Saturday 10 March 2018

Another PAS 'Liaison' First


10th March 2018, 18:23  from PC 2111 Matt Noone,  Colchester Police station, Southway, Colchester. Guess who and why?
"[...] I am not saying you are guilty of any offences, but wanted you to be aware this matter has been reported to the Police. [...] and this allegation has been crimed under reference 42/30727/18". [...] This investigation will be filed now, but this email will be kept on record and can be used in any future criminal proceedings.  Kind regards [...]
So, the lady has earned me a police record - for heritage blogging. The policeman is right, I am not guilty of any offence at all, and the museum lady was merely wasting police time in what looks like a personal vendetta. But she sees this as relating to her work at PAS and the Museum, and as such this represents the PAS taking 'escalation' to whole new heights.

I presume I have the right to learn the content of this allegation deposited in a public record and respond accordingly. I'll contact PC Noone on Monday and ask him about his opinion on metal detectorists and people wasting police time. Meanwhile I have been "advised" by Colchester police NOT
to make any more comments about [the Essex FLO] on your blog, so that you dont (sic) put yourself in a position where any more allegations can be made against you.  
'The allegations may be false, but don't write anything....'. That, too, takes PAS heritage gatekeeping to new levels. As far as I know, this is the first time anyone has tried to get the police to intervene in the heritage debate anywhere (oh, perhaps Amritsar). What next? The Army and RAF?

As it happens, I came home to that message from the UK police straight from a political demonstration in the capital against the manipulations of the ultra-conservative government of my country where a smallish group of us armed just with white roses had a face-off just now with 4000 uniformed police, unknown numbers of plain clothes officers inserted among the protesters and at least two snipers. This time, no arrests were made.

Castle Square, Warsaw 10th March 2018, 20:22 PM
(photo PMB, but please use it if you want, nobody
here has any reason to be ashamed, we are all doing
what we consider to be the right thing to do)

Really, UK, PAS, Colchester and Ipswich Museums and Essex FLO, the heritage debate is not a police matter. Get used to it. Heritage is who we are. Who are you?

1 comment:

Hougenai said...

Let's face it PAS has a strange interpretation of how best to interpret the Law when it comes to detecting, why wouldn't they have an equally odd view regarding copyright. It is a little ironic that in the first instance they operate the 'Blind eye' approach, yet in the second seem to use 'something out of nothing'.

 
Creative Commons License
Ten utwór jest dostępny na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 3.0 Unported.