The Quiz.

Last night well over a hundred people turned up to the annual Friends of Christ Church Erith Quiz Night. The evening also marked the launch of the Friends of Christ Christ Church Erith fund raising calendar, which features thirteen artworks from the "Our Erith" art exhibition held in the church earlier in the year. The calendar is now on sale for a very reasonable £3 a copy, and all profits go to the Friends in their work to maintain the historic Grade 2* listed church building. The quiz was tough, and the friendly competition fierce. The winning team was led by local MP Teresa Pearce and her other half Paul - you can see them in the photo below. This is one scoop neither the News Shopper or the Bexley Times are getting!

In the last week Bexley Police rolled out body worn video cameras to all patrolling officers. This is as part of a programme to get all 22,000 serving Metropolitan Police officers to be so equipped. Over the coming months, the cameras will be issued to all thirty two London and other frontline specialist roles, including firearms officers. Police said members of the public will be told as soon as practical that they are being recorded, and when the camera is recording it is highly visible - notable by a flashing red circle in the centre of the camera and a frequent beeping noise when the camera is activated. The trials of body worn video cameras has shown that people are more likely to plead guilty when they know Police have captured the incident on a camera. That then speeds up justice, puts offenders behind bars more quickly, and most importantly protects potential victims. Last month, a study by the University of Cambridge found a 93 per cent decrease in complaints made against officers clearly wearing body cameras. Video footage is not continuously recorded - officers manually switch on the video recorders when they expect trouble. I have covered this issue in the past; problems occurred during the Bexley Police body worn camera trial back in August of last year. As you may recall, I was contacted by Sky News investigative journalist Gerard Tubb. Sky News discovered that whilst the Police had told the public that the body worn video data was uploaded to secure Police video servers, it was actually being uploaded to an external commercial data storage company with a history of data security breaches. Gerard Tubb had already uncovered this story, but approached me for a copy of the Police announcement to interested parties. He had been assured by the Home Office that the document had never been published, but he suspected that it had. I was able to confirm that the document had indeed been published, and I supplied him with a copy, along with the associated Email trail, thus giving him the "smoking gun" proving the veracity of the story. I am hopeful that after the story made the headlines on Sky News that the Metropolitan Police have improved their data security practices now that the camera footage is going to be collected by all Police officers who deal with the public. A Metropolitan Police document on body worn cameras states:- "Why use BWV at all? 
 BWV provides an additional option for officers to gather evidence at incidents.  BWV cameras have already been used in the MPS and in other forces to good effect. The cameras can capture evidence of criminal behaviour and can help to ‘set the scene’ for the court at a later date.  By capturing this evidence, officers can spend less time writing statements and completing paperwork at the station. This allows them to spend more time patrolling and responding to incidents in the community.  The use of BWV in other countries has been shown to moderate the behaviour of people present at incidents, resulting in less of force by officers and reduced complaints against police. It is hoped this will help to ensure public confidence in police actions.  Evidence from other forces in the UK has shown that, where BWV is key evidence, guilty pleas at the first opportunity at court rise significantly - this means reduced burdens across the Criminal Justice System, not just in policing. When will officers be using the BWV? Will it be ‘always on?’  No - the use of BWV will be ‘incident specific’ - officers will switch on the camera when they would ordinarily be considering recording an incident or interaction by conventional means - for example, a statement or notebook entry - or if they feel that there would be evidential value in recording the incident. Officers will, when practicable, tell those present when they are recording and when they are about to switch off the camera. They will usually only switch the camera off when the incident has concluded or where there is no further evidential value to be had in continued recording.  To have the cameras ‘always on’ may result in private or confidential interactions with the public being recorded and also may represent a significant intrusion into the privacy of those who might be caught on camera. As well as this, continual recording will result in massive amounts of data being retained and stored by the police, which would result in increased logistical problems in back office functions. What about rights to privacy? It is understandable that some people may be concerned about officer’s recording their interactions with the public at incidents. They may be worried that footage concerning them may be held on police data servers. This is a key reason why officers will not indiscriminately record all interactions and activity. This is to ensure that any intrusion into private lives is kept to the minimum level necessary. All footage recorded on BWV in the MPS is subject to legal safeguards and guidance set by the Information Commissioner’s office and the Home Office. Footage that is not likely to be of evidential value will be removed from the system within a very short time - the current guidance is within 31 days. Footage that is retained is subject to regular review and, if no longer required or likely to be required as evidence, will again be weeded. People who have been recorded have the right to see footage of them that has been retained by the MPS. See our website - www.met.police.uk for details on how to obtain this footage". Overall I think this move to recording is a good idea; I just have reservations about the potential for a bad cop to switch the recording off midway through an encounter if they thought it might go badly for them if the footage was filmed and later reviewed. What do you think? Either leave a comment below, or drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Halloween seems to be taking over as the main winter festival from Guy Fawkes Night. Halloween was originally created in pretty much its’ current form by 18th century Irish people, the word is a corruption of All Hallow’s Eve. Irish immigrants to America took the tradition there, and it was exported back across the Atlantic in the early 1980’s. Although Halloween was celebrated before this time, it was a far lower key and less involved affair. I am convinced that the increase in popularity of the Americanised version of the festival can at least partly be laid at the feet of Stephen Spielberg and his movie “ET – The Extra Terrestrial”. The film carries strong Halloween themes such as dressing up and “Trick or Treating” which prior to the opening of the film had been relatively uncommon in the UK. The massive popularity of the film exposed may children of the time to take on the American aspects of the Halloween festival; many of those children now have children of their own, and the festival thus now has an amplified resonance not previously seen. Personally I am not struck with the whole thing, which basically encourages small children to demand goods with menaces, but I am probably in a minority.

