Bloomsbury Pete, the most vocal portable antiquities issues advocate in Bloomsbury

Heritage hero, Bloomsbury Pete:

Bloomsbury Pete (national representative of the NGO, the Avian Concern for Cultural Heritage, British Museum, Bloomsbury WC1), was first labelled 'currently Britain's most vociferous spokesman on portable antiquity issues' on this blog Wednesday, 23rd March 2011 ('Le trafic des biens culturels dans le monde s'intensifie') pointing out the general silence of the British Museum's PAS in speaking out against the commodification of portable antiquities.

He made a rhetorical return 27th March 2011 ('No Pockets Needed') and listening in to PAS doing some televised Treasure Hunting outrech later that year (Thursday, 9 June 2011 BBC: Metal detecting 'helping to preserve Britain's history').

In 2012 he was again reported to be the most vocal portable antiquities issues advocate in Bloomsbury (Tuesday, 8 May 2012, 'Ask Bloomsbury Pete, He Might have an Answer Where Others Do Not'), and again in November 2012. Two years later, he was still visibly being more active than the PAS, "his reticent neighbours at number 41, who sit there drinking tea and counting their website 'hits' and speaking to TV executives when they are not fondling coins from treasure-hunted hoards" (Saturday, 17 August 2013 Farmer Brown gets VERY confused! Can anyone help him?).

The following year it briefly looked as if things were looking up (Tuesday, 8 April 2014 'Deep Digger Dan has been Invited to the PAS?') Bloomsbury Pete, 'the most vocal portable antiquities issues advocate in Bloomsbury' informed us that metal detectorist 'Deep Digger Dan' had been invited

by Roger Bland and his Merry Men in Bloomsbury to pay them a visit and discuss "matters of common interest" while the whole debate is filmed. I do not know how reliable this information is, it certainly would be a smart move on the part of the PAS since Mr Dan has far more followers of his videos than the PAS has for its own "Metal Detecting Best Practice" series of You Tube videos (currently 47,941 more to be exact, because the PAS currently has just six subscribers).

They now have all of 58 subscribers for the two (two!) You Tube films they posted up since they started the channel 18 Mar 2011. Bloomsbury Pete is not impressed.
He got rather annoyed by the silence of the PAS about the ethical aspects of UK metal detecting 'partners' being involved in the scandalous "Nazi War Diggers" in 2016 (Wednesday, 6 January 2016 The PAS and UK "Nazi War Diggers" Re-Release), not seeing the opportunity it provided for arousing public discussion of ethics in artefact hunting. Not soon after that, he was criticising the marasmic manner in which they promoted (I use the term loosely) Responsible Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record -if there can be such a thing (Monday, 29 February 2016 What is "Responsible Artefact Hunting"? Archaeology is not Rocket Science). It is thought that he knows, maybe has defecated on the cars of staff of, of 'a certain national museum' that were 'remarkably silent on the subject' at a conference on heritage damage. And just last year, Bloomsbury Pete was miffed about the lack of action of the "portable Antiquities Scheme" that is doing nothing any time any ancient artefacts with no record of provenance or collecting history (some of them of gold and silver - Treasure Act metals) appears on sale online (Monday, 13 May 2019 UK Antiquities Market Watch: PAS Monitoring EBay? Nah, not really. [UPDATED]).

I am putting in Bloomsbury Pete's name for the issue of a UK award recognising his long-term service to heritage protection and arousing public interest in the issues surrounding Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record. That he is a totally fictitious character makes no difference, because the public-funded public 'outreach' on these issues (as Bloomsbury Pete has shown) has for the past 23 years been equally fictitious.