The Anonymous "Scholar dealer": Confusion over Legislation on Coin Dealers' Associations' Lobbyist's blog

A mythical "Scholar dealer" appears as a sock puppet now alongside the "Reds-under-the-bed" BFF bus driving metal detectorist one on Tompa's Cultural Property Obfuscator blog. For once, just for once the lawyer uses the IAPN/PNG money to insult somebody else other than Paul Barford (after forbidding him the opportunity to reply there of course). Professor David Gill now gets the nasty-numismatic busdriver-bombast treatment:

it's David Gill being David Gill; the anti-detecting, collecting, whinger extraordinaire,

Give a man a metal detector and he instantly feels he has become entitled to slag off anyone with a postgraduate degree. So here we have the usual side-stepping chalk-and-cheese arguments of the ever unreflexive gaggle of coineys which surround the ACCG and Moneta-L: 

"A simple question is this: What would you rather have, a coin hoard that ends up dispersed but has been found by a metal detectorist and declared so that it could be excavated properly and recorded prior to sale, or a hoard that has been illegally excavated and dispersed? So close down PAS (a la Gill) and make England like Italy. Bravo..."

A simple question to the self-proclaimed and deliberately nameless "scholar dealer" - have you any idea what you are talking about? Is that why you send your comments for anonymous publication?

1) How many hoards ancient and medieval hoards recovered in England and Wales have been "properly excavated and properly published [die link level] before sale" under the PAS? [let's allow you a level of licence, I presume you meant Treasure Act]
2) How do you explain the coin hoards reported in England and Wales, quite a number of them, going back to the 18th century, before the Treasure Act? You are familiar with the literature on the pre-PAS ones aren't you (being a "scholar")?
3) How do you explain hoards reported in Scotland where there is no PAS?  You are familiar with the literature on these aren't you (being a "scholar")?
4) Is it the lack of CRIMINALS with whom the dugup antiquities market are willing to deal that is the factor here? Let's have a "scholarly" answer here.
5) Where does Professor Gill say "close down the PAS"? Let's have a "scholarly" answer here, cite a reference.
6) In what way does England's Treasure Act (applied to hoards) differ from the Italian legislation regarding stewardship (ownership) applied to hoards? Both vest ownership in the state (in the UK represented by The Crown), there is no difference in the basic pattern of stewardship applied to hoards between the two countries.

Not that I expect for a millisecond that any dealer in dugups is going to sit down and untangle the web of loaded questions and half-answers which is the staple of the coiney contributions to the Heritage Debate. Too busy flogging off the evidence.