Something very strange has been happening to the demographics of the readership of the Maggot Sandwich, and it is something that I would like some help with from you, the readers. Blogger uses Google Analytics to generate statistics on each blog it hosts. I can see how many people are reading the Maggot Sandwich, divided up by what web browser they are using, what country they come from, and lots of other diverse criteria. If you look at the screen capture above, which shows activity on the website since last Sunday, you can see that by far my highest readership is located in the USA. Bear in mind that each blog update normally is written in stages across the week before it is published on Sunday afternoons, and this part was written on Friday evening, the total number of readers at the time of writing was 17,460 - well on the way to the average of 22,000 unique page views I have once the week is fully complete. I am rather mystified as to why so many people in America are reading this blog - after all, nearly all of the stories that I cover are very much about the area around Abbey Wood, Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green - not exactly the most attention grabbing subjects, unless you happen to be a local resident. I cannot believe that there are that number of expatriates in America who now follow the blog on a regular basis. I am aware that the Maggot Sandwich does have a legitimate world - wide following. I am aware of readers in Melbourne Australia, Tasmania, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Washington DC. Quite why so many Americans regularly read this blog is very much a source of bemusement to me. I am also aware that the Maggot Sandwich is banned in China, though I have absolutely no idea why. I have never said anything remotely negative about the country or its citizens, so I am at somewhat of a loss. Quite why the maggot Sandwich is blocked by The Great Firewall of China is a mystery. The hits marked as coming from China on the graphic above are quite possibly coming from Hong Kong - where the Chinese firewall rules are somewhat more relaxed; although officially a part of China, Hong Kong has a fierce independence and the Chinese government seem to cut them quite a lot of slack. One of my readers used to regularly commute from mainland China to Hong Kong, and he was the one that told me about the different levels of online filtering dependent on geographical location.

Still, having ticked off the World’s second largest power, I could stop, or I could dig myself even deeper. I think most regular readers will know which way this is going. There have been some interesting comments over the last couple of weeks regarding the nomenclature of Nuxley Road in Upper Belvedere (by the way, Belvedere means “beautiful view” in Italian), which some people misguidedly refer to as “Nuxley Village”. The origin of the names of the  places in the local area, and some of the surrounding landmarks dates back to the early fifteenth century, and the name Belvedere even earlier. The area of Bedonwell gets its name from the Bedon stream, which runs through what is now known as Streamway; the Bedon is a minor tributary of the River Thames, which is now run though an underground drain for much of its length. A fifteenth century form of the name was Beton Well, meaning “praying well”. The exact origin is lost in the mists of time, though the old English word “bydan” meaning a shallow valley may have something to do with it. On the South side of the stream was a further area of open heath land, called Nuxley or Little Heath, which occupied an area around what was later Belmont Primary School (and is now a Doctor’s surgery and private flats). The name Nuxley was sometimes spelled Naxley, which in turn is a corruption of Knocksley, meaning a small hill. Nuxley Road was originally named Bexley Road, until March 1939 when it was renamed as Nuxley Road, which it remains to date. There is no record of Upper Belvedere ever having been named Nuxley Village, and parish records for the area date back to 1235 AD, and survived the reformation, when ownership of the parish was transferred from Lesnes Abbey to the owners of Parsonage Farm (on what is now Parsonage Manor Way). During the late 19th century, Parsonage Farm was owned by the Vinson family, who were at the time rich and powerful enough to issue their own trade tokens (a kind of informal local currency). There are records that beer houses such as the Fox, and full pubs such as The Eardley Arms took trade tokens for payment for food and drink until sometime around 1900. The farm buildings, which were  constructed in the Middle Ages (principally to provide food and drink for Abbot and Monks at Lesnes Abbey) lasted until the end of WWII, when it was used to house an auxiliary fire station. After the war the building was so derelict it was demolished. Thus, the name “Nuxley Village” is a construct – a fictional creation of local estate agents who have no knowledge of the history of the area. Upper Belvedere has been so called for at least the last 781 years, and the thoughtless action of a handful of ignorant house peddlers from outside of the area is not going to change facts any time soon.

