From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:05:12 -0500
Archived: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:05:12 -0500
Subject: UFO Spotted Opposite Houses Of Parliament




Source: The Daily Telegraph - London, England, UK

http://tinyurl.com/cqlcwt

05 Feb 2009


UFO Spotted Opposite Houses Of Parliament

A multicoloured spacecraft seen floating opposite the Houses of
Parliament was among the hundreds of UFOs reported in 2008, it
has been disclosed.

By Matthew Moore

The number of UFO sightings logged with the Ministry of Defence
more than doubled to 285 last year, a rise described as
"phenomenal" by experts. It is the highest number of sightings
in 10 years.


All the incidents are included in a document released by the
MoD yesterday, which details the date, time and location of the
sightings, along with a brief summary of the eyewitness reports.

The Palace of Westminster sighting on Feb 12 is described as
follows: "There was a craft that had green, red and white
lights. It was still and static in the sky. It was seen for
about an hour and a half." There is no information about who
reported the UFO or what it may have been.

The MoD only investigates reports of unidentified flying objects
that it considers may pose a risk to national security, and most
of the incidents seem just to have been logged and ignored. One
UFO, in the skies over Stroud in Gloucestershire on June 2, is
recorded only as "a sighting of something".

Many of the sightings read like the products of overactive
imaginations. In Scarborough, North Yorkshire on June 11 a
member of the public reported seeing "a cork shaped object that
glowed like an angel, flew up and over some trees".

Others are strikingly specific, like this description of a UFO
seen near Blackpool in Lancashire on Sept 8: "An object, the
shape of a chewing gum pack, black in colour and had three
circles of lights underneath it, emitting a dull orange light.
Was about 150 feet long and 50 feet wide."

Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFOs for the MoD in the 1990s
and is now one of the country's leading UFO authorities, said
that the doubling of sightings was "statistically extremely
significant." In 2007 there were 135 reported sightings, and
just 97 in 2006.

"If it was a more modest increase one could say it was due to
all sorts of reasons but this is phenomenal," he said.

"There are some interesting clusters of sightings in the summer
where there were six sightings on the same day, albeit in
different parts of the country and with different descriptions."

Mr Pope said that the increase in reporting was probably linked
to the MoD's release of documents from its UFO archive in May,
which made headlines across the world and helped make the
phenomenon a mainstream issue again.

Many of archive documents featured testimonies from policemen
and pilots, which "sent a message to people that there is
nothing to be ashamed of" about reporting a UFO, Mr Pope said.