The Scrunch Test.

Feedback regarding the recently opened Riverside Fish and Steak restaurant has been uniformly good, with many extremely favourable comments regarding the decor, the quality of the cooking and the excellent, friendly service. Local resident Mrs. B wrote the following mini review:- "On Wednesday 14th December 2016 I visited the new restaurant in Erith, with my sister and brother-in-law, my daughter and her one month old son (who slept throughout the whole proceedings in his pram), for a late lunch.  When we arrived we were the only diners in there and had our choice of table.  We were warmly greeted by a charming member of staff who made us feel very welcome.  We weren't too sure about the background music but she quickly changed this to a compilation of our choice.  I had warm chicken breast on a salad, and the other three in our party had fish and chips.  There was a little bit of a delay but this was fine as we were enjoying chatting in pleasant surroundings, and when the food was served it was beautifully presented and delicious.  The desserts were a work of art and were wonderful.  Including drinks, the two course meal for the four of us came to just over £50, as far as I recall.   A few other tables filled up while we were there and I gather that there was a large group booked in for that evening.   I would definitely go there again, and I wish them every success". One constructive comment has been made - and that is that if you Google search for "Riverside Fish and Steak restaurant", the result that comes back is for the Riverside Fish Bar in West Street, Erith. This was reviewed a while back by Maggot Sandwich restaurant critic Brian Silk, and also got a glowing review. It seems to me that the new restaurant needs a proper web presence - a dedicated web site for the up - market eaterie, rather than just a Facebook page that it currently has. Image and corporate identity are an important factor to the success of any business. 

Bexleyheath made the regional and national news over the holiday period - but for all of the wrong reasons. A chap was standing outside of the Primark discount clothing store in Bexleyheath Broadway on Christmas Eve, when he noticed a rat in the shop, very close to the windows. He filmed it on his mobile phone and sent the results to the London Evening Standard. You can see the video and read the account of what happened by clicking here. What surprises me is that so many people are surprised by the incident. I am pretty certain that every single shop and residence in Bexleyheath has had rats or mice at some stage or other - as is the case everywhere in the UK and to be honest most places around the world. Rats and mice occur wherever humans are; they are two extremely successful species - it is said that in London you are never more than an average of twelve feet away from a rat - it is just that in most circumstances humans very seldom see them, as normally they are reclusive and secretive, and most of their activity is nocturnal. The rat featured in the story above is untypical in this respect, though its lack of fear of the human filming it may be readily explained; rats have very poor vision - they rely far more on their sense of hearing and smell. The Primark window display was very brightly lit, and it was dark outside - it is entirely possible that the rat saw little through the window, and any noises and all smells would have been blocked. In any case it is now academic; from the statement issued by Primark, pest controllers were soon called and the rat destroyed. 

On Christmas Day morning I was in a cab (a very nice, one year old Mercedes Benz E220 Estate) being driven along Manor Road, on a trip up to visit my Mum in Upper Belvedere. A scrote on an illegal off - road motorbike, no registration plates and of course no crash helmet came pelting up the other side of the road, towards the cab; the teenaged rider suddenly swerved as he lost control of the bike, and he headed directly towards the Mercedes with me and the driver as targets; the cab driver braked and swerved - miraculously avoiding a collision. Whilst the teenaged illegal rider would most definitely come off worse in the event of a collision, the £40,000 (with a couple of options) Mercedes would have been seriously damaged. The cab driver was understandably shaken up and very annoyed - he was a big chap, and I get the feeling that if he had not had me on board as a paying passenger, he would have turned the car around and gone on to chase the scumbag. Many of the local illegal bike riders belong to a large gang called Bike Life TV UK, which was the subject of a BBC documentary which you can watch by clicking here.  Bike Life TV UK are a notorious gang who operate all around the UK, but seem to have their primary base in and around Thamesmead. They not only ride en masse in public areas on unlicensed, stolen and uninsured motorbikes and quad bikes, usually whilst not wearing helmets. As I written in the past, the not wearing of helmets is a deliberate tactic – the Police will not chase a biker not wearing a helmet, as they are concerned for the safety of the non – helmeted biker. This is a difficult issue with many different factors involved – the trouble is the scumbags know that they are effectively immune from any form of recourse, as they wear masks with the deliberate intent of making themselves unidentifiable. This aura of untouchability that members of Bike Life TV UK have fostered has got to be forcibly changed. Members of the public are losing patience with the Police, who seem to be powerless to stop them. I know that in reality this is not the case, and certainly in Bexley, the Police have got illegal bikers as one of their three highest priorities. I feel that the problem in part comes from central government and the Metropolitan Police leadership, who effectively hamper the actions of the officers “on the ground” with excessively restrictive rules of engagement. What I really fail to understand is why the bikers are obsessed with wheelies – they seem to spend as much time as they are physically able to on their back wheel. Why? What is the point? It would be just as effective and considerably cheaper to have “I am a complete pillock” tattooed across each of their foreheads. Bike Life TV UK don’t just ride around intimidating other road users and pedestrians, I understand that some of their members are involved in other types of crime. I have heard it said (but not confirmed) that some gang members move drugs around Thamesmead and Plumstead using junior gang members as couriers. Body building and Mixed Martial Arts are also popular with gang members – I have also heard to date unsubstantiated rumours that they have a trade in illegal anabolic steroids. This might well explain the extremely violent nature and short tempers of Bike Life TV UK members – who may well be suffering from “Roid Rage". The London Evening Standard covered the gang and their illegal activities a while back. you can see the article by clicking here.

