UK shuts down UFO/Alien Hotline after 50 years

Well, their right. That is a waste of money, from a defense standpoint.

Your not going to find aliens, looking at moving lights and spots in the sky. Even if you see a UFO, how is it going to explain anything about aliens?

Originally posted by Zsaqulz78th
Well, their right. That is a waste of money, from a defense standpoint.

Your not going to find aliens, looking at moving lights and spots in the sky. Even if you see a UFO, how is it going to explain anything about aliens?

Um....some UFO sightings are just "lights" in the sky, but some are also solid objects up to a mile wide. And when an object is tracked on radar going from a hover to 3,000 mph in a split second, I doubt that's "ours". But to the MOD and DOD it's "nothing".

The majority of the general public (including you) and the media buy it, so the beat goes on.

Originally posted by ufo reality

Originally posted by Zsaqulz78th
Well, their right. That is a waste of money, from a defense standpoint.

Your not going to find aliens, looking at moving lights and spots in the sky. Even if you see a UFO, how is it going to explain anything about aliens?

Um....some UFO sightings are just "lights" in the sky, but some are also solid objects up to a mile wide. And when an object is tracked on radar going from a hover to 3,000 mph in a split second, I doubt that's "ours". But to the MOD and DOD it's "nothing".

The majority of the general public (including you) and the media buy it, so the beat goes on.

You really think the majority of the general public buy "it", I presume by "it" you mean that the UFO phenomena are "nothing"?

Maybe you have some more recent polls than I do, but here is some dated information from a Gallup poll on UFOs:

www.cnn.com...

As for the Roswell incident, nearly two-thirds of the respondents to the poll said they believed that a UFO crash-landed in a field outside the New Mexico

Two thirds! That's 67%!!!! So I'd say most people think there is something to it.

In fact 67% is the same percentage of people in Great Britain who think the Earth revolves around the sun!

www.gallup.com...

Probing a more universal measure of knowledge, Gallup also asked the following basic science question, which has been used to indicate the level of public knowledge in two European countries in recent years: "As far as you know, does the earth revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the earth?"
Great Britain that same year, 67% answered correctly

If 67% say the Earth revolves around the sun and 67% say there was a real UFO in Roswell, how much higher do you really expect these UFO believer numbers to get? I'd say that's pretty high and it shows most people DO believe in UFOs

The MOD should watch this before they say there's nothing to UFOs and no defense concern:

www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 5-12-2009 by ufo reality]

Originally posted by ufo reality
The MOD should watch this before they say there's nothing to UFOs and no defense concern:

www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 5-12-2009 by ufo reality]

Those are some great links, I think a harder push for disclosure is happening. These comments about, oh they've been saying this for 50 years.....They're also saying right now there has never been more talk of disclosure than ever before. Can you imagine? I'm done imagining, I wanna know who they are.

The ufo reporting desk was only in place to keep the public happy.
Just think about it 50k a year to run. That's probably one persons salary for a year and a phone line with a bit of stationary. The MOD spends more in a year on biscuits!
If anything of any significance happens then it wont be ignored, they will investigate but we just wont hear anything about it.

Thanks for posting the Nick Pope / MOD stuff - fascinating.

I really think we ARE closer to disclosure, than ever before (then again, that is always a true statement, no (?))

I just realized... this never made the U.S. news, did it?!?

How odd.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
That is an interesting approach that reminds me of Spock's quote in Star Trek:

www.imdb.com...

"when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

So if we have a given sighting and say it's impossible to be a known manmade craft, impossible to be psychological, impossible to be geophysical, etc then what is left?

Arbitrageur thats a great post - I think Mr Spock nicked that line from Sherlock Holmes but it makes a very good point.

To my mind there are quite a number of credible UFO cases out there which are extremely puzzling and certainly challenge the practise of deductive reasoning.

You've probably heard of all them but I don't think anyones ever incorporated all the facts and come up with any comprehensive,acceptable or reasonable explanations for the true nature of the objects involved in these incidents:

The Lakenheath Incident (1956)

The Coyne Incident

The Tehran Incident

The RB-47 Incident

The Redmond Oregon Incident

The Colares Incident

The Portage County Incident

The Alaska Flight 1628 Incident

The Exeter Puzzle Incident

The Washington Merry go round

The Chiles-Whitted Incident

The Gosford Incident

The Westhall UFO Incident

The Bariloche UFO Incident

The B-29 UFO Encounter (1952)

The Ellsworth AFB Incident (1953)

The Bethune case (1951)

The West Lothian Incident (1979)

Cheers.

I have an alternative theory why they have closed the UFO project ! Disclosures coming and by closing theyre offices they are telling us that yes if you see something flying round our skies there is no need to ring them because it IS a UFO or extraterrestrial craft ! Think about it, are the British gov't so skint that they're desperate to save 50grand ?

[edit on 053131p://12America/Chicago15 by ProRipp]

Originally posted by SquirrelNutz

Thanks for posting the Nick Pope / MOD stuff - fascinating.