I have banged on at some length about how Smart Meters are a lot less of a good idea than the utility companies would have you believe. My concerns are mainly about the cost savings made by switching to a Smart Meter being far lower than has been publicised; but my main concern is to do with their almost total lack of security. Only this week was a report published into "Internet of Things" (IOT) devices, and how easy they are to compromise. On average, an IoT device is infected with malware and will launch an attack within six minutes of being exposed to the internet. IoT devices are probed for vulnerabilities 800 times per hour by attackers from across the globe. Every day there are an average of over 400 login attempts per device, an average of one attempt every five minutes and 66 per cent of them on average are successful, according to the report. The Blaster and Sasser worm of 2003 and 2004, respectively, was brought to heel after Microsoft enable a firewall technology with Windows XP SP2. On Friday there was a massive Denial Of Service attack on several popular websites including Twitter, Reddit and Spotify, which was undertaken using "Smart" devices as the attack vector. Basically at present, so called "Smart" devices are complex enough to be hijacked by bad people, but but not sophisticated enough to detect that they are being criminally manipulated. Things will only get worse before they get better. To add to this, Vodafone have just announced a new dedicated mobile network especially designed to work with smart meters and “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices. The roll – out will initially be in mainland Europe, but may well come to the UK sooner rather than later. It is an aggressive timetable but probably not unrealistic. For most of its networks, Vodafone has said that the rollout will require just a software upgrade (i.e. no site visit would be required). From its trials in Spain and elsewhere, Vodafone is also clearly satisfied with the performance of the technology. The issues it faces now are probably as much commercial (e.g. agreeing the licencing terms) as they are technical. Other rival mobile “Internet of Things” communication technologies exist, and at this point it is unclear as to which will win out. It would seem that the telecommunications industry may be about to have a Betamax versus VHS battle on its hands in respect of the technology and data format that smart devices will use to communicate with each other and their service provider. As previously mentioned, I am cynical about Smart Meters, which may well not save the user anything like as much money as the utility companies are saying; different energy suppliers use different types of incompatible meters, which makes switching companies more difficult, as the meter will have to be changed – usually at the home owners expense. On top of this, as I have explained before, the Smart Meters have little if any effective encryption on their communications, which makes them a very big target for malicious exploitation, as was seen on Friday. The only sector than really benefits from the deployment of Smart Meters are the utility companies themselves – as they have no need to employ staff to read meters. The energy companies are promoting Smart Meter as if they will be a boon to users, whereas in reality they will only actually benefit themselves.

A pilot scheme to deter people from littering started this week. Bexley Council published the poster you can see above - more on which a little later. The scheme will see uniformed enforcement officers patrolling the Borough, from 24 October, issuing fixed penalty notices, of up to a maximum of £400, to people seen committing environmental offences such as littering. Cabinet member, Cllr Peter Craske said, “Bexley is one of the best places to live in London and I know from talking to residents that they are fed up with the tiny minority who leave litter and mess in their wake.‘It also costs thousands and thousands of pounds of taxpayers money to clear this up, and I have had many people contact me welcoming this new initiative." Following a period of training, up to five uniformed enforcement officers, will patrol areas in the Borough which are hotspots for litter offenders. On the spot fines will be issued to those seen committing the offence of littering, allowing their dog to foul in public areas or fly tipping. The level of fines will be £80 for littering, £50 for dog fouling and a maximum of £400 for fly tipping. Full payment of the fine will be required in all cases - with no reduction for early payment. The aim is to recover the cost of running the service through the issue of fixed penalty notices. During the pilot, young offenders will have their details recorded and a warning letter will be sent to their parents or school. At the end of November, posters using the headline ‘Don’t be a Tosser’, along with a picture showing some examples of litter offences, will appear throughout the Borough. These will also feature the campaign hashtag #cleanerBexley. The campaign is designed to attract attention and get people thinking and talking about the problem of litter. It was originally used in a Keep Britain Tidy campaign and has already proved to be a successful anti-litter message in other parts of the UK, including Essex and Suffolk. If the enforcement service proves effective and financially sustainable, a decision will be made next summer on whether to make it permanent". I see problems for Bexley Council with the anti littering poster shown above; firstly it is crass and subtle as a brick, secondly it uses copyright material which is the property of Coca Cola - the crushed soft drinks can in the picture is meant to be a generic can of soft drink, but the poster designer has made two errors - first they have used the exact PanTone red colour (484C for the initiated) as the famous brand, and they have also used the Coca Cola font on the can - which is copyrighted. I would imagine that Coca Cola's lawyers would take an extremely dim view of the whole thing. We shall see. Once again the law of unintended consequences comes into play.

