Scotland Defence Ministry and the media

I would just like anyone outside the UK to get a perspective on how i am perceiving the change in attitude here in the UK, (I'm in Edinburgh) in relation to the UFO phenomena in general.

Some time ago i saw Timothy Good on the BBC news channel giving his opinion on Ufo's in general, I think it was a while ago admittedly but someone posted it recently in relation to the stale Isaac material still swimming around.

Normally the presenters who cover such stories of UFO sightings here in the UK have a half smirk on their faces when covering such things and they seemed to do that with Timoth but by the end of the interview they seemed really interested in what he had to say and i felt quite happy about that.

So today I was walking back to work after my lunch and popped into the News Agents for a Diet Coke and as I was reaching for it i looked to my left and saw on the cover of The Radio Times (Respected TV and Radio Guide Originally covering all BBC listings) the bottom of the cover saying something like "The Aliens Are Coming!, who believes they will visit us by 2030?" I didn't knpw who was saying that in the magazine but i made a mental note to look it up on the web to see if i could find the feature (No joy yet)

I turned to my right and put my DC on top of a pile of Edinburgh Evening news to pay for and found a full cover story titled "Lothian X-Files revealed, Defence Ministry opens up records of UFO sightings in pas ten years". I found a link to the papers website listing all the sightings around the Lothian region

news.scotsman.com...

My point in this post is really just to give people a heads up outside the UK on the increased activity and serious interest being taken with UFO sightings. It seems to me that as more information comes to light more people and in turn the Media are taking this issue more seriously as time goes by.

It is interesting to see that something like the Isaac/CARET stuff should even make it onto the news. Despite being vaguely mysterious, I really don't consider it newsworthy, per se.

I lived in England up until the age of 29, then emmigrated to get married. I have to say that I did find people in Britain far more willing to consider the possibility of UFOs and talk about them than here in the US. Also, books were far more widely available in the UK. I know one guy here in the US who is interested in the subject; everyone else thinks I'm a nutcase

I was surprised to see CNN cover the Stratford sightings (since debunked as Chinese lanterns), however.

Maybe, people here are far to enlightened and intelligent to even consider the possibility

I would assume that people in the UK are more open to the posibilty of UFO's for sevral reasons.

1. The population per square mile is a hell of a lot higher in the UK than in the US, therefore people are more likely to have seen something strange or have a friend who has.

2. Untill recently we only really had 4-5 TV channels which people had access to, and they all showed there fair share of Sci-Fi: X-Files, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, etc. So it is far more likely that people have seen such shows.

3. I think we are pretty much crop circle central of the planet. Thus the news has covered such incidents more.

4. Kids entertainment in the UK was a lot more Sci-Fi based. Jeff Waynes musical War of the Worlds. This was quite popular with the older generation (40/50+) people in the UK when they were kids before TV was that common, thus a lot of kids minds were opened to such posibilities and now ofcourse they are all grown up. Also Gery Andersons shows, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Terahawks, Fireball XL5, etc.

5. The UK is a lot older than America, we have a hell of a lot of paranormal stories, with the likes of Nessie, and I know that almost all places in the UK have some kind of local Ghost Story.

Thanks for the info. I'm in Scotland but haven't heard anything about this, probably because I don't usually buy newspapers. I know there's plenty of UFO activity in the Lothian area but it's just as busy in Fife and beyond. Trouble is there aren't many active researchers in this area so there's probably a lot of stuff is going unreported.I've been thinking about contacting the BBC news site. They have a great page on Welsh UFOs and I think there's a Southampton one too. Someone should put in a request for a page for up-to-date Scottish UFO sightings.

I live in the UK too. What's happening in the Bonneybridge area these days? Still a UFO hotbed or has it all died down now?

It dont get much better than the updates from Scotland than this form me and my mate Midlothian to Stirling and a few more scottish sightings and footage so keep coming back for updates.

www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...

