UK Metal Detecting About to Lose a Prop?

The Heritage Journal, UK metal detecting: ' The undeserving hobby to get its just deserts?'

An end to pretence would be refreshing. 17 years of representing the scheme as more successful than it is is quite enough. If PAS was anything like the national treasure it has been consistently painted it would now be being expanded not contracted.[...] 70% non-co-operation after all this time isn’t what was intended by the architects of the Scheme (nor did they anticipate that a quango would see its best chance of continued funding lay in not mentioning the figure and promoting metal detecting instead of coping with it!) It all seemed pretty simple at the outset. A social compact in which hobbyists would behave well in exchange for legitimacy but, as is now clear, most detectorists took the legitimacy and didn’t give the good behaviour in exchange.

So, it is going under, and as per usual, British archaeologists, unable to comprehend what it means for them, are standing silently by and watching.