Buffy the Ham Pie Slayer blogs about portable antiquities

“Edward” “On Blogger Since December 2008” left the following taunting comment on my blog:

"[I] think you should go take a look here: http://paul-barford-blog-response.blogspot.com/ regards Edward”

A blog about a blog. The author of this blog turns out to be coy about using his real name (as are most artefact hunters). He reckons “Who I am by name is irrelevant”. He appears to come from Monmouth and refers to himself as “BUFFET, The Ham Pie Slayer”; presumably related in some way to this. He defines himself as “Middle aged, middle class, professional working in the field of law”, though the lawyers I know can generally use apostrophes correctly and spell.

“Buffet” has ambitions to create new terms:

Like a child entering the world kicking and struggling, a new fledgling word enters into our language and that word is 'Barfordisation'. So, how are we to define 'Barfordisation'? Primarily, Barfordisation is used to describe a misrepresenation of facts. The selective use of the unknown as the expense of the known if it does not fit the argument presented. It is speculative yet perjorative (sic) in its useage. It distorts the argument and twists it to fit the agenda.

Hmmm. What “knowns” would they be then “Buffet”?

I do not think the anonymous “Buffet” understands what the Heritage Action Erosion Counter represents either, he writes:

“Suddenly all metal detectorists become 'artefact hunters' in order to swell the numbers and exaggerate the statistics”.

This claim is really baseless, it seems to me however that Heritage Action spell out what their concern is in plain enough English. There then follow some pieces of detecting dogma no doubt firmly affirmed by the detectorists’ new partner the Portable Antiquities Scheme:

Farmers chemicals & heavy farm machinery would have their toll on these artefact's and increase their numbers as they disintegrate to become 'partefacts'. Knowledge only becomes known when we unearth (sic) the facts. if we don't unearth the facts we know nothing at all so the status quo is kept. But
this is the gist of Barfords arguments. He doesn't want the artefact's removed from the soil but he offers no solution to his self satisfying problem. For Mr Barford, no knowledge seems to be better than increased knowledge. What purpose would that serve?

Um, Valetta Convention? Heard of it “Buffet”? Know what its for? Thought not. Ask the PAS to explain it to you. If they can.