Farmer Brown writes again

. While there are some in the metal detecting and collecting milieu who seem to feel Farmer Brown is a fiction of the imagination of heritage activists, he has submitted another comment on artefact hunters walking off with landowners' finds (Farmer Brown Writes Again). Good for him. He notes some wording characteristically missing from "model landowner agreements" published in metal detecting resources. It is just 30 simple words: “I understand that all finds from the site, other than Treasure shall remain the property of [the landowner!] and I will not claim ownership, possession, or any other right in such finds”. "They oblige the finder to bring all finds to the legal owner at which point, if I feel like it, I may give him some or all of them. What could be righter or fairer?". Farmer Brown also has some thoughts on the new bowldlerised "Glasgow Fourth", where some academics feel that a metal detectorist might be justified in taking this right away from the likes of Farmer Brown:

I see that, following my first letter, Glasgow Uni amended its Encyclopedia. Now, not disclosing finds to the landowner is nighthawking “(except where this was agreed in advance with the landowner to be unnecessary).” However, non-disclosure is never, ever “unnecessary” for a clause that authorises it leaves the hapless landowner wide open to being massively ripped off. Hence, anyone getting him to sign it cannot be acting in his interest and a university definition that implies it is normal also works against his interest. Let’s hope it is changed.

This raises the question just what it is that Glasgow are trying to achieve. It comes to something when a simple 'son of the soil' can see that it's nuts, but thinkers in one of Britain's top academic criminological institutions seem to be putting out half-baked opinions and ideas as encyclopaedic facts. Why?

"Four legs good, two legs better"?