Friday, December 04, 2009

No more official UFO sightings for Brits

Interesting that this story ended in the Ananova.com Quirky news file, given the gravity or repercussions of this report. So y'see - the British Ministry of Defense who deals with UFO reports (among other things one presumes), is closing up shop after 60 years of investigations, 12,000 reports including 135 last year alone.

As is the case in many governments around the globe, the heart of the matter is money so the decision to close the department will result in a savings of £50,000 per year.

That's it? I mean, one wonders if this an entire departmental staff salary or one person's salary `a la British eqivalent of a Fox Muldaur. The official wording is that the department after deciding there was no benefit investigating sightings which were "an inappropriate use of defence resources".

A lot of Brits are not pleased with the decision including one Nick Pope, who ran the Ministry of Defence UFO project from 1991 to 1994, said it was "outrageous".

"We're leaving ourselves wide open to terrorist attacks," he told The Sun.

Well Nick, I don't know if I would go that far. Is Nick referring to an alien attack from another planet or dimension? Does he know something that we should know? Is there a space ship in a hangar somewhere hidden away from the public? Is there a British equivalent of Area 51? These are things enquiring minds wanna know!

After an application under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence admitted that responding to every UFO sightings "diverts MoD (Ministry of Defence) resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence". Presumably, it also costs to send out investigators to write up flying saucer reports that are most likely stored away for posterity or something.

It said that in more than 50 years "no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom".

Uh-huh...and what about all those corn field patterns? Huh?

After investigating, around five per cent of reports remain unexplained. There you go. Five percent is five percent!

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