Worse than ever?

You may recall that back, almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a feature on the Pizza Hut franchise in Northumberland Heath, and how appalling dirty and unhygienic the place was. The News Shopper also had it as their headline story at the time. The scandal ended up being covered by several national newspapers, the conditions were so bad. The shop ended up being closed for emergency remedial cleaning work; I had thought that the story was now closed; On Friday morning an anonymous person uploaded the following comment onto my original blog posting. I am reproducing it here, as it is shocking, and if true (and I have no reason to believe it is not), then the public needs to know. I work in this "disgusting" pizza hut you mentioned and let me just say, you have mentioned the fact that "Apparently the place has received a deep clean and its’ hygiene standards are improving". The shop was recently given a new shop front to improve the customer perception of the shop but this was as far as improvements actually went. The general conditions within the shop is probably in my opinion worse than ever. In November 2011 most Pizza Hut delivery units were franchised off to private companies and this is when the trouble started. The company that runs this and many other stores in the surrounding area presented managers with such unreachable targets that they soon all left. This then left it open for the company to get in their own managers. Just before Christmas 2013 conditions within the shop were so bad I was having to work in pools of water leaking from various fridges walls and ceilings. Toilet facilities at one point were completely non-existent, the toilet was in fact broken and laying on its side exposing the sewage pipe where rats were seen and making the whole inside of the shop smell of raw sewage. Dates on ingredients are changed to extend the shelf life rather than discarding then like they should be. Things like the can opener, vegetable slicer and oven are no cleaner really now than they ever were. Finally, Just to say that if any of your readers think that eating here may make you sick, believe me, even I won't eat from here. I have passed the information onto reporters at the News Shopper, as they have the resources to carry out a full investigation, and I do not. It will be interesting to see what they discover.

During my enforced period of quarantine whilst I suffered with Gastroenteritis recently (fortunately not caused by eating from Pizza Hut, as I don't eat takeaway pizza), I decided that I would grow a beard. Actually I was so unwell that I could not be bothered to shave, but that is another story. Once I recovered, I decided that it was high time for the beard to go, as it was getting itchy and anyway, I don’t think a beard particularly suits me. I am one of those individuals who uses a Gillette Fusion wet shaving razor. It is claimed by Gillette (actually a company in name only, as they are 100% owned by Procter and Gamble) that each fusion blade will give many comfortable shaves before they need to be replaced. The number of shaves varies between adverts and promotional material, but nevertheless they do cite multiple uses. In my own experience I am lucky to get three shaves out of a single blade unit before it is too blunt to use, and in the case of the beard removal, a single use was enough to completely knacker a brand new blade head. Bearing in mind that a four blade pack of Fusion blades costs £9.95, this is no small expense. I have read research which states that each blade head costs the manufacturer around 5p per unit to manufacture – which, by the time the supermarkets have taken their cut is a total mark up of 4,750%. Nice work if you can get it. If you search around online, and even look for buying these type of blades in bulk, there are surprisingly few discounts of substance to be had. One would have thought with such a huge profit margin, some savvy retailer would have bought a few lorry – loads and set up a discount service. I can find no evidence of this. I then got to doing some thinking. Why has no savvy business person seen the gap in the market, and gone to some manufacturing supplier in somewhere like China where high quality, well engineered kit can be made to a customers’ specification in fairly short order, and got them to make huge numbers of “own brand” blades that are compatible with the popular razor hand units, then sell them online at a fraction of the outrageous prices charged by Gillette / Procter and Gamble. I got so taken up with this idea that I contacted a very good friend, who just happens to be MD of one of Britain’s’ most highly respected market research / market analysis companies, and asked his professional opinion on the matter. He said that a couple of the big supermarket chains tried this very approach a few years ago, but soon found that it was a bigger problem than they had initially expected. Procter and Gamble, owners of the Gillette brand, supply something like 25% of all the goods sold in most UK supermarkets. As soon as Procter and Gamble heard of this endeavour, they rolled out their heavyweight lawyers and started muttering about copyright infringement. The supermarkets backed down, unwilling to cause potential disruption to other goods in their supply chain. Thus the whole “own brand” razor blade project withered on the vine. My business contact did say that he could see a potential way an entrepreneur could challenge the current corporate razor blade monopoly – but it would need someone like a modern day Richard Branson to attempt it. In essence, the entrepreneur would need to set up a business in somewhere like the British Virgin Isles, and conduct all business from there (a place where it is very difficult for third parties to carry out malicious prosecutions). They would need to hire a Gillette product manager – someone who knows how the company works and how they think. The blades could be made in China, then shipped in bulk all over the world; all ordering would have to be done via an online shop located outside of the European Union. If this could be kept up for a year or so, to the point where the blades had got a degree of market penetration as a viable alternative to the much more expensive “big name” versions, you might well end up in a situation where Gillette / Procter and Gamble would be forced to lower their exorbitant prices due to the newly introduced competition in the market place. To be honest, this is all a bit of a pipe dream; the idea of selling lower cost, high quality razor blades to compete with the big producers is such an obvious business opportunity that if there was any viable way to do it, someone would have done it by now. The fact that they have not really goes to show how tightly the market is already tied up. Please leave a comment below.