I was returning home on the B12 single decker bus (a very under rated bus route in my opinion) on Tuesday evening. It was travelling Southwards along Queen’s Road in Erith when the bus stopped at the traffic lights and Zebra Crossing at the end of Pier Road. Nobody crossed the road. When the lights changed to green for the road traffic, the bus started up – then the driver undertook an emergency stop as a young woman stepped out into the road with no warning. The bus wing mirror clipped the woman’s head and she staggered backwards. The woman had been oblivious to the bus due to the fact that she had been staring intently at the screen of her mobile phone, and could not hear what was going on around her due to her wearing ear buds plugged into the phone. She had been so unconscious of the real world around her that she very nearly ended up being run over by the bus. It was only the very quick actions of the alert driver that prevented what could have well been her death. The woman was shaken, but largely unhurt; the driver pulled over to the side of the road and asked if she was all right –she said that she was – he got her contact details as he had to file a report on the incident, and he also got the details of a couple of witnesses in case of any further action. Fortunately the bus is fitted with a forward – facing dash camera, the footage from which would completely exonerate the driver from any blame in the matter. As many readers know, I have a degree of antipathy towards mobile phones, and the incident just described only reinforces this. Every day I see pedestrians bumbling along, with their heads stuck into the screen of their mobile devices, ears deafened to the outside world by a set of headphones. Even more worryingly, I regularly see cyclists on the road bedecked by Beats style, full – ear coverage headphones. The Royal Marines have a description for this kind of behaviour – they call it “a lack of situational awareness”. I am of the opinion that if cyclists and pedestrians were subject to the same laws as vehicle drivers in respect of the use of mobile devices - and that those laws were properly enforced, then the frequency and severity of road accidents would significantly reduce. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Erith came to the attention of the press for an entirely unwelcome reason in the early hours of last Monday morning. The News Shopper has reported on the story of a serious fight outside of the Ship pub in West Street. The details are somewhat hazy, but it would appear that a group of youths attacked an individual, and then a second group defended the individual – the attackers then apparently ran off in the direction of St. Fidelis Road. Several of those involved required hospital treatment. The Ship does not have a particularly bad reputation as local pubs go – the landlady did get into hot water back in 2010, when the pub got close to losing its licence. This was due to the toilets in the pub indicating positive for traces of Cocaine when they were swabbed by the investigating authorities. After a concerted campaign by locals, the Council agreed to let the Ship keep operating, but with strict new conditions to their licence. These conditions included staff checking the toilets for drugs every half an hour during the time the pub is open. CCTV was also ordered to be installed – this may well have recorded the assault that occurred in the early hours of Monday morning. Currently Erith only has two pubs – the aforementioned Ship, and the Running Horses, neither of which particularly prove attractive. Things have gone rather quiet regarding the possible opening of a Wetherspoons in the town, potentially in the old (and currently unused) Carnegie Library in Walnut Tree Road. I am cautiously optimistic that the giant pub company will see fit to refurbish the historic public building and re-open it as a pub / restaurant, as I think it would be very successful and well – received. There have been rumours that Wetherspoons are looking at the Post Office building in Erith High Street, but I feel that this is rather unlikely - it is not a suitable structure for conversion into a pub / restaurant, it would do away with the only Post Office in the town - and would thus be very unpopular - and when you have the eminently suitable former library only a couple of hundred metres away, it seems to me to be a no brainer. If you have any information regarding this, then please drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The ending video this week is entitled "Memories of Erith". Give it a watch and see what you think.

Kung Fury.

The photo above shows a Police helicopter taken from the back garden of Pewty Acres on Thursday evening. The helicopter flew around for around half an hour, taking particular interest in the river front area, before it flew away – I suspect as it was running low on fuel. At the time I wondered of it was tracking the two youths on the stolen high – powered motorbike that I reported last week. It turns out that there had been a report of a “despondent” person on Erith Pier who was threatening to throw themselves in the river. The RNLI also attended from Gravesend, but nothing was found, and no person identified. This is the third such incident in as many weeks; apart from my recent thoughts on having an RNLI resource based in Erith, I am not sure how the pier could be made less attractive to those contemplating suicide. There was an unfortunate case back in 2011 when a young man did jump to his death from the pier – and a small metal plaque on the small white building at the far end of the pier now commemorates the event. I understand that the currents and undertow in the Anchor Bay portion of the river (where the pier is located) are some of the strongest and most deadly of any on the entire length of the River Thames. It has been said that even a very strong swimmer who fell in accidentally would only have a life expectancy of eleven minutes without aid.

