause Asbestosis, as well as several types of cancer. Nationwide there are nearly five thousand asbestos-related deaths a year (about half of which are from mesothelioma). The Medway area, which includes Chatham dockyard, is in the UK’s top four for asbestos related deaths. A total of 104 people died from mesothelioma in Medway between 2006 and 2010. This is way above the number one would expect from such as geographically small area. I understand that several legal cases have been lodged by former Chatham Dockyard workers with the Ministry of Defence over Asbestos related illnesses allegedly caused to people working there in the past.  I ought to make it abundantly clear that the dockyard (now a popular museum and film location – it is regularly used by the producers of “Call the Midwife” to stand in for 1950’s Poplar, and the producers of films including Sherlock Holmes – a Game of Shadows, Les Miserables, Children of Men, and The World is Not Enough have used the place as a location) is absolutely not now an asbestos or radiation risk. The dockyard makes for a fine family day out, with plenty to see and do for all ages. It even has an excellent pub / restaurant in the Ship and Trades, run by Shepherd Neame. You can read about the Chatham Historic Dockyard Museum here.

The launch of the “Dart Charge” at the Dartford River Crossing seems to have gone relatively smoothly. The scheme went live on the evening of the 30^th November. Charges apply to any vehicle crossing the bridge / going through one of the tunnels between 6am and 10pm – overnight the journey is free. The Highways Agency have stated that eighty five percent of the vehicles transiting the crossing during chargeable periods have paid up. That still leaves a whole lot of drivers who have not paid. Bearing in mind the Dartford Crossing gets roughly a million transits a month, that would mean that something in the region of 300,000 vehicle crossings have been made but not paid for. The new system uses Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to identify vehicles as they cross the River Thames. Drivers are supposed to prepay online, or to pay later within twenty four hours of using the service. Anyone not doing so will be sent a penalty charge notice costing £70, reduced to £35 if paid within fourteen days, and rises to £105 if left unpaid for twenty eight days. I suspect, as I have written before, a substantial number of fees will remain unpaid; ANPR technology is useful, but unreliable in anything other than perfect conditions. Some number plates will not be recognised, or will be misread – it only requires rain, mist, dust or a flurry of snow to disrupt the computer linked camera system. On top of this I suspect that a substantial number of regularly evading users will be using cloned number plates – a problem that is growing over time. Over all of this, there is the continuing resentment that local people have over the whole charging system; when the crossing was paid for, it was meant to be free – though how anyone actually believed this was going to happen, I do not understand. The Dartford Crossing is such as cash cow that any operator would be stupid to cut off such a lucrative money generator.

The photo above was taken from an old 8mm colour amateur movie shot in Erith in and around the town centre in 1972 / 1973. The shot is an interesting one as it shows the old and the new. To the right of the image you can see the then new concrete shopping centre, which had only just been constructed. To the left of the photo you can see the old Victorian shops in Pier Road, shortly before they were demolished to make way for the building that nowadays houses both Farmfoods and the Erith Police Office. Local Historian Ken Chamberlain has kindly supplied me with some information and photos of this old row of shops, and I will be covering this in more detail next week.

The photo above was taken on Friday afternoon in Pier Road, as close as possible to the site of the original shot - unfortunately the positioning is not exactly the same, but it does give you an idea as to how much the town centre has changed over the last half century. One of the few businesses to make the transition is Howells and Harrison the Pharmacist - which you can see in the right hand side of the upper photo, and also again now, renamed simply as Harrison's Pharmacy. An excellent shop then and now. Whilst the shopping centre now looks much better clad in brick, rather than the hideous Brutalist concrete, it is actually a very clever refit - the original concrete skeleton is still there, but now looks better than it ever used to. 

