While the coronavirus pandemic may, or may not, have passed its peak in this country, other issues do not seem to go away - and one is that of refugees, or economic migrants, depending on your point of view - whose tiny boats continue to cross the Channel from France in apparently increasing numbers during better weather and calmer seas.
And they arrive, from the direction of Calais, and are carried along the coast by the current from Dover towards Hastings - and this weekend another boatload arrived at Pett Level.
And they have arrived there (or indeed at Dungeness) often enough for our Member of Parliament Sally-Ann Hart to write to an open letter to the Home Secretary earlier this month (see letter below). However, not everyone agrees with her point of view.
Some do agree though, but some reactions are not always appreciated.
And this is not the first time our country, and this coastline, and indeed Rye, has received hundreds of refugees. In 1572 after the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants by Catholics there were 641 Huguenot refugees in Rye. And reactions then were mixed.
This what our MP had to say :
And this is what a a group from Hastings, which works to support refugees, had to say in response.
