“Preservation by record” : a dirty little lie?

This oh so common story caught our eye today

A sand quarry needs to extend to obtain more sand (sand being such a rare resource!), a Bronze Age barrow is in the way,  so a choice has to be made.

“Councillors heard that, depending on the results of the investigations, it would be decided if the barrow should be left undisturbed or preserved ‘by record’, where the barrow would be extensively photographed and described by archaeology specialists and then allowed to be destroyed.”

Anyone care to guess what the decision will be?

[CLUE: what is almost invariably the decision in such cases? ]

No prizes for guessing. After all, almost weekly comes evidence that quarry companies, local authorities and statutory heritage guardians are in effective cahoots to allow money to prevail over preservation while still mouthing words that suggest there’s no problem. WHAT WORDS ARE USED? Simple. “Preservation by Record”! So long as someone has written down that the barrow used to exist, says the story, then it’s fine to destroy it.

The same goes for St Pauls, Magna Carta and the Mona Lisa after all. No problem smashing them up to sell the debris for money as they’ll still be preserved by record.

Or does shamefully surrendering treasures to those who want to make money only apply to prehistoric monuments?

So it would seem.

Why?