If you walk around Erith fairly early on a weekday morning, amongst the heavy traffic coming along Queen’s Road heading North West over the hideous fish roundabout and into Bronze Age Way in the direction of Thamesmead and Woolwich, one can see a procession of white vans with dark windows in the sides. These are the Serco prison transport vehicles, which are ferrying prisoners on remand to both Woolwich Crown Court at Belmarsh Prison, and to The Central Criminal Court (better known as the Old Bailey). The vans start appearing a few minutes before 7am each weekday, and usually have gone by around 7.15. It strikes me that as one can generally set one’s watch by the regular appearance of the vans, their location must be known by many. Bearing in mind that the accused only gets detained on remand in the most serious of cases, and those on remand tend to be prisoners with previous convictions, or are accused of serious crimes such as murder or terrorism, there may be those close to the prisoners who wish to see them free. Erith seems to be an ideal choke point to hijack a Serco van to free a prisoner on their way to or from court. The predictable behaviour of the vans would make setting up an ambush relatively straightforward, and there are multiple escape routes by car – you can head through Northumberland Heath down onto the A2 for the coast, or back along Bronze Age Way to head into London – the options are legion. I wonder if Serco (a commercial organisation) have given this aspect of security any real consideration? I am concerned that Erith is going to be getting press attention for all of the wrong reasons if something is not done. I have been in contact with Serco in respect of the matter, and will let you know when (if?)  they get back to me.

It is not often that I celebrate the closure of a shop, especially one in the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre, where there are unfortunately still units un-let since the place opened. In this case I will make an exception. The Money Shop has closed down and a notice in the window indicates that it has “relocated” to Woolwich. I am glad to see the back of the place, which exploited down on their luck locals. The money shop charge a basic 1305% APR on cash loans – an utterly extortionate amount for people who are often at a very low and vulnerable point in their lives. As I have stated before, it is very expensive to be poor nowadays – whether it be by using pre – pay utility meters, payday lenders or buying goods on the “never-never” from exploitative stores like Brighthouse, who I have written about extensively in the past. Suffice to say that all of these legal, but to my way of thinking, immoral organisations prey on the poor. Seeing the back of one of them can only be to the long term benefit of local people. I am told that a credit union may be on  the way – though the talks seem to have been going on interminably; hopefully we will get something in place before too much longer. Now that The Money Shop are no longer in the shopping centre, I wonder how long it will be before another retailer moves into the space? Nearby neighbour Mambocino have made a great success – what started out as little more than yet another coffee shop has metamorphosed into a lovely café cum informal restaurant that always seems to be buzzing with visitors. Some time ago I reported on a rumour that I had heard that Mambocino were going to expand into the large corner unit that takes up the space to the left of the large precinct gates at the front of the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. Currently this unit is still empty with a “To Let” sign in the window, but I am hopeful of developments soon.

