Octopus Energy gone haywire - again!

I'm an electricity only customer, we are two OAPs, using such a minute amount of electricity because we don't have central heating, no air conditioning and one primary instant electric water heater of 10/12 Kw for kitchen and bathroom which takes electricity only when switched on to give hot water.  A second unit is 3 Kw for hand washing in the small downstairs toilet.

Years ago, we invested in a 6.24 kWh solar array and 14.4 kWh set of batteries which should also explain that even £50/mth charge is too much, let alone £100.

This means we use only 3 to 4 kWh of electricity per day when averaged out over the full year.

Please check your arithmetic and computer for faults.  Or is your whole system of working somewhat inept?

Please explain your actions fully in writing.  And put things right.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, Energy Sec

Fahnbulleh is a rising star in the party who contributed heavily to Burnham’s policy ideas as he was preparing for government.

She previously worked closely with Miliband so was a natural choice for the energy role and will have a crucial task in Burnham’s mission of cutting bills while sticking to commitments in net zero.

FROM: 'The Guardian' today

Ed Miliband praised

... the rules Labour inherited governing the UK’s privatised power market, which mean that the price of electricity is set by gas-fired power stations, which can be highly profitable for them but disastrous for consumers.

Miliband has been trying to wean the UK off fossil fuels, to cheap renewable energy. This will require more investment, particularly in the grid. And the government is intent on decoupling gas and electricity prices, but this is proving a tough and slow process.

His move to the Foreign Office will prevent Miliband from following through on this project, and it remains to be seen whether his replacement, Miatta Fahnbulleh, will continue it with such enthusiasm.

---------

Teresa Ribera, a vice-president of the European Commission responsible for green transition, has been a close ally since Miliband began his first stint as energy secretary in 2008. “He is, by some distance, one of the most skilful and respected negotiators I have ever worked with, and one of the most honest and principled politicians I know. He commands respect in international institutions and among the world’s most influential governments, but equally among developing countries, workers, scientists and business and civil society leaders,” she told the Guardian.

This will help Britain, and the world, in his new role. “I have absolutely no doubt that he has all the qualities needed to become an outstanding foreign secretary,” says Ribera. “His experience in international climate negotiations, his understanding of the economic and social dimensions of the energy transition, and his unwavering commitment to fairness and social justice make him one of the most valuable figures not only in British politics, but in global public leadership.”

FROM:  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/21/labour-briefed-against-ed-miliband-success-popularity

White Judeo-Christian West record of Islamophobia is longer and deeper than antisemitism!

The Judeo-Christian world has been Islamophobic for many centuries.  Especially, since the 1WW with first Sykes-Picot​ and then with Balfour.  We got the Arabs to help us win the War by telling them that if they helped us win, we would let them govern their own land.  We then reneged on our assurances and tightened our grip on them because we were now in control and wanted things to remain that way.  Duplicitous, perfidious Albion!

Their land, with all that lovely black gold, was far too important to be trusted to the Arabs/Muslims, so we took control of it.  For many decades in the case of Iran.  We even dictatorially, in a USA/UK coup, deposed their own elected President Mosadeq and imposed our man, the Shah of Iran and his Police state!  This is Islamophobic and breaks international law.

Islamophobic since the 7th century because we didn't like their new faith insisting it was a further revelation and correction of our own Jewish/Christian truth.

FROM: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/20/islamophobia-spectator-britain-oldest-political-magazine

A large and comprehensive report from the Centre for Media Monitoring reviewed 3,733 articles published in the Spectator relating to Islam or Muslims. Released last week, it criticised the publication for “a sustained and systemic pattern of biased coverage of Muslims and Islam”, according to the CMM, “with more than half of all relevant articles rated as biased over an eight-year period”. It is grim, grim reading.

Among the conclusions reached by the report are that articles in the magazine regularly portrayed Muslims as a “problem population”, delegitimised the very notion of Islamophobia, and consistently presented Muslims as exceptional or threatening. The overall effect is of a minority that is not only sectarian and separate, but also, ironically, from within its ghetto, dangerous and aggressively colonising British society.

NESRINE MALIK, Guardian columnist

to David G

I love trams and always use them rather than buses.  The first idiocy by our politicians and transport experts was to destroy the lot of them, apart from Blackpool and up Snaefell hill in the Isle of Man.  They then replaced them with a cocktail of poisonous gases from diesel buses and started selling off railway lines for buildings and roads, instead of mothballing them for future railway use to reduce road and railway congestion.  How shortsighted.  How stupid was that?

