Decreased UFO activitiy in the UK?

British UFO Hunter Chris Parr, announced this week that there don't seem to be any UFOs in the Cumbrian skies anymore. Parr stated that the combined lack of spotters plus the lack of military exercises have decreased the sightings to almost nothing. So far no UFO sightings have been reported this year.

Does this mean the UFOs have gone on to places where people are more likely to take them seriously like Mexico and Brazil? What about the crop circles, why are they still appearing in Britain? If they are linked to UFOs why crop circles but no sightings?

Parr reckons it is the lack of military exercises and the lowered amounts of spotters that is decreasing the sightings. Sceptics always quick to jump the denial bandwagon are saying that ufology is dead and others that the 'novelty' has worn out.

I think regardless of your view on extraterrestrials, a little of the magic seems to have disappeared when people stop believing.

What do others think?

www.guardian.co.uk...

My local radio station is going to do a show on this and they were asking for opinions this morning. I emailed them with my opinions and they requested that I go on the show, but I'm too much of a wuss for that so I sent them an email with the basic history and more credible UFO cases, so hopefully they can do something objective and beneficial to the subject.

As far as the Guardian article is concerned, this is just one area of the country where sightings have decreased. Some regions have more sightings than others and I don't know why - where I live has never had one as far as I know.

In the UK I do feel that people have been highly condition to laugh at the subject. If you mention UFO or alien I guarantee you that the person you talk to will laugh or smile, especially if they are 40+. It used to get occasional coverage on shows like This Morning but they usually did more damage than good by getting some crackpot on.

I don't know if people as a whole are more open to new ideas in places like Mexico or Brazil.

Edit for typo

[edit on 11-8-2005 by Nova]

Thanks Nova,

That makes a lot of sense. Correct me if I'm wrong here but aren't a lot of people in the UK pro crop circles? If so, are they viewing it as something other than aliens? I know a few very 'serious' local government type folks who love nothing than to jump into their Audis on a weekend and dance around or nap in the fields of Wiltshire or wherever the latest one has popped up.

Maybe this is looked upon as 'acceptable' behaviour as it can be passed off as an artistic hobby type activity rather than the 'nuttier' claim of watching silver disks in the sky.

What's your opinion? I'm in London, will I be able to catch the radio programme? When is it on?

I've never heard of people going out to camp by crop circles but I guess that's southerners for you

As for the radio show they said thanks for the info and that they were planning on doing a show soon - you won't be able to pick it up where you live on a radio but you could probably get it on their website here when they do it (it's a bbc station):

www.bbc.co.uk...

I think it's interesting how different nations seem to react differently - the US seems to be one of outright ridicule, whereas the UK is more like just ignore it altogether. I can't remember ever seeing a UK TV show about the subject, the only stuff I've ever seen has been on the Sci-Fi channel or the history channel which are American shows.

I'd definitely say that people in the 18-30 demographic are more open to the idea from my experience. Hopefully they'll give the government a harder time about it in the future.

EarthSister (another person here) has said that Japan is going to be the place that extraterrestrials make contact. I wonder what the public view of UFOs / aliens is in Japan? We never really hear anything about their point of view here.

Nova

I like your theory that different countries respond in different ways to UFOs. Maybe something about trying to find 'intelligent life' on Earth would make 'them' not want to visit the US or the UK and head for Japan.

I think the warmer climate countries, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, seem to take such things as OVNIS (UFOS) and Chupacabras and ghosts pretty much in their stride. These Latin American countries are rich in imagination, lyricism, poetry and literature and thus have a higher level of acceptance of things that can not be explained by rationale or cold logic. After all the nature of so called 'reality' can be highly debated as those of us online can completely understand.

I have done a few google searches for Crop Circle devotees and found the following. Some even have tours although whether that is aimed at 'real' believers or gullible tourists is something to take into consideration.


www.sacredbritain.com...
www.temporarytemples.co.uk...
www.telegraph.co.uk.../travel/2004/06/07/etcropcircles.xml
www.nccn.net...

Some of those links are quite funny... this probably means that someone somewhere is getting paid to make crop circles!

Given the apparent conclusion that aliens likely do not have our best interests at heart, oddly enough I wouldn't be disappointed with a decrease in sightings...

Unless of course, they're simply getting better at not being seen, which is kind of an unsettling thought.

Or maybe the hoaxers and liars are getting bored of being quickly debunked so it's not worth putting the effort in - leaving us with actual UFOs.

If there has been a lack of military exercises would this not suggest that the UFO sightings were merely sightings of military craft?

It's probably part of it. Untrained observers certainly can make mistakes...

However, just because some A's are B's, and some B's are C's, it doesn't make all A's = C's......

Gazrok,

Yep, that's true. However, in an area of high military activity which also has a lot of UFO sightings would you not agree that if the UFO sightings stop when the military activity drops, it is a sensible assumption that the sightings are of said activity?

Donkey

I agree. It is no coincidence that near military bases is where most of the UFO sightings usually are. Sorry can't back that up with a link but I'm sure someone has posted it somewhere. As for the 'real' non military/UFO sightings, someone on another thread mentioned that perhaps *they* are getting better at being undetected, which can mean a lot of things - most of them scary.

I myself go for the soft option that maybe they just don't like the UK anymore as the people here can be rather cynical about UFOs. I think *they* have gone somewhere where they will be more noticed, tolerated and respected.

Then again how about this scary option - *They* are choosing to go undetected AND are capitalizing on the chaos that surrounds us now - war, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, Gaza, airline disasters, nuke threats, diseases, vchips, etc...

Heck, that's when I would plot an attack.

Although UFO reports may have decreased in that area, there is still Unidentifed Flying Objects in England.

America is so much bigger than the UK, with so many more people.
If England was that size, it wouldn't suprise me if the number of reports was almost the same

Yes I can appreciate that. The US has more eyes to check the skies than most other Countries and so I could imagine the amount of sightings reported would be many fold over say Canada or Britain.

I'm still trying to figure out why so many EBE/UFO Web sites are going stale these days. Perhap's the more believers there are the less interest there might be in research? Dunno.

Dallas