Last weekend local drivers had a new challenge. Bexley Road, from the roundabout by the railway bridge and Fraser Road, as far up as Park Crescent, was blocked off from very early on Saturday morning to midday on Monday. I went for a snoop when I heard the news; The News Shopper is reporting that a Mini Cooper crashed into a parked Mercedes saloon in the early hours of Saturday morning, and this left a mixture of Diesel and engine / transmission oil on the road. Apparently the driver of the Cooper was badly hurt, but his passenger did a runner – which sounds very suspicious indeed. The Police had blocked off the road for a stretch of several hundred metres, and the Fire Brigade had spread some kind of moisture absorbing granules over the leaked fluid. I am unsure why the section of main road was closed for quite so long; all I can assume is that there was damage to the road surface – which would not be surprising – petro chemicals eat away at tarmac like acid eats away at metal. It may well have been that the Borough Surveyor needed to check the damage before the road could be re – opened. Residents in the adjoining side streets have been most put out, as drivers have been using diversions to skirt around the normally very busy closed section of Bexley Road.

The photo above was kindly sent to me by local history expert Ken Chamberlain; it is my current favourite shot of old Erith, as it shows so much life and activity, and is not a posed photograph. It shows the view looking Northwards along the High Street, towards the River Thames. Unfortunately it is impossible to take a modern equivalent photograph from the same location as the historic one, as the Erith Riverside Shopping Centre is now in the way, and the road layouts in and around the centre of Erith have drastically changed in the intervening years. The one thing we do know for certain is that the photograph was taken in 1910. By the looks of it, the shot was taken late on a Saturday morning in Spring or Summer - there are a lot of adult men in the photo, most of whom would be at work if the photo was taken during the week; secondly the shadows are very short, indicating the photo was taken around midday. Quite why so many people are standing around in the street is unclear. There are no apparent indications of preparations for a parade or other festival; it just appears to be a very busy street scene. The one building that is still readily recognisable in modern Erith is the Cross Keys pub, which is shown in the distance in the old photograph. Nowadays it is being renovated and converted into offices and meeting rooms for management consultancy the Aleff Group. They are making sure that the external appearance of the building is as close as possible to the original, as they are keen to preserve the building, which is located in Erith’s conservation area. They take the preservation of the historic building very seriously, unlike the people who ran the nearby White Hart, and who ripped out the listed frontage to install hideous plate glass. I don’t normally like seeing empty premises, but the Potion Bar that replaced the White Hart was definitely a bad move, and I have to say that many locals are glad to see the back of it, now that the business has failed. I may be a tad on the optimistic side, but it would be nice to see the building housing a proper sit – down restaurant. The trouble is, the work required to bring the building up to a decent standard in order to open such a restaurant would almost certainly be prohibitively expensive.

