Blind Outreach

From a PAS south coast FLO this morning:

Dear Mr Barford, Thank you for your enquiry. Due to limitations placed on access to internet sites via my work computer, I am unable at present to read through the material you have kindly provided links to below. I will forward the message to another e-mail address and take a look when I am next working from home and reply in due course. Regards,

So next time, dear Reader you see something going on right out in the open on a detecting forum, blog or antiquity sales site, do not assume the FLO can even see it if you notify them of it.

This is just bonkers, the PAS is set up to interact with, outreach to and instil best practice in members of the public. Here we all are members of the public seeing what is going on, and parts of the PAS cannot? So members of the public can interact with each other about these things, but the PAS is cut off from them totally? This poor lady has to wait until she gets permission from Bloomsbury to work from her HOME computer to actually do the work the British public are paying her to do? Its bad enough these people have to work weekends and bank holidays at commercial rallies to get the all-important database-boosting "data" to send buy computer to Wahlkampfzentrale Bloombury, now they have to work after ours to use any computer (and then it's their own) to engage in any kind of online outreach or interaction with the public? Outrageous.

I actually sent that notification several days ago - If I'd said I'd just found a hoard of coins with my Bill Wyman metal detector, I bet I'd have got a reply within minutes or hours. (Must try it next time I am in England - but still on outreach, my FLO Laura McLean still has not answered the question about the Mark's Tey rally, so I be blowed if I'm going to boost HER "finds recorded in a month" statistics.)

One might ask if the PAS really is seriously interested any more in any kind of real public archaeological outreach and education, or whether its just after as many 'bits of stuff' as it can get the details of as possible for its database and making TV programmes about "you too can find Buried Treasure"? If it is still engaged in doing to any extent what it was actually set up to do, where is the evidence of this, can anyone tell me?

Vignette: PAS like blind man walking