Word processing has become so ubiquitous on personal computers that many people don't realise that originally "Word Processors" were dedicated hardware machines, operated by trained users; they were not general purpose computers, but instead all they did was edit and print text. In the early 1980's this began to change with the invention of relatively affordable personal computers. At this point many software companies created word processing programs for a variety of proprietary platforms, most of which started to quietly die off as the PC began to dominate the computer market place. The dominant word processing program for personal computers in the 1980s was DOS-based WordPerfect. Microsoft Word for DOS, which had been released in 1983, was an also-ran. That situation changed dramatically with the introduction of Microsoft Word for Windows in 1989.  By 1993 it was generating 50 percent of the word processing market revenue, and by 1997 it was up to 90 percent. Clearly there was something extraordinary about Word for Windows. Part of its success was due to Microsoft’s marketing acumen. But it was also a stunning technical achievement, and its ability to run on ordinary PCs created the first popular vanguard of the new graphics-oriented style of document preparation. Remember, this was a time when a typical personal computer might have an 8 Mhz processor, 1 megabyte of memory, a 20 megabyte hard disk, and a floppy disk drive. How did Word accomplish so much with so little? It was down to some extremely clever programming. At that point in time, most word processors - like WordStar and Wordperfect 5.1 (remember those - I do!) were not capable of displaying the document on screen in the same manner that it would finally be printed on paper - this caused all sorts of problems - the only way you could tell what your document was going to look like was to print it out - which could cause a lot of wasted paper, if your document was an academic thesis, or a chapter of a book. The emergence of WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) word processors changed all that. The screen showed what the final document would look like, and keyboard commands you used changed the look of the text, not a programming script. One of the first such programs was BRAVO, created in 1974 by Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi and others at Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, for the groundbreaking Alto computer (I have written about the Xerox Alto back in July 2011 - you can read all about it by clicking here). Simonyi later said, "It was clear that quite a beautiful editor could be written for the Alto. Remember, the Alto had a black and white bitmap display. It had a mouse. It had an un-decoded keyboard. It had all the ingredients that are necessary for WYSIWYG. And, of course, then the network came around. The laser printer was coming alive. So all the components were there, except for the software…. We set out to write an editor and we finished it about three months!" Like much of the other innovative Alto software and hardware, BRAVO was never sold as a commercial product. After nine years, Simonyi was frustrated by Xerox’s inability to turn great ideas into products. “I lost faith in Xerox’s ability to do anything” . In 1981 he left and joined Microsoft to lead a team in creating application programs. The first, already in progress when he arrived, was the spreadsheet Multiplan, a VisiCalc competitor. Simonyi was well-suited from his Xerox experience for the next assault on the competition: to unseat MicroPro’s popular WordStar word processor. He hired Richard Brodie, a brilliant programmer he had first hired in 1979 at Xerox PARC. The fact that Brodie had no college degree wasn’t an issue; Brodie said later that “He asked me some programming questions and he liked the way I answered them.” In the summer of 1982 Brodie began working with others at Microsoft on a word processor to be controlled by a mouse. It was finished just over a year later, in October 1983. “I had pretty much a free hand. It was a pretty small program, and I was familiar with word processing from my work at Xerox PARC with Charles.” It may have been a “small program” but it had some sophisticated features, including support for style sheets, multiple windows, footnotes, mail-merge, undo, and the proportional fonts that the newly emerging laser printers would be able to use. Microsoft founder and president Bill Gates was impressed. “One thing that just blew Bill away was an optimization of the display speed. We actually formatted as you typed. Every time you inserted one character, the screen would update to show exactly what was going to be printed.” Free demonstration copies of Microsoft Word for MS-DOS were bundled with the November 1983 issue of PC World magazine. But it received mixed reviews, in large part because it was so different from what most people were used to. The 1984 BYTE magazine review said it was “clever, put together well, and performs some extraordinary feats, but extremely frustrating to learn and operate efficiently. …Word’s developers seem to be trying to completely reinvent word processing.” That is precisely what they were trying to do. Although it was inspired by the earlier work at Xerox, few people outside the research community had been yet exposed to the new regime that would eventually predominate. Microsoft Word brought WYSIWYG to the masses. Over the next years Word was continually improved. The first version for Microsoft Windows was released in late 1989 at a single-user price of $495. It received a glowing review in Infoworld that didn’t flinch at the price: “If your system is powerful enough to support Microsoft Windows, at $495 it is an excellent value.” This might seem quite strange now, when $495 would have been more like $1000 in modern terms, but you have to remember that this was an era when the cost of commercial software running on a business PC was often far higher than the cost of the hardware itself. It is ironic that Microsoft Word is now the defacto standard for word processing, even though Microsoft continually changes the way that formatting data is stored in each version of Word. This means that in years to come, it may be impossible to read or print out documents produced in older versions of Word. Personally, if you would like to try an alternative to Microsoft Office that is one hundred percent file compatible, but is free and open source, I would highly recommend Libre Office which is available for free download for the Windows, Apple OS X, and Linux operating systems.