Next, in the 80s in Manchester, trams replaced trains and buses at the most colossal expense, when that money could have been better spent.  More of the railway network lost for multi-modal transport to make for more changes.  Money for regional Fare-Free Public Transport for every single person from the cradle to the grave and, to entice car commuters out of their tin boxes!

Over one billion to destroy 10 Kms of the principal mainline railway.  Scandalous expense for doing the wrong thing.  BUT the tram was sold to us as needing to be built to get the full 56 Kms between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent reopened.  Trams to get trains.  How stupid is that?

Have you read what I sent you today, David?  Have you read anything I have sent you over the years?

Midlands Connect has always fully supported Metro trams and their expansion.  The £15 billion for 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops by 2040 has not been cancelled, David.  Or, what have you heard?  Am I wrong?

All the best and keep in touch.  Please try and get Railfuture to fight for trains on freight only or unused, still not built on railway lines.  I've been doing their work over the last 40 years in opposing Metro on mainline railways.

What is most shocking and reprehensible, dear friend - McClean Way

Thanks for mentioning to your team members, our Saturday 8 August walk/run/cycle event on the 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway from Himley Woodland Trust car park. Activity and distance are personal choice!  But it is the two old Dudley railway lines, south of the S Staffs/Dudley border which are the object of our desire for us all to use without being decked out in old clothes and wellies in winter.  It's an official public right of way from the 70s or 80s, too but is so neglected it is heaven on earth for dirt bikers and quad bikers!

Tim, were you aware that there was a perfectly good, double track, principal mainline railway that was available but, reserved for trams from 1981, from Walsall Railway Sta to Stourbridge Jct Railway Sta and onwards?  But, perhaps, the authorities were unaware there was your perfectly good railway line in S Staffordshire that is its continuation!

I hope you won't be offended at my sending this to you, just in case you were unaware of the 45 year history of Metro trams going on railway lines - but only 23 Kms actually achieved when 200 Kms was wanted by 2000, 26 years ago!  It is now 150 miles or 241 Kms by 2040.  Here it is:

Sunday, 19 July 2026

What is most shocking and reprehensible, dear friend

 ... about regional transport policy since the 1980s, by both Centro, their political leaders and continuing under the Mayor and the Combined Authority/TfWM, is the constant refrain that Metro trams are the catalyst to get the railway​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​open again.

"Light rail (trams) provide the basis for restoring heavy rail services (trains) at the appropriate time."  Tom Magrath, Centro Passenger Services Director, letter dated Sept 2000 about the 120 Kms Black Country Railway bypassing THE railway congestion bottleneck of Grand Central.  Trams are essential to get the trains!

In more recent years, Mayor Andy Street in my talks with him, was only ever concerned that the trams would not stop the reopening of the full Black Country Railway for trains.  In the main meeting I had with him and his advisers, they reassured him that the trains would still be able to return at a later date, thanks to their magic "passive provision".  Absurd!  Therefore, Andy did nothing because he believed his officers rather than me when I pointed out the blindingly obvious that railway lines can be reopened without turning them into tramways and cycle-walkways first!​

 Misconduct in public office - the sham, the dishonesty, the lie of "passive provision" for the re...

​

​What is worse is that their policy of trams to get trains is accelerating the Climate Emergency at a time when drought, 40 C temperatures and wildfires are showing we may be seeing the runaway greenhouse effect on our planet similar to the one on our sister or twin planet, Venus.  Now uninhabitable.

In addition, there are still existing but wasted railway lines in our region or, freight only lines, alongside or near to congested roads and motorways which could slow congestion and mitigate Climate horrors if brought back into use for TRAINS, rather than grossly expensive trams or, nothing.  See this 2003 map​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​

​In 23 years, very little has changed for the better.  For 35 years to 2016, the policy was for Metro trams on the Bristol to Grand Central railway in Brum!!  There must still be about 100 Kms of underused/wasted railways left in the region. However, they are all besotted with trams at the most enormous expense and difficulty to achieve.  One tramway is going to the new Birmingham City football stadium to smarten up that deprived area of poverty and poor housing in Bordesley.  Such are their priorities!  241Kms of tramway and 380 tram stops by 2040 to give us the perfect ideal of 'Mixed Use Railways' from the Dept for Transport - the current mantra to bring Transport Heaven on Earth to us all.

