Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Confrontational Critic Rebuked

For some reason a certain south coast metal detectorist has taken a dislike to this blog, Heritage Action and over the past few months has regularly launched a series of unrelenting puerile and personal attacks on myself and Nigel Swift. So it is nice to see on the pages of the January 2014 number of "the Searcher" in response to a text he wrote in a previous number, twenty years ago, that even his own peers considered him an empty vessel (page 11, Searcher Retrospect, words of Dennis Jordan, President of the National Council for Metal Detecting):

"John Howland's comments [....] are largely incorrect, needlessly confrontational and hopelessly outdated. This is an understandable consequence of his voluntary relinquishing some years ago of all direct contact with the NCMD...."

I would say that nothing much seems to have changed, this just about sums up everything this individual has written about the relationships between archaeology and metal detecting over the last few years on the Dick Stout blog. Mr Howland has shown he really has very little idea about things he pretends to understand (the Heritage Action Artefact Erosion Counter for example), is obviously unswervingly intent on confrontation with archaeological organizations such as the CBA of the most aggressive, petty and nasty kind, and is still trapped in his atavistic 1980s mindset when it comes to evaluating the place of metal detecting in the world.