Just want to clarify that this is the UK Ministry of Defence opening up files, not some fictitious Scottish Defence Ministry. Such a thing does not exist.

Originally posted by stumason
Just want to clarify that this is the UK Ministry of Defence opening up files, not some fictitious Scottish Defence Ministry. Such a thing does not exist.

yet......


when peak oil really bites what will they think about sending all that black gold downisle for cheap?

Indeed.

They'll need what little remains of the Oil to pay for your benefit cheques, free Uni and prescriptions that the rest of the UK subsidizes....

There won't be any money left over to fund Scottish Defence.

Would that mean Scotland would have there own Scottish Defence Ministry and alot more better still the rest of the uk can still be run with a scot though weird that.
any way are we talking about ufos or ballot papers

Originally posted by stumason
Just want to clarify that this is the UK Ministry of Defence opening up files, not some fictitious Scottish Defence Ministry. Such a thing does not exist.

Maybe he forgot the comma. Scotland, Defence Ministry and the media. Gosh, some folk are so picky.Ireland has just released their files too, btw.

I did forget the comma, whoops. No matter, Here's an article on the Ireland files:

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk...

"The busiest year for possible 'space invader' activity in the province was 1999, with five incidents recorded, including two in Co Antrim within 48 hours.

Other reports include 18 lights moving across the sky and an object the size of a bowling ball with red lines on it that "moved fast, then vanished" .

Describing one incident, a witness told the MoD they saw "two egg shaped objects, with red, blue and green coloured lights", adding it was dome shaped at the top but was flat at the bottom.

Every year in the UK, more than 100 UFO sightings are reported to the MoD"

Very strange indeed, strange that there were only 11 sightings reported in a decade to the MOD in Ireland.

Originally posted by Wirral Bagpuss
I live in the UK too. What's happening in the Bonneybridge area these days? Still a UFO hotbed or has it all died down now?

I work in bonnybridge 5 days a week and havn't seen anything recently, although when i was on nightshift now and then you would see wwhat i could only describe as 'Moving stars' they moved pretty weird and often dissapeared and reapeared, i see them in Falkirk a lot as well!

Here are a few more links for reports of MoD related releases of info...

Oxford Mail - Government reveals UFO sightings

Derbyshire Evening Telegraph - MOD LIFTS LID ON DERBYSHIRE'S REAL X-FILES (WITH VIDEO)

Nottingham Evening Post - NOTTS UFO FILES: COULD TRUTH BE IN THERE?

You have to understand that this can be used to spread as much disinformation as information.

I am still unsure on the agenda the MoD have. They might just be trying to counter the French GEIPAN releases with their own release to try to hush things up or to seed some garbage into this research field. The famous trash-decoy method.

We will have to see more development...

Yet another UK UFO newspaper link...

Western Morning News - WE ARE A UFO HOTSPOT

I think that the main problem with any MoD agenda would be simply to get UFO researchers off their backs for a while. And while we can well imagine that nothing truly startling will come of the releases, I doubt very much that what is released will be disinfo.

In fact, so long as the MoD sticks to their usual method of 'keeping an open mind', claiming that there is nothing of any 'defence significance', and generally not drawing any conclusions whatsoever as far as the public is concerned, we can probably expect the whole thing to blow over by early next year.

And yet more links

The Herald: The Voice of Plymouth - EIGHT UFOS SEEN OVER CITY IN LAST NINE YEARS

The Courier (Tayside & Fife) - Fife tops UFO league —with 29 sightings

Thanks for all the links uv777bk! All of the Freedom Of Information stuff must have been released at the same time in the last few days UK wide. I thought the MoD didn't really investigate sightings but they were certainly active to investigate these sightings.

Surely if that was the case they would have a named department or group within the MoD, Nick Pope used to be involved didn't he but he now doesn't know what it's called if anything.

It would be good if we could get all the FOI and see if any of the sightings match other counties or across the UK, or even worldwide to see if people saw the same thing but in different places, especially some of the more unusual shaped ones.