Thirty years ago this month, Dire Straits released their fifth album, “Brothers in Arms". It went on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time, it revolutionised the music industry. For the first time, an album sold more on compact disc than on vinyl, and passed the one million units sold  mark. Three years after the first silver discs had appeared in record shops,”Brothers in Arms” was the symbolic milestone that marked the true beginning of the CD era. “Brothers in Arms was the first flag in the ground that made the industry and the wider public aware of the CD’s potential,” says the British Phonographic Industry spokesperson Gennaro Castaldo, who began a long career in retail that year. “It was clear this was a format whose time had come.” CD sales overtook vinyl in 1988 and cassettes in 1991. The 12 centimetre optical disc became the biggest money-spinner the music industry had ever seen, or will ever be likely to see. In 1974, 28-year-old electronic engineer Kees Schouhamer Immink was assigned to the Optics Group of Philips Research in Eindhoven, Holland. His team’s task was to create a 30 centimetre videodisc called Laservision (Laserdisk in Europe), but that flopped (the quality was pretty poor, and the disks were notorious for skipping and stopping dead for no apparent reason) and the focus shifted to designing a smaller audio-only disc. “There were 101 problems to be solved,” Immink says. Meanwhile, in Japan, Sony engineers were working on a similar project. In 1979, Sony and Philips made an unprecedented agreement to pool resources. For example, Sony engineers perfected the error correction code, CIRC, while Immink himself developed the channel code, EFM, which struck a workable balance between reliability and playing time. “We never had people from other companies in our experimental premises,” Immink says. “It was unheard of. Usually you become foes, but in this case we really became good friends, and we're still friends after so many years. It was remarkable, actually.” In June 1980, after complicated negotiations in Tokyo and Eindhoven, the so-called Red Book set standard specifications for the compact disc digital audio format. The story goes that the size (12 cm) and length (74 minutes, 33 seconds) were changed at the eleventh hour when Sony’s executive vice president Norio Ohga insisted that the disc should have enough space for the longest recorded performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his wife’s favourite piece of music, but I and others suspect that is an urban myth. There were so many technical and financial considerations that it is unlikely such a key decision came down to one woman’s love of Beethoven – there were simply too many other factors.  The CD was introduced to the British public in a 1981 episode of the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, in which Kieran Prendeville famously mauled a test disc of the Bee Gees’ Living Eyes to demonstrate the format’s alleged indestructibility – the spreading of jam on the test disc is something that has passed into popular legend.  It caught the public imagination, but Immink found the claim puzzling and embarrassing because it was clearly untrue. “We should not put emphasis on the fact it will last for ever because it will not last forever,” he says. “We should put emphasis on the quality of sound and ease of handling.” (I read an article recently where Paul McCartney recalled the first time George Martin showed him a CD. George said, ‘This will change the world.’ He told us it was indestructible, you can’t smash it. Look! And – whack – it broke in half.”) Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler was an early convert (the second track on Pure, Perfect Sound Forever, the promotional 1982 compilation that came free with early CD players, was Dire Straits’ Once Upon a Time in the West). Knopfler insisted on recording Brothers in Arms on state-of-the-art digital equipment, so a promotional partnership was a natural fit. Philips sponsored Dire Straits’ world tour and featured the band in TV commercials with the slogan, attributed to Knopfler: “I want the best. How about you?” Brothers in Arms was an iconic release, the CD came to symbolise the so-called yuppie generation, representing new material success and aspiration. If you owned a CD player it showed you were upwardly mobile. Its significance seemed to go beyond music to a lifestyle statement. CD’s still sell nowadays, but the emphasis on convenience and ease of use of digital download services such as Apple’s ITunes have reduced the demand for physical recordings – it was It was the 2001 launch of the iPod, an aspirational premium product which made MP3s portable, that turned the tide. Before that the MP3 was an inferior good; Once you had the iPod, the CD was an inferior good. It could get cracked or lost, whereas MP3 files lasted.  Not pure, not perfect, but sound for ever. It is just a pity that unless recorded at very high bit rates, MP3 files sound inferior to CD, and way worse that vinyl – my own format of choice to this day. What do you think? Are CD’s on the way out for you? Do you still have a much loved collection of vinyl? Please make a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The occasional Maggot Sandwich restaurant critic Brian Silk has written the following review on the restaurant in the Running Horses in Erith High Street, opposite the Riverside Gardens.  "I recently returned to the Running Horses pub for yet another meal before going to see a production at the Playhouse. I've been doing this, with the same group of friends, for a few years now. We go there for the reliable menu and the ability to buy a chilled bottle (or two) of white wine – this sets us up nicely for short stroll up the hill to enjoy the rest of our evening at Erith's fine theatre. The menus at The Horses are well worn. That's not a criticism, but rather to say that the pub has been serving the same extensive menu for quite a few years now. So it's tried and tested and they are very good at what they do. And what they do is serve up freshly-prepared large, and very tasty, pub grub. It never fails to hit the spot and it's accompanied by friendly efficient service. There's every dish you might imagine would be available in a pub and there are some excellent meal deals. A final plus point is to say that the Running Horses is a pleasant place to eat with friends – it's nicely decorated and, best of all, there is no blaring music or sports TV to get in the way of having a conversation".

