They are at it again. I’m talking about the leaflet from Rother announcing their plans for Rye. How two faced can they get? They claim they want Rye to prosper but offer no ideas or initiatives as how this can be achieved.
On the contrary, by charging the Rye Treasury back rates for an enterprise that is very beneficial to the town but which is an obvious labour of love and is certainly not running at a profit, they will be depriving the town of a great attraction. There should be no rates charged for an enterprise of this type, or a grant equivalent to the amount of the rates should be made by the District Council.
Do Rother have something up their sleeve for the so called rail corridor, how crafty can you get. Come on, let us into the secret. What is the Railway Corridor? How wide or big is it? Why does Rye not yet know of it? Is it the Ferry Road School site? Who are these Development people that are trying to buy adjoining properties to the site? I hope they do not have Rother District or County Council connections.
The Ferry Road School site was the property of the old Rye Borough Council, it was taken off them by the County when the local forms of government were reorganised in 1973. The site belongs to the people of Rye and its future should be decided in Rye not sold off to speculative builders to balance the County budget. Rye never tells the people of Bexhill or Lewes how to conduct their affairs, we pay the highest rates in the County and now we are demanding the right to conduct our own affairs again as we did in a much more satisfactory manner prior to 1973 than others have managed them for us since.
It is time we put our foot down and demanded the changes that would let us govern our own town once more. It is much easier to deal with people you know and to elect people you know. Look at the recent fiascos in Parliament. Prominent members are found to have little integrity, we thought they were fine upstanding people but the newspapers revealed them for what they really were. It is not so easy to be fooled by people you have grown up and lived among. Let us elect our own people to govern local affairs and rest assured that they have the interest of Rye in their hearts. This is the system that used to prevail and it certainly worked better and was cheaper to run than the method operating today.
The Planning officer for Rye should at least live in or near Rye, know its people, trade and history, love the place and wish it to prosper. Also to realise that the folk that live here have to earn a living and so must work. Talk to the local people and they will tell you how it was and how it could now that less – yes less – people live in Rye, why? Because a lot of them cannot afford to live in Rye as many houses their grandparent lived in now belong to the second home owners from far away. I have no quarrel with that as these people have the time and money to do and keep the houses looking nice, but the young want jobs and cheaper homes and for Rother to tell us that the population has shrunk, well, of course it has with no cheap council homes for them to rent.
Its like the police saying the crime in Rye was so low they could not justify so many men in the Town. Now crime is booming Surly anyone can see the reason for low crime, with a Bobby around the corner, who is going to be stupid and get nicked. It must be better and cheaper to keep a good police presence.
The police strength in Rye is far too low and the response times of cars arriving from Hastings or wherever else in the area they are operating is too long to be effective in 90% of cases. The local paper reported a quick response by the police when two women were rowing in a Rye street but response and results were not nearly as swift when robbers broke into a clothes shop in Rye on three occasions. Smash a window and steal a persons living, no result, perhaps what Rye needs is a dozen good girls screaming at each other every night in every street, this might get the old bill to show themselves in Rye again!
Another lot on top on my hit list are the environment people. Every year they cut and clean the sewers and rivers, to keep the flow of the water moving, then what happens to it as it passes out through the lock gates? Not a lot, when will the Brede and Tillingham get dredged? Just look at it at low water, full of mud, they do a good job of getting the flood water to the locks, then it hits nothing but silt, huge banks of it, no wonder inland it floods if the water cannot get to the sea easily. The banks of the Rother are slowly encroaching into the main stream.
At Monkbretton Bridge it is trying to cut back across the fields, in Rock channel the bank has collapsed, further down river the wall on the Camber side has fallen into the river. All this is helping to slow the flow to the sea, one of the reasons for not doing it is money, they seem to find plenty of money for things that don’t really matter, like new signs and trappings. What are all these light posts and lights for down at the HHarbour Master, Fishmarketarbour Masters? To control the movement of ships I suppose, whatever did all this cost? I expect they also have a posh back up supply of generators in case of a power cut. What was wrong with the old ball system, or was that too old fashioned?
Another ploy of the Environmental people is to claim they need a licence to dredge and move the silt mud from the rivers. Who tells the almighty that he can or cannot move it, when it falls into the river, if they are that worried that the mud is contaminated and need a licence from themselves what do they think is in it? Stop delaying the dredging you environment people, get the job done before the new Fishmarket is built don’t leave it till we have new staging or you might find out that it is in the wrong place to allow effective dredging of all that mud.
JIMPER