This week I have a guest writer, who for reasons best known to themselves, has asked to remain anonymous. He's one of a small team behind a very influential online publication that has its' roots in the local area:- One little known aspect of the north of Bexley borough is that it saw the birth of a science fiction venture that still continues today. The Science Fact and Fiction Concatenation began in 1987 as an annual fanzine produced by a group of local scientists and engineers reviewing the SF genre. The editorial team has since now largely dispersed across the UK but the zine still continues, including with some editorial support from those still within what was the old Erith borough (now Belvedere, Erith, Slade Green and Northumberland Heath), in an on-line largely text-only webzine. Over the 1990s interest expanded and SF enthusiasts from overseas began to take interest including from Eastern Europe with the Iron Curtain coming down. This led to SF2 Concatenation appearing at Eurocons and a trilingual edition (English, German and Romanian) in 1994. This edition saw Concatenation's first of, to date, 4  European SF Society Eurocon Award wins for 'Best Fanzine' and other categories: all  Concatenation's European Award wins have been when the Eurocon that year was in another country than Britain, and this is a small matter of pride for the team garnering such attention away from their home turf. In addition to running the zine, the team have engaged in a number of allied projects. These have included a number of Eastern European (Romania and Hungary) cultural exchanges in the late 1990s to early 2000s. In addition to members of the team going to Eastern Europe and staying with local fans there (including  to see the eclipse of the Sun in 1999, the team sponsored Eastern Europeans to visit Britain. Among the many things they did included a welcome by Bexley's Deputy Mayor, visiting Dartford Groundwork, seeing the Crossness Engines in Thamesmead, and broadcasting back to Eastern Europe via the BBC World Service. Another of the projects was to catalogue all the SF works up to 2004 that have won SF enthusiast popular voted awards and publish this as a book called Essential Science Fiction A Concise Guide. Today the Concatenation site is still maintained by a couple of locals to the north of the borough. Others who have left the area (and are now elsewhere in Britain) do still contribute. This summer will see a reunion as many of the team will join a few thousand of SF enthusiasts, writers and professionals at the annual World SF Society Worldcon which, (called Loncon) for the first time in many decades, will be in London! Indeed it is arguably worth passing this news along to anyone locally you know with a penchant for science fiction as this year the SF World is coming to our door step. So you can see from all of this that there are those in the north of Bexley borough who have an eye on the future and the far horizons of other worlds.

As I have mentioned in the past, there are weeks when writing the content for the Maggot Sandwich is a real uphill struggle, and other weeks when it pretty much writes itself. This week I have had an embarrassment of content, which makes nailing the update together very straightforward. Reader Stephen dropped me a line midweek to ask if I had heard of a new online service called Jabbakam.com which takes feeds from web cams and network connected CCTV systems and enables groups of people and communities to be able to share the video feeds, irrespective of geographical location. This somewhat coincided with a story in the News Shopper which relates to an Erith resident who has installed four CCTV cameras on the outside of his house in order to monitor and record any criminal activity occurring on his private property. The Council have decreed that he will have to apply for planning permission for the cameras, as apparently under the Town and Country Planning Act, cameras on private dwellings have to be located a minimum of ten metres apart, otherwise they need planning permission. When this law was passed, I could understand this; back in the 1980’s CCTV cameras were large, bulky and unsightly items which definitely could adversely affect the looks of a property. Nowadays modern cameras are tiny and extremely discreet, and any requirement for planning permission now seems utterly superfluous. It seems to me to be a classic case of the law not keeping track of technology. It also seems that the house owner – a chap called Michael Hix, has been unfairly targeted. There are a large number of local structures that have multiple CCTV cameras mounted on them, all of which are very unlikely to have requested planning permission. My understanding of the position the Police take regarding private CCTV is that they are not really bothered, just as long as the cameras are only pointing onto the owners’ property – they (quite rightly) take a dim view of CCTV cameras pointing out into the public street. This seems to be a more enlightened view than that taken by Bexley Council. The fact is, a mobile phone can be used as a portable CCTV recorder just by downloading a suitable app. This video can be shared worldwide with services such as Jabbakam, and the council are living in the Stone Age if they think they are able to control such actions by using a blunt force such as the planning rules. The game has changed, but the Council are unaware of it.