The photo above shows the second freight train derailment at the Charlton Junction, which happened this Wednesday afternoon, once again meaning that no train services to and from London were able to run on the North Kent Line. The photo above is the copyright of Daniel Rudge. Part of the problem is that the UK is unusual in allowing freight and passenger trains to run on the same lines - most other countries have separate train lines for each service. After years of griping about the poor service, high ticket prices, and general “couldn't care less” attitude of Southeastern Trains, a possible development has appeared on the horizon. Following last week’s Transport for London (TFL) takeover of rail services out of Liverpool Street and between Romford and Upminster, which were previously run by the operator Greater Anglia. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said that he wants to extent TFL’s influence to include Southeastern – their franchise is not due for renegotiation until 2018, but their poor level of service, late trains and high levels of sudden cancellations mean that Boris may well force the issue. TFL took over running the North London Line and Silverlink, which meant that all of their stations were staffed all of the time they are open, they also became part of the Oyster card system, rather than the national “pay as you go” scheme, and this has on average reduced journey costs to passengers by a little over fifteen percent. The plan would seem to be to include all over ground train networks within Greater London under the control of Transport for London, and remove the franchised companies altogether. At a press event in Enfield last week, Boris Johnson said “Since TFL took over underused rail lines and created London Over ground there have been massive improvements – with delays down and passengers giving the network their vote of confidence in huge numbers. Now that London’s population growing at a phenomenal rate, it is the perfect time for these new routes to pass to TFL so that they can be brought up to the same high standard. Beyond this important addition to London’s integrated transport network, I will be urging government colleagues to look at how Southeastern services could operate when this franchise ends in 2018”. Personally I don’t see this coming a moment too soon – especially as the existing rail operators have once again been held ransom by their staff – the much anticipated national rail strike was called off at the start of last week – until the union members decide they want to line their pockets still further, and make another threat. The railways form an integral part of the communication infrastructure of the country, and as such I feel that they should be treated in a similar way to the Police or Armed Forces. It is not like we in the South East are exactly unfamiliar with a lack of train service anyway – what with both the rebuilding and expansion of London Bridge station, and the even closer Crossrail Terminus project at Abbey Wood, the trains are out of service most, if not all weekends, which restricts people's leisure travel into places such as Greenwich and central London. I think that when Crossrail opens in 2018, the Southeastern franchise will transfer to TFL, and the real start of London transport integration will have begun. For me I don't think it can some soon enough.

One less well known than it should be local landmark is the Victorian pumping station at Crossness. It opens occasionally to the public, but for much of the year it is closed, except to those volunteers who are working to restore and maintain the Grade 1 listed building and the giant steam powered pumping engines that it contains. The whole Crossness project began in the long hot summer of 1858 and the infamous “Great Stink”; at the time, toilets flushed into sewers that fed directly into the River Thames; consequently the smell that came off the river was awful , and the summer of 1858 made it even worse, to the point where questions were asked in the House of Commons (which, of course is right next to the banks of the Thames). With a river soaked in effluent, the stench back then came from outside the House of Commons rather than inside. Cholera raged across London, killing three times as many as in areas with cleaner water. While pioneering epidemiologist John Snow had traced an outbreak in Soho to a water pump, many still believed in theories about miasma – that the source of illness was in the air. Against this background, engineer and businessman Joseph Bazalgette was given the go-ahead to build the sewer system that finally made London a really modern city. With a system of interconnecting sewers both North and South of the river connecting to the growing suburbs, the Thames was finally tamed. In fact, the system had been planned four years previously, in response to the cholera crisis, but it was the Great Stink that gave the impetus to pass an enabling Act. Bazalgette’s system was really two separate ones, with the separate branches of each converging, before ultimately the sewage was still dumped into the river – just not where it would bother anyone who really mattered. In the north, the sewers converge at Abbey Mills, where a pumping station linked them to the Northern Outfall Sewer. In the south, sewage was originally dumped into Deptford Creek. By 1860 work had begun on the Southern Outfall Sewer, which was to take the waste all the way to Crossness, adjacent to what is now Thamesmead, but at the time was an uninhabited area of marsh land. In 1865 – 150 years ago this year – the Crossness Pumping Station was opened. At Crossness, a huge covered reservoir stored everything that came from the sewers South of the river. Covering over six acres, and capable of holding 27 million gallons, it was filled by the engines in the pump house raising the sewage up, and then opened at high tide, to allow the contents to flow out to sea as the waters ebb. In 1865, sewage treatment as we know it had not been developed, so the aim was simply to dump the muck as far away from where it mattered as possible. It just goes to show that little has changed – politicians at both national and local level (Teresa Pearce, the MP for Erith and Thamesmead excepted) want as little as possible to do with the area even nowadays. Anyway, The Victorians, of course, did things in style. Just as two years before, a banquet had been held at Farringdon Station to mark the opening of the world’s first underground railway, so Crossness was opened with pomp and circumstance, with the Prince of Wales starting the engines in the company of two other princes, a Duke and a pair of Archbishops. As you might expect, given the spirit of the age, the four engines – built by James Watt – were given suitably regal names: Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert Edward and Alexandra. Another four engines were added in 1897 to provide additional capacity. A few years later, the original steam engines were upgraded with additional cylinders, before the four additional engines were replaced by diesel in 1913. By 1956, all the steam-powered machines had been decommissioned, with the last major use of the Prince Consort engine being to help pump water after the great floods of 1953. Like much old Victorian machinery, their story would have ended with rot and decay, were it not for The Crossness Engines Trust. In 1985, a group was formed with the aim of preserving the engines and ultimately restoring them. Converted into a Trust to give it legal standing in 1988, it was granted a lease in 1993. The Trust’s aim is to restore the buildings and engines to their 1899 condition, and create an exhibition to accompany them. Despite delays, work is proceeding thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and it is hoped that a new access route to an exhibition – avoiding the still-working sections of the Thames Water plant – will be complete next year. The giant pump called Prince Consort has been fully restored and work continues on Victoria. At open days several times each year, Prince Consort is steamed and visitors can see the engine in action, as well as admiring the interior of the pumping station. The Crossness Engines Trust are currently looking for more volunteers. Many of those in the past have been active in the areas immediately useful to the project – working on the restoration of engines, painting the ironwork, and so on. But with work progressing on the new visitor facilities, they will also need more customer service volunteers, tour guides, people to keep the garden in order and much more. Ultimately, to enable the engines to work more often, there’s likely to be a need for more people who can work them, too. The venue will be open on the following occasions in 2015:- June 21st, July 26th, August 23rd and October 11th. Admission Fee: Adults £6, Children £2, under 5 free.

