Vincent Page of Antiques on High writes for the Herald.

So the weather has broken, reducing the all important energy bills by a little bit and we are heading towards the summer, how many business owners are feeling optimistic?

We have battled through the winter and for many it was a winter of utter discontent and just as we start to come out the other side we hear about the colossal profits made by the oil companies on the back of the regular working man struggling to meet his energy bills over the last few months.

With profits into the billions one has to wonder at the legitimacy of it all and the blame on the war in Ukraine. I’m not in any way a person with a political agenda but I do feel that many years ago when all these industries were Government owned and run we didn’t have to worry about how accurate our gas or electric bill was yet the privatisation of so many industries may well have raised substantial funds for the Government of the day but it also put control into the hands of people whose bonusses were based on performance and profits. We now live in such a society where that’s apparently what matters, decency and honesty have long since flown the nest essentially being replaced by greed.

And if this wasn’t enough for the businesses in the town, we are now facing the possibility of various parts of the town including the picturesque seafront being rented out to traders for a whole lot more than the one week period of the folk festival, so on that basis we must assume that the council are going to abolish the business rates for all the businesses in the town to compensate them for the loss of earnings and the lowering of standards this will inevitably bring to the seaside town and hats off to the Sidmouth Chamber of Commerce who have publicly declared the opposition of such a move.