Christian = Trump supporter

"Faith is being used to legitimise 'political exclusion', academics warn"

Dr Katie Gaddini, Associate Professor in Sociology at UCL, said that Christian women in the US have become an increasingly crucial part of Trump’s MAGA movement.

“Being a Christian means being a Trump supporter,” she noted, adding that the lines between political and religious belief are blurred.

“‘That's how fused the categories were within the Christian communities that I grew up in… we're at the point, where departing from not only conservatism, but a MAGA-informed conservatism, automatically puts you on the outside within your Christian community.”

from Premier Christian News

8,000 miles off our coast; 300 miles off Argentina's

Yet again, coercion, force and violence have settled the matter once and for all.  We won the war in '82 to determine who should own the islands.  The islanders had no say in the matter but were certainly over joyed that our side was victorious, if never in football.

If we had lost, presumably we would have relocated the islanders to the UK.  No problem.  So why did nearly one thousand people have to die to underscore the principle that you don't ever takeover/attack another country - like Chagos Islands, S Africa or Palestine/Israel or Afghanistan or Iraq or Venezuela or Iran?

Anyway, all that matters is that what we want goes in this world.  We want, we have.  Everything, but its not greed, mind you.  Now, multiple rail modes are called, officially by the DfT - Mixed Use Railways.

Whites taking over S Africa worked. Why not for Israel?

Do you Aaron, see any similarity between the Whites taking over S Africa and eventually coming to an agreement, a settlement with the indigenous Blacks, and Israel taking over more and more of Palestine throughout the 20th century after nearly 2,000 years of being deprived?

Certainly not an exact parallel, of course but it has worked in South Africa where Israelis have failed in their takeover.

The colonisers upset the apple cart - well and truly!

1600:  Tens of thousands of indigenous N American Indians peacefully co-existing after many thousands of years of their low materially but, sustainable, lifestyles.

1620:  The Pilgrim Fathers arrived from W Europe and trouble started!  The Protestant Puritans believing every word in the Bible newly translated into English, became the foundation of today's USA.

400 years of internal killings - first of the native population and then the slaughter of Americans in the War of Independence from Britain and then the Civil War to rid the land of slavery but not racism.

I'm sure I've heard from one authority on the subject, that more Americans were slaughtered in the 1860s Civil War than the total in all their subsequent wars to the present day!  58,000 dead to fight Communism in the 1950s, 60s and 70s - and then it was an ignominious defeat with later parallels to the withdrawal from Kabul in 2021.

The USA is strongly Bible believing and is the country with the highest proportion of church attendance in the world.  But that means nothing if they cannot stop their slaughter and dominating behaviour on the international scene!

Why I've back slidden, fallen out of love with evangelical Christianity

Many years ago, you very kindly showed interest in why I had departed from the evangelical Christianity of my Westhill days. At that time I gave a very brief and, an extremely inadequate answer. What follows is a better explanation. But, again not everything!

Politics is about morality and leadership.  Ecology trumps theology, as must morality, conscience and personal integrity rather than creeds and doctrine.

 

For me, heresy is when Christians get mixed up with arms production, with the armed forces and going to war at the behest of a  Bush, a Blair/Brown or an equally demented Trump in this decade.

Heresy is when nature's laws are dismissed as being of little consequence when compared to the magisterial monument which is the Bible.

The Bible is put on a pedestal for instruction in how to live. No wonder, the believers have got mixed-up in coercion, force and violence and in control, domination and occupation of other peoples' lands. So ruling over others, without a by your leave - just imposition from beginning to end.  

The Church gladly saw worldwide colonialism as a wonderful opportunity to save souls and extend the Kingdom of God for His glory. Never mind the million dead and the million forced out of their homes when the Jewel in the Crown, the mighty British Raj, came to an end in 1947.

The very next year saw the defeat of the British Empire as the three Jewish-Zionist terrorist gangs defeated the largest Empire the world has ever seen.  One of them, Haganah, became the IDF! 

Funded by America, the New State of Israel had its aggression rewarded in every subsequent war with ever more land conquered and occupied ever since.

This was a repeat of the colonial settler movement by mainly Bible-believing, God fearing, Christian Puritans of the 17th century who took over N America from the indigenous native Indians. That too saw decades of violence by the White man before gaining total and complete control for the last 250 years.  Our total control over the last 78 years imposes American, British and Israeli ever so Righteous Way of the West on the land once known as Palestine.

95% of the followers of the Way of Jesus, for the first 300 years, had it dead right in understanding that total discipleship meant renouncing coercion, force and violence.