An announcement from the local Police:- "Please see below for all local Police Safer Neighbourhood Surgery/Street Briefing dates for January and February 2017 for the North End Ward in JAN/FEB 2017 are listed below:-

TUESDAY 03/JANUARY/2017  1000hrs  FOREST ROAD CAFÉ
THURSDAY 05/JANUARY/2017  0830hrs OUTSIDE PEARESWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL, PEARESWOOD ROAD
FRIDAY 06/JANUARY/2017  0830hrs  OUTSIDE SLADE GREEN PRIMARY AND HABERDASHERS SCHOOL, SLADE GREEN ROAD
MONDAY 16/JANUARY/2017  1500hrs  OUTSIDE PEARESWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL, PEARESWOOD ROAD
TUESDAY 17/JANUARY/2017  1500hrs  OUTSIDE SLADE GREEN PRIMARY AND HABERDASHERS SCHOOL, SLADE GREEN ROAD
TUESDAY 24/JANUARY/2017  1100hrs  SLADE GREEN LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY CENTRE
WEDNESDAY 01/FEBRUARY/2017  1500hrs  OUTSIDE PEARESWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL, PEARESWOOD ROAD
THURSDAY 02/FEBRUARY/2017  1500hrs  OUTSIDE SLADE GREEN PRIMARY AND HABERDASHERS SCHOOL, SLADE GREEN ROAD
TUESDAY 21/FEBRUARY/2017  1500hrs  OUTSIDE PEARESWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL, PEARESWOOD ROAD
WEDNESDAY 22/FEBRUARY/2017  1500hrs  OUTSIDE SLADE GREEN PRIMARY AND HABERDASHERS SCHOOL, SLADE GREEN ROAD
SATURDAY 25/FEBRUARY/2017  1100hrs  FOREST ROAD CAFÉ
MONDAY 27/FEBRUARY/2017  0830hrs  OUTSIDE PEARESWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL, PEARESWOOD ROAD
TUESDAY 28/FEBRUARY/2017  0830hrs  OUTSIDE SLADE GREEN PRIMARY AND HABERDASHERS SCHOOL, SLADE GREEN ROAD"

