UK's NCMD Excited to be Invited

After six week's silence following the internal turmoil that seems to have recently visited the National Council for Metal Detecting, the NCMD proudly announce:

NCMD visit British Museum for PAS Annual Report
The executive committee members of the NCMD were invited to the British Museum on the 14th December, for the launch of the 2020 Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) Annual Report and the 2019 Treasure Report. The event was launched by Arts Minister Lord Parkinson and he was joined by Hartwig Fischer, Head (sic) of the British Museum and Michael Lewis, Head of the PAS. Photos below include the NCMD Chair Wendy Howard and Communications Officer Dave Crisp, along with Lord Parkinson and Hartwig Fisher. There were some fantastic items on display, every one of them was a testimony to the hobby and the important role that Detectorists play in finding and recording of our heritage. For more information visit https://finds.org.uk/documents/annualreports/2020.pdf
14 January 2022

So, who represented the millions of people in the public of England and Wales who are not exploitive artefact hunters and were told how much of an important contribution the public reporting of chance finds has made to the finding and recording of our heritage? Eh, PAS?

Interestingly, this report of the results of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money on this Scheme is just 21 pages thick.

Meanwhile, on a metal detecting forum near you, just a mouse click away, member crastinblack moans and then can't decide if he's making a statement or asking a question (Mon Jan 17, 2022 2:09 pm:

"I read the PAS editorial in last month's Treasure Hunting magazine. The impression I got was that PAS had a really negative view on metal detecting.
Have you seen the new PAS code of conduct video at https://finds.org.uk/ brought to you by Mr. Westcott? He seems to be promoting it via his Youtube channel. Isn't this basically exactly the same code of conduct that the NCMD have had for the last 40 years just with an AoD badge slapped on the front? I suppose it shows the power of good PR and networking?

He receives a response from one "Jungle" (Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:05 pm):

No, NCMD have only just followed IOD in endorsing the latest version.

Wow. First of all, Jungle is totally wrong. There has been no change on this page for yonks (and certainly pre-IOD). There is no endorsement there. This is the statement the NCMD put there when they withdrew their endorsement in 2017/2018. And nobody should be forgetting that the NCMD WITHDREW THEIR ENDORSEMENT of the multilaterally agreed Code of Best Practice (maybe Wendy Howard might like to take a look at this again).

I don't as a rule read Treasure Hunting Magazine and really do not feel inclined to buy it on the say-so of a bloke that cannot even work out how to use question marks and what the difference between the NCMD Code and any others is. But if the PAS has developed a "really negative view on metal detecting", I'd be very pleased they've finally (but 20 years too late) discarded the institutional blinkers and are addressing the issue as they should be.

The video needs promoting not just by the Institute of Detectorists, but everyone with any contact with metal detectorists. Has the MDF got it pinned as the top post for 2021? (Don't bother registering to check, they have not). The code itself is a (2017) update of the existing official Code of Best Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales that the NCMD was consulted over and endorsed for a while when it suited them but they withdrew their endorsement in 2017. The screenplay of the video diverges from the printed text in several places... why?