In the lead up to the 2024 USA Presidential election, which saw Trump elected, Edward Stourton interviewed USA evangelical, Pastor Michael Yousef who quite unashamedly, said he would be voting for Donald Trump because he was strongly against abortion.  Similarly, he thought, most of his church members and followers would also be voting 'Trump'.  The fate of the unborn is more important than that of the born who are killed in vast numbers in American initiated interventions and wars.  Upside down, back to front, inside out morality and politics.

Sometime later and after the election, I heard a brief report on state national broadcaster, Radio 4 News saying that it was thought that about 80% of American evangelicals voted for Trump in 2024.

Do what the government wants regardless of your personal role in it?

For me, using English air bases for defensive purposes in our side's war on Iran is not good enough.  I would expect 'Premier Christian News' to uphold Christ's teaching on violence, revenge and warfare.

"and celebrating after the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei" is entirely inappropriate, I think!

But can individuals behave differently if they have to act in a government role?  They then suppress their personal conscience/opinion to do what their government wants.  Is this acceptable?

Tim Weller promises £1,000 towards nature reinstatement but bribery still won't work!

Manor Way/A456 between A459/B4551 and M5 jct 3

I would like the old nature reinstatement programme to be put back after 30 years of asking.  The proof of its original existence are the two remnants - opposite Shell and east of the Manor Lane traffic lights.

£1K from very small-time environmental watchdog, Tim Weller, only if:

The UK's very fine oddity/eccentricity - the major, 30 m diameter Grange/cricket ground roundabout, from tyres to tarmac in 50 years, is finally finished with nature landscaping - not sculptures, as once planned! 

For the Manor Way/A456 reinstatement is completed by returning the rest of the woodland to the central reservation, after the carriageway resurfacing 30 years ago.  The current line of 'lollipop' cherry trees is my one success when asking for the full reinstatement many years ago.  That area was, originally, heavily wooded.  Some of my own protest planting to fill in the gaps where cherry trees have died, remains!  Can you spot them and the species?!

The planting of trees and a footway carbon capture scheme for Manor Way/Lapal Lane South to also react to Climate heatwaves - like the other measures, above.

Edge of carriageway mowing, ONLY.

Then, ​cycle-walkway, railway​s and nature destroying, ​dismal​ Dudley MBC gets my £1,000 reward!

TIM WELLER  -   HALESOWEN  BLACK COUNTRY

The vicious, brutal over-reaction ...

to 9/11 stirred up a hornet's nest of even more violence, death and destruction for 25 years, so far, throughout the Middle East.

Violence, massacres and destruction is ever and only the instant response from every branch of humanity. Especially from the unhappy Abrahamic family - Judeo-Christian and Muslim. They are the worst of the lot - MY tribe!

Sat 8 Aug 2026

I'm a cycle commuter, cycle campaigner, bikepacker - for the last 50 years of cycling and hill walking.  I'm known to the renowned David Viner of Halesowen Athletic and Cycling Club.  Visit us in the barren, backward, bleak Black Country - please, my friend (not that bad, really!)

Cycle or walk, for coffee and back, on SATURDAY 8 AUGUST 2026 at 10 am, from Himley Plantation car park!

Two of us cyclists and walkers are trying to whip up support for getting the authorities to finish, easily, the UK's most important and longest, 20 Km urban-rural-urban Black Country Active Travel Route from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhampton and beyond.

The surface is fine from the Woodland Trust's Himley Plantation car park, going north through Wombourne and on to Wolverhampton.  It is a 5 Km winter mud bath going south from the Dudley/S Staffs border, which we do not touch - we go in the opposite direction!  But please help us to get it upgraded to the South Staffordshire District Council standard by joining us on the cycle/walk.  It needs more of us asking.

First coffee stop, certainly for walkers after 3 Kms, is https://www.theplatformwombourne.com/ - at Bratch Lane, Wombourne in the old railway station.  Whats App:07950330661.

Go to - https://maps.app.goo.gl/YdEszfAvqspUNMyP8

First for cyclists after 10 Kms from start is https://cupcake-lane.com/ - at Smestow Valley/Tettenhall Railway Station, Meadow View Terrace, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton.