I got a copy of the popular book "Radio Caroline - the true story of the boat that rocked" for Christmas, and I sat down and read it in a single sitting (I am a very fast reader - the book is 256 pages long, including quite a lot of photographs). It was written by a chap called Ray Clark, who worked for the station in the mid 1980's - a couple of years or so before my time. I would recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in offshore radio, or indeed social history over the last fifty or so years. I feel that the book does have a few flaws though - in my opinion in covers the 1960's in minute detail, recounting quite a few stories I had not heard before. However the subsequent chapters covering the 1970's and 1980's feel somewhat rushed, and I feel that a lot more detail could have been included; I have stories that I feel would have added to the enjoyment of the reader, and I am pretty certain that the same could be said from many other former members of Radio Caroline staff. There is most definitely scope for a revised and extended version of the book in the future. Incidentally, should you be interested, you can see some of my photos from my time with Radio Caroline by clicking here. I also came across an edited, off - air recording of me doing my early morning radio show during a force 9 gale with thirty foot high waves battering the ship, which someone has uploaded here - click to listen. And yes, I do sound about twelve years old, I agree! Comments below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

British film director Ridley Scott has two major films coming out in the next few months - a sequel to the classic "Blade Runner", and "Alien: Covenant" - the sequel to 2012's "Prometheus" - the film I consider to the one of the worst that I have ever seen - and overall I am a big fan of Ridley Scott's work. Prometheus has not inspired me with confidence in what will be delivered in the next "Alien" film. Much had been promised with Prometheus, which was a direct prequel to the original (and many would say the best) "Alien", and as such I was expecting much - after all, he had set the bar so high with his 1979 low budget sci fi horror movie; he virtually reinvented the genre. I had heard some rather mixed reviews of the new movie, but I watched it with an open mind. To be blunt, "Prometheus" was a total mess. The story makes little sense, the cast telephone in their performances (with one exception, which I will come to later) and the characters act in a completely illogical manner. Without giving out any spoilers in case you have not already seen the movie, the film is a confusing and sometimes contradictory experience. The crew of the Prometheus are at the centre of the story, in a similar manner to the original "Alien" movie. Unlike in Alien, where the crew were basically a group of working class manual labourers - space truckers, if you will, who were forced by circumstance to work together to defeat a common foe; in Prometheus they are a hand picked elite group of scientists and engineers - the best of the best. The problem is that the crew of the Prometheus act like a group of unruly teenagers - they disobey orders, smoke dope, drink copious quantities of booze, and generally act in a shambolic and irresponsible manner. None of this helps the suspension of disbelief; much of the time you are left wondering "just why did that character do that? It makes no sense". It is not like there is a reveal, making the uncharacteristic actions clear. Another thing, when the crew come out of hyper sleep, the ship has just made orbit around the alien world. You would have thought that the first thing they would do would be to survey and map the surface, and check the atmosphere - either directly, or by using robotic drones. But no, they just pile in to land, and guess what? They come up directly on the destination they wanted - the alien base facility. The coincidence is laughable - they had an entire planet to choose from, and they picked the right spot first time. All it would have taken was a crew member to say something like "The survey drones have located some kind of artificial structure - we are going down to take a look". Later, when the crew enter the structure, it becomes clear that they do indeed have semi intelligent mapping drones - why do the humans have to go inside what is clearly a dangerous structure, when the drones can do it all for them? Weak plotting. I could go on, but I don't want to give away what little plot there is - in case you have not seen the film. I feel that there is a good film in there somewhere, but it needs some drastic re-editing; still, Scott is renowned for issuing cut after cut of his movies, as anyone who has bought multiple versions of Alien, Aliens and Blade Runner can attest. Normally I can suspend my disbelief during a movie, but with Prometheus I found myself shouting at the screen - with one exception, the characters continually act against their motivation. The exception is the character of David, the robot or "synthetic human". The role is excellently played by actor Michael Fassbender, who manages to impart a understated and subtle menace to the character; there is a very nice nod to the fact that the Alien and Blade Runner universes are one and the same. You will have to look carefully though - look for the scene with David's finger prints in macro close up. Overall I would still recommend you watch the film, if you have not already seen it; the photography is beautiful, and the CGI top notch, even if some of the special effects makeup is surprisingly ropey at times, and the ending of the movie is pretty much ridiculous. I understand that I am by far from the only person to find multiple faults with Prometheus - indeed I understand that one of the reasons that Ridley Scott has taken the best part of four years to produce a sequel in what was intended to be a trilogy was that he had to rework the story arc to remove many of the elements the audience found unbelievable or ridiculous. The trailer for Alien: Covenant does look far more like a "conventional" Alien film - which ironically may also turn off an audience who may well feel that the new film is just a rehash of stuff that has been done before. Time will tell - I would love for the new film to be great, but I am not holding my breath. The first Alien, and its sequel Aliens are amongst my absolute top favourite movies, and any new addition to the canon has a lot to live up to. 