Some news that really ought not to surprise many, Apple’s shiny (relatively) new iPhone 6 can be spoofed with the same fake fingerprints that tricked its older sibling, the iPhone 5S. According to mobile security firm Lookout, which said it discovered that it is possible to create a fake fingerprint that is capable of fooling the TouchID fingerprint security sensor of the latest iPhones (6 and 6 Plus are apparently equally vulnerable). Despite the addition of secure payment app Apple Pay to the iPhone 6, the in-built security has not evolved enough over the last year, the security experts warn. iPhone users are still vulnerable to the exact same security flaw as a year ago. The main difference is that now, with Apple Pay, the bad guys have more incentive to abuse access to an iPhone. The central problem is that the TouchID fingerprint scanner on both the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 can be fooled with a cloned fingerprint lifted from a shiny surface and recreated using easily available PVA wood glue. Germany's Chaos Computer Club was the first to crack Apple's TouchID fingerprint lock, a trick replicated by Lookout last September and replicated recently on the  newly iPhone 6. "Sadly there has been little in the way of measurable improvement in the sensor between these two devices," explained Lookout researcher Marc Rogers in a blog post. "Fake fingerprints created using my previous technique were able to readily fool both devices." In the future it may not even require hackers to have physical access to a potential victims’ fingerprints; a further report, also originating in Germany states that it is possible to recreate fingerprints from hi resolution digital photographs. Security researchers claim to have cloned the thumbprint of the German Defence Minister by photographing her hand at a press conference. In a presentation at the annual Chaos Computer Club hacker gathering in Berlin, biometrics specialist Jan Krisller – known in the hacker community as "Starbug" – explained how he'd taken a variety of photographs of Ursula von der Leyen when she gave a press briefing in October. Krisller used a telephoto lens with a focal length of 200mm and took the photographs from six feet away, he said. He then used commercial fingerprint software from Verifinger to map out the contours of the Minister's thumbprint. To get that into something that could be used on a biometric scanner, Krisller employed the same technique he demonstrated at the conference last year, where he successfully defeated Apple's TouchID fingerprint lock. The technique employs digital photographs, flexible materials, and laser printers to create false fingerprints. Krisller said the research inspired him to look at other ways photography might be used to defeat biometric security – for example, to copy the unique iris print of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Using high-resolution images from her election campaign materials, he said, it was possible to print out an image that might fool a basic iris security scanner. This issue will only become more serious and widespread as very high resolution digital cameras become more widely available. Both market leaders in high end digital photography Canon and Nikon have models with image sensors with 36.3 million pixels in a single image. At this level of potential detail, if a very high quality lens is used, a huge amount of biometric information can be extracted from the image. This is one of those classic laws of unintended consequences. I get a feeling this issue will run and run.

On New Year's Eve afternoon, I was queueing at one of the checkouts in Morrison's. The man in front of me had around a dozen jars of various varieties of pre - made pasta sauce in his trolley. I had to bite my tongue and not say anything. Mass produced pasta sauces are both a culinary abomination and a waste of money - not to say that they also contain a large number of additives. Fresh pasta sauce is so cheap and easy to make that I really cannot understand why someone would pay more for a vastly inferior alternative. Every so often I publish the occasional recipe, and this week is no exception. This is how to make a very basic pasta sauce - I have been using this for years, with very successful results.

Hugh's basic pasta sauce recipe.

Ingredients.

1 can of chopped tomatoes

1 large onion, finely diced

3 - 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 teaspoons of dried mixed herbs

1 teaspoon of dried Oregano

3 small Bay leaves

Dash of Worcestershire Sauce.

Method.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan or wok; add the finely diced onion and cook until it starts to soften, then add the garlic and fry until the onions are translucent. You can then add a generous dash of Worcestershire sauce (it will initially smell overpowering, but will mellow remarkably as it cooks), followed by the tin of chopped tomatoes and the bay leaves. Cook for around ten minutes when the sauce starts to reduce, then add the dried mixed herbs and Oregano, and cook for another five minutes, adding a dash of water if the sauce becomes too dry. Serve with cooked pasta of your choice. You can add chopped mushrooms, sweet peppers, finely chopped carrots or celery to this basic sauce to make it a little more interesting, or even add minced beef before the chopped tomatoes to make a basic Bolognese sauce (I don't subscribe to the theory that Bolognese meat should be a mixture of minced Pork and Beef - firstly this seems too complex for what is essentially an Italian peasant dish, and secondly I am Pork intolerant, and have to avoid all Pig related products). Nevertheless, the basic recipe can be modified as you see fit. It tastes infinitely superior to the shop bought jars, and is far better for you. The raw ingredients also cost a fraction of the factory bought stuff, so what is there not to like? If you would like more details on my recipes, do feel free to drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com - let me know what you think.

Another long running story is that of the Emirates Air Line cable car, (locally nicknamed the Arabfly Dangleway) which Greenwich and Charlton blogger Darryl Chamberlain of the 853 Blog picked up on a couple of weeks ago, when he submitted a Freedom of Information Request to Transport for London in order to discover how many commuters were using the cable car to commute across the River Thames. When the answer came back as “none” he wrote a rather pithy blog posting about the subject that you can read here. Later both the London Evening Standard and now the Daily Mail have picked up on Darryl’s research. The Mail sent a reporter down to the cable car to interview the few hardy souls who were using it, and discovered that with one notable exception the riders were tourists, or people out for a joy ride, rather than people commuting to or from work. This makes sense – the cable car journey is slower and more expensive that using the Jubilee Line tube which is a far more time efficient method of making the same journey – when you are a regular commuter, you want the most painless travel method possible.