MEET at Himley Lane - entrance to car park at pin, below:

TIM WELLER  Halesowen  Black Country  (0791 380 4363)

We are so entitled, we now have Mixed Use Railways - official from DfT

https://www.uktram.org/post/mixed-use-railway-gains-momentum-with-launch-of-new-industry-platform

STOP TURNING WASTED/UNUSED/FREIGHT ONLY BUT REMAINING RAILWAY LINES, INTO TRAMWAYS, VLR TEST TRACKS, CYCLE-WALKWAYS, BUILDINGS.  USE THEM FOR COMMUTER/REGIONAL TRAINS NOT TRAMS OR ANYTHING ELSE!

We've got everything and we want even  more!  High Speed railways, a revival of tramways in many towns and cities costing billions.  Just concentrate on existing railways and buses meeting trains.  And, FFPT = regional Fare-Free Public Transport for ALL which, as an OAP, I've had for 18 years!

Concentrate on TRAINS and BUSES, please.  NOT ON GREEDILY REBUILDING THE TRAM NETWORK.

Our nation is on the attack, with USA/Israel

Our nation, I think is attacking Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank by failing to be outspoken in explaining to USA and Israel that their behaviour is totally unacceptable. There should also be BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) imposed where practical and possible. And, certainly no more iniquitous arms trading. Keep our weapons to ourselves. The popular arms trade is as wicked as 300 years of the British slave trade.

"Funding murderous wars", says Mick Freer

You wrote that we must stop funding murderous wars. How right you are. But we have taken an active part, alongside the USA in attacking Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, less active against Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon - and now Iran with English airfields used by USAF. My nation's values are rotten to the core, setting a very bad example for other nations to also be aggressive. Keep up your sterling work Mick and best wishes.cking Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, less active against Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon - and now Iran with English airfields used by USAF. My nation's values

to Mick Freer

Dear Mick

For me, and this is all about my survival instinct to help slow human caused climate change and resource depletion, it would be a wise move to begin the long transition towards using our local countryside for locally produced food; and, to grow renewable, zero carbon timber instead of catastrophic and finite fossil fuels. For me, this is the most important argument to slow the incessant process of concrete, brick and tarmac poured over fertile soil that, one day, we may be desperate for. For the politicians' goal of 2 or 3% economic greed every year on a finite planet that ain't so greedy as us lot, how about this, below? The Enterprise Zone would be better created, either on the land at Moor Street, Brierley Hill (the site of the former Brierley Hill Steel Terminal) or, north of Pensnett High Street. I am asking (a futile and ignored request) for Moor Street to be the site for the Very Light Rail (VLR) project and Innovation Centre and, for the test track to use the branch line to the cleared land north of Pensnett High Street. This would then allow the 13 miles mainline Black Country Line (with reinstated extension to Lichfield) to be reopened, once more, for local and ICE (inter city express) trains on both tracks, However, our councillors (except wonderful Will) and transport officials want only one mile and one track to be used to shuttle passengers to the ICE line in the neighbouring borough of Sandwell. The other track is to be a test track for VLR. The Black Country has its own, unused ICE line but doesn't realise it! We have two brown field enterprise zones but don't realise it! Unless we use them, we continue to worsen all our road and rail congestion problems. We also fuel the cry for more motorways to give us land next to them for growth/greed from the take, make and throw away life styles that has made us all so rich. Rich from relentless industrialism and finite resource exploitation that one day must come to an end. Living more simply and constructively so that others may simply live. And, prioritising land use and transport projects. What do you think? Tim Weller

Legal and illegal immigration

Under the Refugee Convention of 1951, I don't think there is any such thing.  Fear of persecution or death in war is sufficient reason to flee to the first safe country - and, by any means.

Nowadays, such is the scale of OUR wars and the vast sale of our UK manufactured weapons which get used throughout the world to kill and maim, it is hardly fair for the first safe country to take the lot.

Those we have turned into refugees or, to begin with those seeking asylum or safety from us lot of renegades, need to be fairly taken in by all the Judeo-Christian nations.  After all, these nations are the most responsible for the horrors being fled from.

I heard on Radio 4, many years ago, that the EU has come up with a formula based on numbers already taken, area of habitable land available and other criteria.  The desperate who are fleeing need to be shared out as fairly as possible amongst us all.  Thus, safe and legal routes are needed.  And, us entitled lot, wanting the lot and ever more from ever less, need to be less demanding of ever increasing economic growth and wealth just for ourselves.

In addition, of course, we in the West are the most responsible for Climate discomfort, too.  By virtue of our prodigious burning of finite fossil fuels which give us our wealth and high standard of living but, the consequences of which we are now seeing.