As many readers will be aware, I am not a fan of Bexley Council - and I know that I am not alone in that sentiment. One area however in which they do very well is in their levels of recycling, which are amongst the best in Greater London. They have just published information regarding the disposal and recycling of Christmas based waste, such as old Christmas trees and wrapping paper. One piece of advice which was new to me is regarding how to test old wrapping paper to see if it is suitable to be recycled. They write:- "To check if your wrapping paper is recyclable give it the 'scrunch test' - if it stays crumpled it can also go into your paper and cardboard recycling container. Any wrapping paper which 'springs back' after being scrunched up is plastic based and cannot be recycled".  You can read more about what to do with your Christmas leftovers and rubbish by clicking here. 

The end video this week is a bit of a curiosity; it shows a trip to the least used railway station in Kent, the tiny and mostly unknown Swale Station - see what you think. If you have any questions or comments, leave a message below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Erith market to return?

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

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

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

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

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

DERES' VASE DREAM DIES

Erith and Belvedere 0 North Shields 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steel Panther.

Remember you read it here first. The next big thing in popular music are going to be retro 80's L.A hair metal band Steel Panther. Trust me. Imagine Poison and Motley Crue, mixed with Whitesnake, and with a touch of Bon Jovi added, then all turned up to 11 with the Dobly turned on. Totally shameless and utterly brilliant. Any band with songs like "Eatin ain't cheatin'", "Fat girl - thar she blows", and "Party all day - f*ck all night" have to be heard to be believed. The disclaimer on the back of their album states "The CD you are about to listen to contains material that features foul language, adult content, Satanic imagery and depictions of sexually deviant fantasies that may offend the religious right, the unreligious left, fat girls, skinny girls, metrosexuals, animal lovers, animal haters, hippies, skinheads, the current Presidential administration and people with ears. The record company and its' parent companies do not endorse or support the opinions of Steel Panther. They just think they f*cking rock!" Quite. You can read the BBC's rave online review of their album, "Feel the Steel" by clicking here. I bought the album yesterday, and I have had it on almost continuous play ever since. Real feel good, old fashioned rock and roll; great tunes and superb musicianship - and then there are the lyrics... Ahem.



Anyway, back to more mundane matters; Morrison's in Erith have introduced four self service checkouts - an exceedingly brave move in my opinion. These automated, self scanning tills tend to be successful in prosperous middle class areas in shops like Waitrose, but in impoverished, run down hell holes like Erith I predict the levels of shop lifting will rocket. I give the whole enterprise six months before they are removed as not being cost effective. What usually happens is that the store has to employ extra security guards, who cost more per hour than check out staff, and the whole thing gets written off as too expensive. Personally I don't see why I should have to check out my purchases - that in my opinion is a job for their staff - after all, you don't have a dog and bark yourself.

Erith Riverside Centre had a visitor yesterday - Titan the Robot, who scared the kids and some of the adults too - according to Ian who took the following photograph.

Nice to see something unusual happening in the area; it will be interesting to see what coverage the event gets in the News Shopper. Plenty of still empty units in the centre though; a pity that after over two years of opening, the place is still hanging on by the skin of its' teeth.