Long – time Maggot Sandwich readers may well recall that I have commented on several occasions in the past that I could foresee the time when previously every day and relatively ubiquitous pieces of electronic equipment could become modern antiques. This has now happened. You may recall that last year I reported how the Henry Ford Museum stumped up a whopping $905,000 for a working model of the Apple 1 computer. Contrary to the popular press, the Apple 1 was not the first home computer, or indeed very much of a success when it was first released in July 1976, when they sold for $666.66 with no case, keyboard, monitor or storage media. Nevertheless, it was a very early computer that could be used in the home or office by a knowledgeable enthusiast, but it certainly was not operable by the average person. Anyway, the small number of Apple 1’s sold back in the day, coupled with the huge fan base the company has nowadays means that the few surviving Apple 1’s in the world are now worth a mint – working or not. Last week, the specialist IT press reported that a Californian electronics recycling company came across something that they were not expecting.  The company - CleanBayArea said the "anonymous lady around 60-70 years of age" left a couple of boxes of electronic waste at its Silicon Valley warehouse in Milpitas last month, explaining that "her husband had passed away and that she had decided to clean up their garage". According to CleanBayArea vice president Victor Gichun, the woman declined to get a receipt or leave her name. A couple of weeks later, a trawl of the boxes revealed an immaculate 8-bit Apple 1, complete with the sales receipt and supporting documentation, which the company subsequently sold to a private collector for nearly a quarter of a million dollars. CleanBayArea policy is to split sales profits 50-50 with the donor, and to claim her $100,000 prize, the mystery woman "just needs to show up at the company's warehouse". Victor Gichun said: "To prove who she is, I just need to look at her." This story sounds like an urban myth, but it checks out. I think the message is, if you don’t know if something is valuable, speak to someone who knows before you throw it out. Since only two hundred Apple 1 computers were ever made, it is doubtful that this kind of incident will happen very frequently, although I do understand that in addition to genuine replicas of the Apple 1, there are a number of dubious motherboards purporting to be the real thing, but which are actually modern fakes. The huge sums of money that Apple 1’s sell for has inevitably attracted forgers and other crooks.



The ending video this week is in my opinion a work of utter genius. The short, thirty minute film has already been viewed on YouTube over thirteen and a half million times in the one week since it was released. It is called “Kung Fury”, and it is rather difficult to describe. It is a Kung Fu cop movie set in 1985 that contains Laser firing dinosaurs, Wolf riding Valkyries armed with chain guns, Hitler and a horde of Nazis, a sentient and psychopathic video games machine, a computer hacker so skilled that he can hack time itself, and the Norse God Thor. Imagine “Avengers Assemble” if it has been made in 1985 as a low budget, straight to VHS video “B” movie and you will be halfway there.  It is hysterically over the top, and parodies the low budget action movies made by production companies such as Cannon Films back in the 80’s perfectly. You even get a guest appearance by David Hasselhoff – what more could you ask? You can see him performing the title song for the movie above. You can watch the movie in full HD below (only it’s actually in VHS quality, complete with the occasional tape tracking error and drop – out of a typical 80’s well-worn VHS rental cassette!) It is an affectionate and spot – on love letter to cheesy 80’s low budget films that used to make up the bulk of the stock of the thousands of independent video rental stores that were found in every town and village in the U.K in the 1980’s. The film was actually produced in Sweden and was financed by a crowd – funding venture. I have just heard that a full length Hollywood feature movie is to be made of Kung Fury, with the director and star in overall charge. It absolutely hits the spot – see what you think, and feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.