Rye Observer Comment

But now it seems there are big multi-national companies that feel it is perfectly acceptable to make others pay for their mistakes - and we don’t just mean the banks.

Traders at Rye’s Ropewalk arcade paid their energy bill in good faith year after year. Now they have been hit by a £60,000 bill back-dated four years.

The EDF Energy’s operating licence gives it power to hound businesses for the past six years, even if the mistake is theirs.

Admittedly they are trying to find a solution but only after long protracted discussions with the desperate Rope Walk owners and intervention from MP Amber Rudd.

For many who have units at Ropewalk it is their first venture into business and coping in the current financial climate is hard enough without being ambushed by bills they believed they had settled.

Let us hope the situation is resolved as soon as possible and this thriving little shopping centre can continue for years to come.

RYE now has a lord sitting on the Town Council though it is unlikely you will find David Russell, the 5th Lord Ampthill, wearing ermine any time soon.

He has the qualities of his father Geoffrey, who was described as “amiable and unassuming”.

For all his modesty, it is rather nice that a town with the history and character of Rye should have a lord.

While, as Cllr Russell, David will involve himself in promoting Rye’s interests in the town and district, I am sure American visitors to Rye will be delighted to learn that there is a lord sitting in the Town Hall.