IT’S A BONNY DAY FOR UFOS!

The town of Bonnybridge in Scotland (above) has been declared the best place to spot a UFO in Britain, according to the travel magazine Wanderlust. Despite attempts to revive the fortunes of Warminster in Wiltshire, that celebrated its 50th anniversary as the country’s first UFO hotspot (see FT331:4047) with a skywatch at the August bank holiday, it was beaten into fourth place by the sheer number of reports emanating from the so-called Falkirk Triangle. Bonnybridge, Midlothian, first came to the attention of the national media in 1992 and since that time claims have been made that more than 300 sightings are logged each year. Since that time, local councillor and UFO believer Billy Buchanan has written to three prime ministers, including David Cameron, asking the Ministry of Defence to investigate. But each time he has been told that the usual explanations for UFOs apply. Wanderlust note there is no obvious explanation why this area should be so attractive for the space people, “although police have suggested alcohol may be a contributing factor”. Number two on the magazine’s list is the Broad Haven triangle in mid-Wales, which was the focus of a UFO flap in 1977-78, with stories of tall humanoids in silver suits stalking remote farms. Rendlesham is pushed into third place, so we conclude that the UFO public are as fickle as any other, and that precisely what constitutes ‘Britain’s Roswell’ is a moveable feast. Wanderlust, 18 September 2015: http://tinyurl.com/pctt5x5 scanning Antarctica using Google Earth when he noticed a “dark area”. He zoomed in, and to his amazement saw something he believed was a crashed flying saucer. “I think there is very large disc-shaped flying machine among the frozen ice,” mused Degterev, basing his assumption on the fact that what he had seen showed the “classic flying saucer shape”. That the “classic flying saucer shape” is based on hoaxes such as Adamski’s Venusian scout-ship has clearly not penetrated the tatters of the Iron Curtain. But this didn’t deter Degterev, who gave the media the exact coordinates of his find and invited people to look. Enter the experts. The British Antarctic Survey fielded Andrew Fleming, who downgraded Degterev’s find from cosmic Holy Grail to mundane ice crevasse. Degterev wasn’t impressed and fought back: “It seems this is a man-made object from the distant cosmos”. Flying Saucery isn’t quite sure where the ‘distant cosmos’ is located exactly but understands how easy it is for the devoted saucer fancier to fall into the trap of radical misperception. Sometimes a crevasse is just a crevasse! Daily Mail online 16 June 2015: http://tinyurl. com/q27b8kk quotes were originated from me”. Yet these are the same questionable stories spread by Robert Hastings and his group of former USAF contacts who claim aliens have interfered with nuclear missiles ( FT270:30). Mitchell is an exemplar of the ‘credible expert’. By this term we mean someone people tend to believe because of their status, qualifications, experience or other skills and qualities. Mitchell may know his onions when it comes to manning a spaceship, but when it comes to determining whether aliens have been intervening in global politics we’re less convinced… to put it mildly. Mirror online, 11 August: http://tinyurl.com/pofdl69; Huffington Post, 27 August: http://tinyurl.com/ok6e33b