Feargal Sharkey, the former lead vocalist of punk band The Undertones, was at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) earlier this month to deliver an enlarged letter to minister Emma Reynolds.

He was joined by Ash Smith and Professor Peter Hammond of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WAS), who were recently portrayed by David Thewlis and Jason Watkins in hit Channel 4 series Dirty Business.

READ MORE: Oxfordshire water campaigners reflect on Channel 4 drama

In addition, Baroness Jenny Jones was present as were campaigners Cat Hobbs and Sophie Conquest, with the wider protest organised by group WeOwnIt.

Although, Ms Reynolds was in China, the group delivered the letter which looked to “call out” lies about putting Thames Water into public ownership.

The UK’s largest water company, which serves approximately 16 million people, has been criticised in recent years for sewage pollution in waterways, rising bills and service disruption, with the regulator Ofwat issuing it a record fine of over £120 million last year.

Feargal Sharkey and others delivering the letter to the Government (Image: WASP)

However the Government has refused to transfer it into state ownership and, after the protest, again said “nationalisation is not the answer”.

A spokesperson for Defra said: “It would cost taxpayers £100 billion and take years to unpick the current ownership model, during which investment would dry up and sewage pollution into our rivers would get worse.

“This government has taken swift action to hold water companies to account.

“Our once-in-a-generation reforms will establish a new, single regulator with more teeth and greater powers to drive transparency including MOT-style checks on water company assets and ‘no notice’ inspections to rebuild customer trust and protect the environment.”

In particular, the campaigners for nationalisation take issue with two points.

Firstly that it would take years and would involve complex legal processes and secondly it would divert effort from cleaning up rivers, lakes and seas.

Mr Smith of WASP said: “The public are being treated as fools and the government is simply repeating a series of lies to try to stop people from knowing that water privatisation has been and still is a massive scam.”

He said it had diverted over £85 billion of money to shareholders, loaded the company with debt and let the country’s sewage infrastructure rot.

Feargal Sharkey and others delivering the letter to the Government (Image: WASP)

He added: “It does not have to be like this, and experts have shown that modern efficient public ownership can be done swiftly and economically with the financiers taking the hit they deserve, not the public, for a change.”

Currently a petition that calls for a referendum on water ownership – set up by WASP – is on over 150,000 signatures.

A spokesperson for Thames Water said: “We remain focused on securing a recapitalisation to restore financial stability, continue our operational turnaround and deliver essential services for 16 million customers.

READ MORE: Oxfordshire stars of Channel 4 show in water referendum call

“We are currently undertaking the biggest upgrade of our network in 150 years with a record capital investment, and we are already making significant progress in improving performance for customers and the environment, including reducing pollutions by 20 per cent.”

The company said its latest results shows that 55p of every £1 received in revenue is invested in infrastructure, 37p is for operational expenditure and 8p is given to lenders.

Mr Smith said that public ownership would see the company’s debts – which reportedly run up to £20 billion – cancelled or greatly reduced and extra money made available for investment.

SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

StorMagic and Supermicro have agreed to sell a joint edge infrastructure offering that bundles Supermicro servers with StorMagic’s SvHCI virtualisation software.

The package is aimed at edge, remote office and branch office, and small datacentre environments. It is built around a two-node architecture rather than the three-node model often used in high-availability deployments.

The approach is designed to reduce hardware requirements for organisations running IT across distributed locations. Target customers include businesses in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, education, hospitality and remote industrial operations, where local IT staffing, space and power can be limited.

Under the agreement, Supermicro’s compact edge systems will be offered within its validated infrastructure portfolio alongside StorMagic’s software. The bundle will be sold through the companies’ global channel partners and distributors.

StorMagic positions the software as a lightweight virtualisation layer for smaller sites that still need resilience for business-critical workloads. Supermicro supplies the server hardware, giving customers a combined procurement and support route instead of buying and integrating components separately.

Edge focus

The move reflects wider pressure on companies to simplify infrastructure outside central datacentres. Edge and branch deployments often face tighter physical constraints than core IT estates, while still being expected to support applications that cannot tolerate extended outages.

Two-node systems are drawing more attention as companies review the cost of adding redundancy to smaller sites. Traditional three-node designs can add expense and operational overhead in environments with little room for extra equipment and no dedicated engineers on site.

In the new offering, customers can run high-availability infrastructure with a smaller footprint and lower power use than more conventional designs. The package is also positioned as a practical fit for businesses seeking to standardise deployments across many sites.

A senior StorMagic executive linked the deal to changing customer spending priorities.

“As organisations rethink infrastructure investments at the edge, the economics of high availability are under greater scrutiny than ever,” said Scott Mann, SVP of Global Sales, StorMagic. “Customers are increasingly focused on the hardware cost savings that come from deploying a resilient two-node architecture instead of a traditional three-node configuration – especially at a time when we’re seeing hardware prices increase by as much as 300% in some scenarios. The ability to reduce infrastructure footprint, power and procurement costs without compromising availability is becoming a major differentiator for edge and ROBO environments, and Supermicro with StorMagic will help customers achieve it.”

Channel route

The companies are relying on the channel to take the product to market globally. That gives resellers and distributors a pre-packaged option for customers that want virtualised infrastructure at smaller sites without building a stack from separate parts.

For channel partners, the attraction is likely to be a simpler sales motion around a defined hardware and software combination. For end users, the appeal is a lower integration burden in environments that can be difficult to support remotely.

StorMagic has built its business around virtualisation software for smaller-scale and edge use cases rather than large core datacentre estates. Supermicro, meanwhile, has expanded its reach in edge computing as customers seek compact systems for stores, factories, clinics and branch offices.

The agreement also comes as some organisations reassess the cost and complexity of virtualisation in distributed environments. Businesses with hundreds or thousands of smaller locations often need a different balance of resilience, cost and ease of management from that used in centralised datacentres.

By focusing on a narrower hardware and software configuration, the two companies are targeting that gap in the market. The joint offer is available immediately through StorMagic and Supermicro’s global channel partners and distributors.

Spiceball Leisure Centre in Banbury has applied to fit 115 photovoltaic panels on its south‑east facing side elevation.

The array, measuring almost 35m long by 10m wide, will form a 51.75kWp system and is expected to generate 45,000–55,000 kWh of electricity a year.

Spiceball Leisure Centre is one of four sites that will receive upgrades (Image: Cherwell District Council)

This output is roughly enough to power around 15 family homes annually, cutting energy bills and carbon emissions at the site.

READ MORE: New illuminated gateway signs planned at key Oxfordshire attraction

Decarbonisation work has already taken place at Spiceball and three other centres as the council pushes towards its climate target, set after it declared a Climate Emergency in 2019. This latest solar scheme is expected to be equivalent to planting 407 trees every year.

Spiceball Leisure Centre could get 115 solar panels on its south-east facing side elevation (Image: Cherwell District Council)

The upgrades are being funded through a £1.1 million grant secured by Cherwell District Council in 2025 from the government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, with the authority also contributing £560,911 in match funding from existing capital budgets.

READ MORE: Bicester Village open late for outdoor England World Cup screenings

Recent eco‑friendly enhancements at the leisure centres include replacing fossil‑fuel heating systems with air‑source heat pumps and improving building insulation to cut heat loss.

Councillors say the programme is expected to deliver annual carbon savings of 234 tonnes of carbon dioxide, comparable to driving a car for more than 820,000 miles.

Together, the solar installation and other measures aim to lock in long‑term reductions in energy use and emissions while keeping running costs down for the council and local taxpayers.