Are there no limits to gormlessness? In tekkiedom it seems not. Over on John Winter's blog we now read a pretty egregious example of special pleading concerning the recent history of the unprotected findspot of the Staffordshire hoard: Seems that a certain blogger has picked up on this discussion and suggesting that i am accusing an individual of creating the so called “nighthawking” evidence. Well to clarify this point i can say that i was merely making an observation on the evidence made available such as a carefully placed belt hanging from a barbed wire fence and so on. To my knowledge no media outlet ran with the story at the time and so i remain unconvinced of what actually took place.The "certain blogger" (who apparently shall not be named, or linked to on John Winter's special pleading blog), c'est moi. This person's snide accusation concerns Nigel Swift (is the metal detectorist afraid of names? Nomenophobia?). I really do not think his accusation even deserves an answer. But, what an extraordinary suggestion follows. Something is not true for the detectorist because "no media outlet ran with the story"! (And Heritage Journal is not "media"?) There are certain subjects no metal detecting forum will discuss, does that mean that these issues do not exist? The "belt" mentioned by the dissenting tekkie was a dog lead (and is not really the most obvious thing one would take to use to 'plant evidence', and its relationship to anything is wholly unclear and no stress was laid on it). What was however photographed and what I think the hapless tekkie is missing is the holes in the field. That is what was photographed, holes in a field dug by... well, they'll say it was giant rabbits or aliens or "somebody out to get us". The reader can make up their own mind who it is more likely to have been and why those holes were dug at that particular point of that particular field...
As for the writer of these words, I suggest a course of action instead of just sitting on his backside casting aspersions on those who went to the trouble of going there to actually find out for themselves and report what they discovered. If he wants to be "convinced" of what took place, he could get in his own car one weekend at an appropriate time of the year and visit the site, climb up the same bank by the side of the public highway and point his own digital camera over the fence to record what he sees. Will he find the site has new holes in it, or will the million-pound hoard site have been left alone by nocturnal hole-diggers?
Tekkie-apologetic Winter and his lowbrow-conspiracy-theory fellows are getting really pathetic with their childish denials. Just what do they take the rest of us for?