Malcolm Knight of the Bexley is Bonkers website has reported that, just as he correctly predicted, Bexley Council are in the process of halting the move of Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre from Bexleyheath Library to Bromley. Indeed, his sources indicate that Bexley Council never formally approached Bromley Council regarding the project, and that the whole thing could well be something he describes as an “Aunt Sally” – something set up to make the council look good, as if they have actually been listening to the views of the local population, and amended their plans accordingly, when in fact they had never seriously intended on moving the Archive in the first place. The wording on the Bexley Conservative Party website is currently very vague and non – committal, but it does begin to sound like the Local Studies and Archive Centre may well be safe – for now, at least.

Things are looking even bleaker for the Arabfly Dangleway – otherwise known as the Emirates Airline Cable Car. As I have said in the past, the service gets very little use, and it has been losing money hand over fist since it originally opened just prior to the 2012 London Olympics. Figures have recently been released, which, according to the Evening Standard, show that for the second quarter of the 2013/14 financial year, the income from the cable car was thirty five percent lower than budgeted.  The Mayor’s office had predicted that the £60 million cable car would generate £8.3 million in tickets for the period, but in reality it only took £5.4 million. Transport for London are still in denial, publicly stating that the service is not making a loss, but this can only be because of the quarterly £3.6 million sponsorship package supplied by Emirates Airline, which is effectively propping up the entire enterprise.  As I have previously wondered, once the sponsorship deal comes to its’ first potential break point, I feel that it would be unlikely for Emirates to continue, as the whole cable car issue has become a farce – Boris is reluctant to intervene to improve the ticketing structure, and pretty much anyone who has any familiarity with the service is aware that it is a vanity project which was built in entirely the wrong part of London. It goes to nowhere from nowhere, and over a warehouse, truck park and a couple of derelict factories – all in all, not a very enticing prospect. The fact is, the current exclusion of Oyster card, London Travel Card and Freedom Pass users from the cable car has done nothing to encourage commuters to use the service – which in any case is far quicker by tube. I regularly pass underneath the cable car when I use the Docklands Light Railway, and it is quite usual to see nobody in a cable car at all; indeed there have been occasions where the operators have switched the system off until a customer turned up – just to save on the electricity bill! Whatever does happen, I seriously doubt that it can carry on in the current manner for very much longer – it is haemorrhaging money. Boris needs to pull his finger out.

I read with disgust that Thamesmead resident Michelle Roberts, who was found guilty by Basildon Crown Court of a number of cases of theft - including from her own family members at a wake after the death of her Uncle; she is to be sentenced in March - you can read the full story on the News Shopper website here. Apart from anyone's normal sense of affronted decency after hearing of the crimes against innocent and often vulnerable victims, what makes it worse for me is that I used to know her. She was a care assistant at my late Dad's nursing home. We don't think she ever managed to steal anything from him, but we have no way of knowing what she may have stolen from others. She's thieving scumbag and a nasty piece of work; she deserves to be locked up for a very long time indeed.

I am afraid the ending video this week is somewhat predictable. Pretty much every media outlet has been banging on about how we are at the 30th anniversary of the launch of the original Apple Macintosh computer; I decided not to give the event as much coverage as I otherwise might, due to the fact the story has been so widely reported elsewhere. Anyway, here is a short video summary of the history of the Mac range. Please feel free to either leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Erith Riverside Festival 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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