Who is the mouse?

Buffy the self-styled “middle-class detectorist” who apparently imagines he is the conservation lobby’s intellectual nemesis seems to be losing his grasp of things. Yes, Mr "Buffet", one can edit these blog posts (as Buffy himself frequently does. So what?

The “name plate” he accuses me of “unscrewing” from the banner of my blog of course never existed (he confuses the text of my profile with the banner heading of my blog).

Let us get one thing straight, archaeology is not and never has been for me a
chained library”. There is however as far as I am concerned a difference Mr Buffy between a library and a box of comic books and girlie magazines at a car boot sale. There is a difference between archaeology as a field of human enquiry and mere collecting of isolated fragments of the past. This IS a conservation argument, not one of personal rights. That is what the book I wrote with Nigel Swift (Chairman of grassroots conservation organization “Heritage Action”) is all about. Like it or lump it, but don't try to misrepresent what it is we are talking about.

Buffy is determined to define something he calls “Barfordisation” (of the “known facts” about “metal detecting”) and then seizes on little factoids from the blogosphere support this notion. Anyway he seems determined to represent me as some kind of rodent, but who is the man and who is the mouse, who uses their real name to stand behind their words, and who hides his puerile sniping behind anonymity and aliases?

Paul Barford (Real name)