Rescue said it rather well:
“Whilst this might represent a tasty windfall for the finder and the landowner, for the rest of us – the other 60 million plus inhabitants of the British Isles – it represents nothing but yet another lost opportunity to add to the knowledge we have about the Saxon period ….Unfortunately these hoards are rare, so there might never be another one and we might never be able to answer the many questions surrounding them. But you won’t read about that in the papers.”
But actually, the papers DO contain some thought-provoking quotes if you look, like the Head of PAS saying their £1.3 million funding is too low (“I’m not sure whether we’re going to be able to renew the contracts for nine of the 32 posts that we’ve got in the scheme from the 1 April”) and Ed Vaizey not addressing that but instead praising “the finders and landowners who have graciously waived their right to a reward” while failing to mention that the vast majority don’t and we pay them far more than PAS gets.
But the best quote is from the BBC for it says the payout just from the Lenborough Hoard “could be £1.3 million” – which is the same as PAS’s allowance for a whole year! (Despite the fact it was hoiked out far too fast due to pressure from people who couldn’t control themselves or be bothered to arrange for it to be guarded overnight!. Selungnorami.)
Compare and contrast the people who didn’t call Atif with the sort of people that are going to THIS today! (No mention or praise or reward for them then Ed!)
So it’s all there in the papers, just under the spin: Britain IS utterly bonkers. And no, our portable antiquities system is not “internationally admired” as has been trumpeted this week (who feeds Ed Vaizey these lines?). Not enough for any country, anywhere, ever to have adopted it anyway! How come? The things you’re liable to read in the papers, they ain’t necessarily so and sometimes they’re utter foutaise as my French archaeologist friend says. (Look it up, it’s rude!)
Update 17 Feb 2015
Meanwhile, look what happens when a finder isn’t selfish and self-serving. See HERE
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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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The Heritage Journal 
4 comments
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14/02/2015 at 08:56
Edwin Deady
I can’t see anywhere that they have waived their reward. The remark about it is by the minister that it is nice if people do do. Unless Google has failed to find the act of generosity.
14/02/2015 at 09:25
heritageaction
No they haven’t (and we haven’t suggested it – although one press release implied so but has now been altered).
Our real moan is that people who knowingly stole information should hold their undeserving hands out for a full reward. On which planet other than Planet Britain is that considered just or tolerable?
14/02/2015 at 10:37
thegrammarofmatter
I was shocked to see the number of portable antiquities for sale in an antique emporium in York this week – Neolithic axes from Belgium, ceramics from India and ‘the Middle East’ (too coy to say looted from Iraq and Syria?) and a whole load of unprovenanced Bronze Age arrowheads (with a ‘nice patina’). The Bronze Age stuff could have been from ANYWHERE, but just as easily detected a few miles up the road, like the piles of flint arrowheads. And there was me looking for brass ashtrays and galvanized bathtubs…
14/02/2015 at 11:54
Paul Barford
and it is precisely this unregulated market for antiquities in Britain which encourages the looting of sites abroad as well as at home. But in the UK argument about both have been substituted by the”Gospel of the PAS” http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2015/02/police-issue-warning-over-hadrians-wall.html