the uk`s general ignorance towards ufos

This annoys me.
I live in the UK, im a firm believe in ufos due to personal experiences, however a couple of years ago i myself didnt believe as i thought it was all make believe.
The point of this thread is to show how ignorant the British people are when it comes to UFOS, yes you'll have the odd report on the bbc or the odd sighting here and there but generally speaking not many people are open about it and you hear maybe one or two incidents a year here on the news about sightings.
In fact, major incidents such as pheonix lights or the o`haire airport sightings, or the fleets over new Mexico, you hear nothing about it here.
If you so much as mention ufos to people in the uk, the shrug their shoulders or its like they dont believe you.
Its really annoying, and so frustrating when you feel like your one of a few believers.
Dont get me wrong i know the US has its fair amount of skeptics, but theres so much more media coverage and so many more people who believe in it that you can openly discuss it with, than here in the UK, anybody else from the UK feel this?

Nope, not me. I've seen at least two UFO's (that is to say, I could not identify the flying objects I saw, which is quite a stretch as I am pretty hot at identifying aircraft) and other's I know have as well. When I mention this to work colleagues, I am greeted with some skepticism but interest none the less.

Obviously there will be people who dismiss it out of hand as they incorrectly assume UFO to mean Alien spaceship, without considering any other possibility. This is down to, in part, to tabloid newspapers making light of any event. Even Rendlesham gets dismissive, tongue in cheek reports when mentioned in the News.

However, recently the BBC carried a half-decent report on the MoD's UFO files, so times are changing.

BBC Link

During the Cold War the major threat came from behind the Iron Curtain, not from outer space.

Meanwhile, public fascination for UFOs has continued to grow. In 1999, a survey for the Daily Mail found that 49% of the UK population believe that life exists on other planets and 29% believe that aliens had already visited Earth in flying saucers.

Equally popular is the idea that governments of the world are conspiring to conceal evidence of alien visits from the general public.

I'm from the UK. And a few years ago I would regularly see these flashing lights in the sky at my local park. Whenever I saw them they were in the same place in the sky.

Me and my friend would sit there and discuss if they were planes. They couldn't be because they went back and forth in between these two same spots all the time. Planes cant go back and forth, nor do they ever stay still in the air.

So helicopters? Well despite the fact it'd be odd to see up to seven going back an forth in one spot quite a few times, they also would constantly change speeds, as well as the brightness of there lights.

Then the most bizarre thing, is when they went. As sometimes they'd just go, sometimes, they'd get brighter before leaving and sometimes, you could even see them shoot off at incredibly high speeds. They can probably still be seen there now, but no way i'm hanging around in a park to find out. Not with chav culture in the UK.

Well the media has not helped with the understanding of ufo's have they?

I doubt this helps either..

English 'fat, sex-obsessed' nation



A NEW travel guide to England has described the country as a place where "overweight, alcopop-swilling, sex and celebrity-obsessed TV addicts" live alongside "animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors thriving on irony and Radio 4".
The Rough Guide to England says this variety makes the country fascinating.

External Link

reply to post by nahsik


Nahsik, sadly your quote is true.

I know a fair few people here in the UK who are interested in UFOs, I must admit I don't know as many English people who are interested as Americans who are interested but then there are more Americans.

Where I live the air is quite busy, the police train their helicopters over my little village and also we get a lot of C-130 Hercules, they fly them really low sometimes.

I see other strange lights fairly often all at night, I'll give two examples; The First one being what looks like spotlights looping on the bottoms of clouds, but without the beams and fairly faint and white. The second was a line of lights following each other with speeds matched but the lights were fairly far apart so not the same flying object and each light had a different intensity, all were white. I don't often report them because I don't have proof, I'm one of a few people my age who doesn't like carrying a mobile phone, when I do its an old Nokia one, bad camera.

I don't carry a mobile phone because I value my privacy, even to people I know.

Being away from a major built up area gives some nice views of the sky, Venus is beautiful, when low on the horizon it can really look like something strange.

reply to post by stumason

Unfortunately aliens and UFOs are synonymous with each other for most people at least. Just look at the name of this forum hehe. I have to say I don't think they are alien craft, not that I think they are definitely not.

[edit on 24-5-2008 by CuriosityStrikes]

[edit on 24-5-2008 by CuriosityStrikes]

this is the truth so keep believing you are the ones who will save the non believers
I warn you against believing that advertising is a science

Its odd but it seems having an actual first hand story or experience of seeing something affects another's persons interest in the topic.

What I mean is, if I were to start a topic with someone along the lines of "I thought I saw something once..." and went on to explain I would likely get a much less cynical response than if I were just to bring the topic up without any first hand story. Seems people are a lot less likely to be cynical and judge others about it if it's implied that any acceptance of the subject is due to an experience rather than simple curiosity.

At least in my experience anyway. Personally I've never experienced anything, and with some people if I bring up the subject they can be quite cynical or dismissive. If someone then pipes up with their own story, even if its not all that extraordinary by comparison to many accounts, that persons tone suddenly changes from that of cynicism to skepticism. Sadly I think it's just become the popular response to mock the subject out of fear of being singled out as some crazy person, that is until someone else in the room breaks that stigma by recounting an experience.

I too think the tabloids and media are a lot to blame for this. More serious and neutral reporters like the bbc news seem to treat the topic with respect, but a lot of the tabloids, radio stations and tv shows just see it as something to laugh at. The topic of MOD files was brought up in 'Have I Got News For You' a bit back, and it immediately received nothing but laughter and ridicule from the audience and panel as they read one account from it. Now admittably the entire point of that show is to basically mock whatever is in the news at the time, so it may not be the best example, but it did make me think about point addressed in this topic....

One of the reasons we have so few UFO reports in the UK, is the size of the country.

We also have quite a large amount of aircraft and military bases, also now police, travel reports and coast guards all in helicopters. Coupled with a large amount of light pollution - its understandable that we have fewer UFO reports.

yeh
chavs ruin this once beutiful country
im embaresed to be british

It's not the chavs that have ruined the country, but the atmosphere which has allowed them to flourish.

Well, since we're in the UK, I'll chip in.
To be honest I haven't heard anyone discussing ufos in the time I've been in London. Even when the laterns hit the papers there wasn't much talk about it on the street. I dunno, maybe Londoners are too preoccupied with being interesting or working to care for such things (things that can make you look reaaally stupid). Too bad really, life shouldn't be taken that serious..

Last weekend me and two mates were walking down Bethnal Green road in east london. We were walking west, and apparently one of my mates saw something. He didn't talk about till later where he asked "did you see that light earlier by the way?" We looked at him quite confused, what light where...? He said he saw something going south > north that was glowing or kind of selfilluminated. He said it was too fast to be a balloon or a kite and too slow to be a helicopter or plane. I even asked him twice and gave him options to what it could have been.
Cliche as it may seem... this is yet another case where a guy who never ever talks about things like these and by his own words never think about things like that, sees something that he can't explain.
The time of day was roughly 12-13, it was completely overcast and was on may 17th.