After all he did for them, the thread on a metal detecting forum near you started a week ago: 'PAS - Roger Bland has resigned' has just 11 posts and has been viewed a mere 302 times on a list with 7795 members. A poor show.One list member hopes that "the intent of the Review [sic] was to enhance the work of the PAS" and adds "I am sure we will never fully know what went on and why it was done" thus resigning himself to a lack of transparency about the fate of a national scheme. "The way the Portable Antiquities Advisory Group were kept out of the loop is very telling", he admits. Not a word though about how this will affect the status of artefact hunting as the BM switches to a format promoting the work of "our volunteers" rather than the "finders" that were the centre of PAS spin.
Shock horror, a literate minority make all the noise about social responsibility and the rest get on with digging for their own benefit.
ReplyDeleteThe most telling line in that thread is "Dont get yourselves tricked into discussing the licence fee nonsense as a way of funding the PAS". I do hope the new management of PAS takes note. They aren't dealing with librarians.