That dreadful rag the Daily Mail (in my opinion the worst national daily newspaper, consciously aiming its' appeal primarily at white, middle aged, middle class women) has been running a campaign that for once I can actually sympathise with. They are campaigning against the use of domestic wheelie bins, and the compunction of residents to act as unpaid litter sorters, bearing in mind the profits made by many councils in selling the pre - sorted waste on to recyclers for cash. I have decided not to play the game at all. Every day I take a small bag of my rubbish from the previous 24 hours round the corner to the waste recycling site in Morrison's car park - usually I do this on my way to work in the morning, after picking up my daily copy of the Times. I then pop round to the recycling point, drop off my rubbish, then head onwards to the railway station, and thence to London. No wheelie bins, stroppy and uncooperative dustmen, or smelly clutter despoiling my front garden - and a Zen like sense of completing the circle; All my food comes from Morrisons, and my waste returns there for recycling. The bonus is that in a very small way I feel that I am for once beating "the man".

The comments I made last week about the future of short wave radio sparked quite a bit of interest; I wonder if anyone remembers the excellent proto commercial shortwave news, technology and current affairs station Radio Fax that broadcast in the early nineties, only to be crushed by the government. You can read all about Radio Fax here.

This weeks' video clip is a little longer than usual; it shows twelve minutes from the pilot episode of "Virtuality" - the new sci fi drama series from Ronald D. Moore, producer and writer of the truly ground breaking remake of "Battlestar Galactica". Here is a sneak peek at his new show...

The battle of Fraser Road.

Well the battle of GC's Night Club has entered a new phase, as you can see above from the front page of the News Shopper local paper - click on either photo for a larger version. I have been contacted by one of the original organisers of the enterprise, who has now parted company with the organisation; it would appear that she was misled by Antony Stewart - the main man behind the club, and she has now severed all ties with him. You can read more on the continuing story, along with some comments from members of the public on the News Shopper website by clicking here. My sources also inform me that the club did not appear to open on Boxing Day evening, as they had been enthusiastically advertising, and it was also closed on Saturday night. We have also discovered that their Facebook site has been taken down, and all references deleted. I am not going to tempt fate by making a pronouncement at this point; let us wait and see what happens.

Many local councils around the country have brought in draconian measures relating to disposal of domestic waste and recycling. Bexley Council issued different coloured bins for food waste, recyclable products and the like. It has to be said that the reliability and regularity of the collections leaves quite a lot to be desired; the increase in workload has meant that the council has had to outsource much of the rubbish collecting to an external contractor, who to be honest are pretty crap. Many locals cannot be bothered to separate the materials by type, and dump everything into a bin bag and hope for the best that the contractors will take it. On top of this the council has hoped to recoup much of the additional expense by selling things like glass and metal on for recycling. Unfortunately for all concerned, the credit crunch has caused the bottom to fall out of scrap prices, and the whole thing has become unworkable. I have now started observing people bagging up their daily rubbish into shopping bags and then disposing of it in public waste bins. Their council run wheelie bins are too small to take all their rubbish, so they export it into public space into bins only designed for the occasional chip wrapper or empty soft drink can. I suppose this is really a form of fly tipping, but I have to admit I can completely understand. The ball has well and truly been dropped on this one, and I don't see what can be done to remedy the situation.

The Christmas / New Year break is always a good time for listening to the radio. Not only do the normal BBC and Independent stations usually have something new and interesting to listen to, but you get all sorts of radio stations like the elusive Enigma 846, Laser Hot Hits and the oft mentioned WNKR 1476 AM popping up. You can see details of what station is on and when by checking out the following blog. I received a very interesting book as a Christmas present, on the history of the development of domestic radio, written by the president of the British Vintage Wireless Society. At heart I will always be an anorak.

You could not make this up. Erith's own tattoo parlour "Point 2 Point" is selling tattoo vouchers for people to give as Christmas and birthday presents. You can see a photo of the place with the proud owner here. My personal views on tattooing and piercing are well known, so I won't bore you with repeating them again.

Another local Blog that is more than worthy of regular read is Plumsteadshire by the engagingly monickered Doctor Pangloss. Do check it out.

I think that next week I may do what so many media outlets do at the end of the year and do a "Year in review" type summary of the last twelve months. Any suggestions would be gratefully received - you can leave comments below as normal, which will appear online instantly. I have now switched comment moderation back off, as I think the anonymous knuckle dragging moron who posted an obscene comment on an older posting seems to have disappeared. No doubt his medication has now worn off.

This weeks video is one that has proved to be extremely popular online. It features a slightly podgy Japanese cat who has a fascination with cardboard boxes and other packaging. See what you think anyway.