Some say we should highlight the good in unregulated metal detecting, not just the bad. We’d love to, but we live in a reality which PAS and many others ignore: the good is far outweighed by the bad and praising the activity year after year aids and abets the bad.
Why? Because in our reality 99.99% of the fields of England and Wales aren’t scheduled so if anyone can persuade a landowner to let them do so they can dig into them randomly, selectively, repeatedly, singly or in large numbers (increasingly “for charity”) and keep whatever they find.
Abroad that’s regarded as looting, in the sense it’s a crime against society. Because it is. Why then should we rejoice about the process or jubilate that PAS gets to see 30% of the finds? The countryside is our national encyclopaedia and PAS, to bolster it’s own existence, isn’t warning landowners loud and clear that hundreds of pages are being ripped out every day.
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A deserted medieval village – the most prized search location of all for detectorists. Heritage England has just posed the question: “What can such places tell us?” The principal thing they can tell us is that Britain’s stewardship of them is disgusting.
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The Heritage Journal 
2 comments
29/01/2017 at 21:37
late b
“27/01/2017 at 19:56
heritageaction
“As I have said before finds of £2000 or even close to £2000 just do not come up on even a remotely regular basis.”
You seem to be completely dense. It is the fact that everything worth less than £2000 is kept by the detectorist that is a disgrace and makes him akin to a yob clearing a loft.”
I expect you will delete this post, but in anycase i have pasted in your reply to me from your CS club digs article/thread.
I see you have resulted to insulting me, however Alan Simkins I will not lower myself to your level and start throwing insults. You can always tell when someone has lost a debate and has no argument as they generally result to insults, as you have done so in this case, along with stopping me from replying to you (hence me replying on a different thread) either by closing the thread or barring me from it.
kind regards
30/01/2017 at 06:02
heritageaction
My name is not Alan Simkins.
I am not concerned that you will lower yourself to my level.
Coming from someone whose interaction with archaeology is to take it for themselves it’s a ludicrous proposition, as is the suggestion that a conservationist could ever lose an argument with an exploiter. The clue is in their respective behaviours.