UK Govt lays UFO investigations to rest

London, August 25 (ANI): Even though UFO watchers have revealed that activity in Britain's skies is constantly increasing, at least the MoD has closed the investigations book.

In fact, the Government began taking its eye off the ball in 2009 when a dedicated department with a 50,000 pounds annual budget to investigate the phenomenon was controversially shut down.

Hot on the heels of the closure a UFO hotline for members of the public to report sightings was disconnected.

Officials insisted that the unit, founded in 1950 at the height of the Cold War, was a waste of time and money.

Despite 10,000 sightings they concluded that "no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom".

Yet buried in the small print surrounding the closure was a telling figure. Most of the thousands of sightings can be explained away, ranging from weather balloons and conventional aircraft to shooting stars and unusual cloud formations.

However five percent of UFOs reported to the MoD have defied all rational analysis. That amounts to hundreds of encounters that cannot be attributed to any earthly reason.

It's a threat that prime ministers have taken seriously down the years and it's only now apparently that the threat is being dismissed.

According to experts, the decision to stop investigating smacks of arrogance and is incredibly short-sighted.

Nick Pope, who worked on the MoD's UFO desk before it was closed down, believes it's a huge own goal by the MoD.

"Is there life out there? Almost certainly... and we should keep looking," the Daily Express quoted him as saying.

"There was no smoking gun such as a hangar full of flying saucers but it's absolutely true that it was official policy to downplay the whole UFO subject," he said.

He believes the MoD became "irritated" by the endless public fascination with UFOs. Over the past decade he claims there has been a concerted attempt by officials to trivialise the issue, referring patronisingly to "flying saucers" and "little green men".

The US government has taken a similar attitude to the MoD on UFOs, announcing categorically a few years ago that they don't exist.

However, there is a band of believers who assert that there's plenty of evidence to the contrary and we ignore the threat from outer space at our peril. (ANI)