Here he is discussing the closing down of the UFO desk - he says that no money is going to be saved and the MOD were quite 'devious' in the way they went about it:



Cheers.

So why is anyone who lives in the UK ( like me) surprised ?
This Government can't tell the difference between illigal immigrants and those that were born here, and have ancestors going back hundreds of years.
So they are going to be able to spot aliens ?
They couldn't spot their own backside with the aid of 2 hands and a torch.

Originally posted by ukmadmax
So why is anyone who lives in the UK ( like me) surprised ?

I don't think they're surprised so much as exasperated at the fact that certain folks just keep swallowing the 'official line' on UFOs without ever bothering to objectively look into the subject for themselves.

Some official UFO denials/explanations are nice bedtime stories for UFO cynics but when a person realy looks at the facts surrounding certain cases they completely fall apart -there are some good examples here.

As for UFOs not being a threat to national security -Nick Pope makes a very good point below:

"The official line from the Ministry of Defense is, 'Yes, this happened. No, we don't know what it is, but we say that it is of no defense significance.' How can it possibly be of no defense significance when your best jet is left for standing by a UFO? And, again, how can it be of no defense significance when your air defense region is routinely penetrated by structured craft?"

Nick Pope
Head of the "UFO desk" at Air Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defence from 1991-1994

Cheers.

Thanks for the updates, Karl.

This to me is just a defeatist attitude - "we get it, there are UFOs - no one is listening to us after all this time - EF it! They'll soon find out"

No? Maybe.

Watching a brand new show on the History channel that addresses the subject of the title of this thread.

Just now!

(That's #1)

#2 is that they've openly admitted that they will no longer investigate inquiries either. (Ancient Aliens Series)

The Ministry of Defense' stance on the subject (the manner, if you watch the show) only further convinces me that the reason for the shutdown is things are getting more and more difficult to keep a lid on.

This is a hands up in the air kind of gesture, to me. "We give - we're just not even going to talk about it, anymore"

All it says to me is that they're so unwilling to discuss this issue because they know something tangible, something that would change everything. If they keep all the eggs in the basket, none can smash and reveal the yolk inside.

Their whole attitude is mind boggling from any other standpoint. Not only is it nonsensical, it's also completely narrow minded.

They haven't saved any money since they did this, UFO sightings still occur with unexplainable sightings remaining that way, and the whole "we're so safe because this isn't a threat to our defences" argument is pointless when they can't even let out what we're dealing with, let alone keep up with UFO's in question.

It's some serious ostrich syndrome.

Originally posted by Faiol
lol maybe they did get their answers and maybe they dont need to investigate anymore that doesnt mean nothing is happenning

That was my first thought when I read the article. They already know what's "out there". They don't need to study it anymore. They either are part of what's out there or know who/what it is.

Just because our government have stated they are no longer investigating does not make it true.
After all, we have been told countless times that there are no people investigating, that there is "no defence significance", that nobody collects & collates reports.
Yet every year there are ever more documents released at Kew.

Now, forgive me for missing something here, but how can these statements be reconciled?
If there are no investigators, and logically no investigations, then where do these documents keep coming from?
If there is no defence significance, then what do you call Rendlesham Forest?
Either something DID happen, or half a Nuclear strike base were hallucinating.
If these people seriously mistook the lighthouse for a downed UFO - which as it was in a different direction I doubt - then how can this NOT be of utmost defence significance?

Most likely, it has all gone black again.

[edit on 9-8-2010 by Welsh_Mulder]

Whilst I do not agree that UFO's pose no defence significance. Do any of you really believe that the British Government have stopped investigating UFO's??

Nick Pope muddies the water here in my opinion. Was there ever a 'UFO desk'? Nick has said that he was the 'head of the British Government's UFO Project'. Whereas the British Government has always denied the existence of such a thing.

Dr. David Clarke's blog post on this issue explains more here.

Linda Unwin, one of the successor's to Nick Pope supposed role, stated:-

"The first point to make is that there is no 'UFO Project'. Handling of UFO sightings is a very small element of our work."

This indicates that Nick pope may have investigated a few cases in his time in this role, supplementary to his every day duties at the MOD. Is it possible to even make a full time job out of investigating a few reports a year?

Whilst I concede that Nick Pope may have gained an interest in the subject and become a 'believer' in the UFO phenomenon through his time at this desk, the reality of it I think, is a lot less glamorous than he would want us to believe.

The 'closure' of Britain's supposed 'UFO desk' means nothing. The 'UFO desk has done nothing more than process FOI requests for the past twenty years, hence the MOD's disclosure program.

The real investigation of the UFO subject, if ever carried out, was not by this department. I'm willing to bet that the MOD is sitting on the more 'interesting' reports, and possibly working with the US in looking at reports made from military/aviation experts sightings.

If anyone is looking at the UFO subject in the UK, I would guess it to be GCHQ, the UK's equivalent of the American NSA.