Tackling Heritage Crime

Historic England, 'Tackling Heritage Crime'  Heritage Calling blog, 6th March  2018

We define Heritage Crime as ‘any offence which harms the value of England’s heritage assets and their settings to this and future generations.’ Threats include metal theft, criminal damage like arson, illicit trade of cultural objects and unlawful metal detecting.

As I recall, in 2017 there were dozens of reports of historical churches losing their lead roofs, several historical mills went up in flames, the Internet and UK antiquities shops were full of unpapered artefacts of suspicious nature and the site of the Staffordshire hoard and other 'hot spots' was still being visited by trespassing artefact hunters with metal detectors and spades. And how many convictions were there for any of these? How many convictions have there been in the UK for illicit trade of cultural objects in the past decade? Eh? ['ping' - pin drops]

Here the boys in blue claim to be 'raising awareness' of heritage crime... I cannot see how prancing around in fancy dress stops metal theft, arson or the illicit trade in antiquities - or illegal metal detecting either (Historic [sic] England)