"Defending the Hobby", by (Deliberately?) Making Ridiculous Claims

The National Council for Metal Disasters has a very strange idea of how to protect and promote the hobby. Their spokesman "Remik" - having read my comments on his tubthumping conspiracy theory (in which those nasty archaeologists are trying to make victims of tekkies), now tries to claim he was really being inordinately "clever" and "setting me up" to refer to what he wrote and make comments which reflect badly on the hobby. Perhaps one of his band of guffawing pals would like to ask him for a more detailed explanation of the concept, when of course the outcome can only reflect badly on the hobby. How is he protecting the hobby that way? If there is misinformation on this blog about the hobby he's supposed to protect, he should be on here answering it and refuting it, not pretending he's been feeding me it.

In any case, that the man is living in fantasy land can I think be demonstrated by looking at today's comments (about nighthawks not really existing and an artificial construct by malicious outsiders) in the context of his other similar remarks on the same forum. A recent example is in the thread discussing an article in which Christos Tsirogiannis is quoted. Here is the NCMD's representative holding forth on how it's some great conspiracy against the tekkies (Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:13 am):

Interesting ,but not unforeseen. The so called interviewer would have already been given a brief to rubbish detecting by their editor [...] Tsirogiannis will likely have been primed for this by others with an anti detecting agenda [...] in need of as much publicity as possible [...] Lord Renfrew is well known for [...] an uneasy alliance of interests [...] the autocratic archaeological regimes that exist in the classical world, [....] An interesting conundrum in my personal opinion for Lord Renfrew. Another interesting fact about Tsirogiannis. One of his two supervisors is Professor David Gill of the University Campus Suffolk [...] Its a small world and we can guess the motivation surrounding the initial interview - classic set up innit.

Here he is again, this time not believing in nighthawks at Whitby (Thu May 16, 2013 9:59 pm):

As many have pointed out these holes conveniently dug on one of the footpaths, could have been dug to order to create a newsworthy nighthawking incident. You are right to smell a rat. I have always considered that the hobby is very vulnerable to manufactured incidents. Someone from the anti detecting lobby with a spade digging a few random holes in an Ancient Monument, can produce an incident ready for the media to feed on and blow up out of all proportions. The truth  [...] goes out of the window to make a good story. Anti detecting archeologists love it as it does the job of rubbishing the hobby for them. Lets see if the Police actually catch someone in the act and perhaps i will be more able to support them in their efforts to catch the "wil o the wisps"

So the NCMD does not always support the police in their efforts to curb heritage crime? We see Mr Remik making the same "conspiracy agin' us" suggestions a bit earlier (Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:00 am))

It is a costly Policing approach to dealing with what may or may not be a real problem. After all the famous Nighthawking Report failed to find what its supporters wanted in the form of hard evidence and since then they have relied on twisting what little evidence they could find and adding this to a big input of anecdotal and hearsay accounts to feed the media. They have in effect resorted to the old way of "if you say something often enough people will begin to believe it" and tried very hard to let the media run with it. Why let the truth get in the way of a good story [?]. EH have and continue to spend a great deal of money on this side issue [...] At the end of the day EH and their supporters will want something back for all the money and resources they have invested in tackling the myths and legends of nighthawking [..] will push for licencing [...] whilst the nighthawks, however many there are will continue their trade and EH and their supporters will have got the result that they were after in the first place.

I think if we observe the lack of any dissent following these remarks, we may assume that metal detectorists have somewhat repressed critical facilities,  nobody is calling this dark vision into question - nor confronting it with the talk elsewhere on the same forum of the topic of real nighthawks.
Mr Remik's accounts above have all the trappings of a true conspiracy theorist, the name-dropping, the inference of motives, the assumption that the whole world is against them, that the Other can make "the Truth go out of the window" - a cover-up, and the attempt to give the impression that the writer deserves attention as  the only one clever enough to see through the lies and, what is more, outsmart the Other, by "setting them up" - manipulating them.

I leave it up to the reader to judge whether the NCMD spokesman is doing the hobby any favours in adopting such a approach.

But of course what is really interesting is the context in which "Remic" claims to be manipulating the reporting of what is being discussed in artefact hunting circles. Note the context where he's trying to turn the discussion to how "clever" he has been, the thread is called "Controversy in Surrey over Roman brooch discovery" and is about the PAS being handed 'planted' finds for recording, raiseing the question of how often this happens. Instead of discussing this topic openly and frankly, and admitting this raises serious questions about the PAS-detectorist "partnership", the metal detectorist most happily would deflect discussion off onto a quite different tangent. The problem of artefacts being mis-reported to the FLO by metal detectorists however is one that should not be so facilely dismissed. It cuts right to the core of the rationale behind the PAS. The metal detectorists' idea of protecting the hobby is avoiding and preventing open and detailed discussion of certain uncomfortable topics - precisely the ones that should be being discussed from a resource management (conservation) point of view.