You may recall that I have been covering events in respect of the closure of Britain's largest dedicated water play park - the Belvedere Splash Park by Bexley Council. There has been a large and dedicated campaign by local residents to keep the park open; over the last few weeks things have gone very quiet, and I have had messages from several Maggot Sandwich readers asking me if the campaign organisers had given up. This is far from the case, as campaign lead Ian Doherty explained in a recent Email to me:- "The Save Our Splash Park campaign was started in mid-October to fight the decision of the ruling Tory Council to close the 100 year old beloved water park in Belvedere Village. Unfortunately due to work commitments and a rash of family bereavements I've been unable to devote time to the campaign recently but with a New Year it’s a new push. We will be aggressively courting local councillors to try and get them on our side and possibly linking up with the organisation that wants to save the local libraries and well as other interested community groups. For more information please see our Facebook page". Well, that clears up that uncertainty. More on the campaign next week.

Over the last couple of years I have been highlighting technological anniversaries, and this week it is a big one. The first of January 2015 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the first commercial telephone call made on a UK cellular mobile telephone network. The companies we know as Vodafone and O2 today were Racal-Vodafone and Securicor-Cellnet back then; phones were the size of a small suitcase and only did voice calls - no text or apps, let alone any kind of camera or GPS. The two companies had spent the months up to the 1st January launch deadline fighting for cell sites and testing coverage, particularly in London. There was no hint of site-sharing. The services used analogue TACS (Total Access Control System), and later ETACS (Enhanced TACS), as more frequencies became necessary. As mentioned last week, the analogue calls could easily be monitored using a radio scanner - as in the infamous Princess Diana "Squidgygate" tapes. The cellular service was not actually the first mobile phone system available - there was a Carphone Radio service called Band 3, but that was push-to-talk and all calls had to go through an operator to be connected. Calls were limited as was the number of users. You had to go on a waiting list and wait for a subscriber to close an account before you could buy one. It was complex, limited in coverage and extremely expensive. The first modern, cellular call was undertaken by Vodafone's Michael Harrison, the son of former Vodafone Chairman Sir Ernest Harrison, who was the first to test the system, calling his father at midnight on 1 January, 1985. Michael Harrison secretly left his family’s New Year’s Eve party at their home in Surrey in the UK to surprise his father, calling him from London’s Parliament Square. Harrison made the historic call from one of the first mobile devices – a Transportable Vodafone VT1, which weighed 11lb (5kg) and had around 30 minutes of talk time - more on this groundbreaking device in a bit. Harrison recalls that the line was crystal clear, although the excited shouting of New Year’s Eve revellers in London created considerable background noise. As Sir Ernest Harrison answered the phone, Michael said: “Hi Dad. It’s Mike. This is the first-ever call made on a UK commercial mobile network”. Which isn't quite “one small step” but is better than, “Watson come here I want to see you". The official press launch was held days later at St Katherine’s Dock in London where Vodafone had hired comedian Ernie Wise make the first public mobile phone call. Wise brought the same transportable device to St Katherine’s Dock in London in a 19th century mail coach, using one of the oldest forms of communications – sending a letter – to highlight the speed and convenience of these new mobile phones. Ernie Wise’s call was received at the original Vodafone headquarters, where a handful of employees were based in an office above an Indian restaurant in Newbury, Berkshire. Heavy and cumbersome, the first generation of mobile phones were sold in the UK from 1984 – before the first products were even available and before the network was officially live. Such was the demand for a fully portable, cellular phone that more than two thousand orders had been taken by the Vodafone sales team before Michael Harrison made his call from Parliament Square. By the end of 1985, over twelve thousand devices had been sold. Very soon afterwards a good friend of mine got given a VT1 portable TACS phone by his then employer, British Telecom. The phone was so powerful that when he made trips to the Carrefour Hypermarket in Calais, he could call his Mum to find out what she wanted him to buy, connecting via the British mobile phone cell in Dover (there was no international mobile roaming back in those days). The video below is a modern take on a period commercial that has been made by Vodafone to commemorate their 30th anniversary as a mobile phone service provider. See if you can spot the mistake - the girl walking a dog and using a VT1 unit would not have been able to make or receive a call, as there is no antenna connected to the bulky transceiver unit! Feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.