Well, to be fair, it wasn’t the UFO’s fault. It was the trashy journalist; in this case, the anonymous author of the article with the headline "Invasion of the bobby snatchers: Police helicopter has close encounter with a UFO".
And trashy is right; the article is garbage. Just click the link and look at the illustration, which shows a classic flying saucer attacking a helicopter (and is copyrighted by "Science Photo Library"; as if). Sheesh. Then read the article, which is full of breathless and very purple prose. And while all the usual caveats are in it, the last line reads:
The extra-terrestrial encounter happened just before 1am on June 8.
It was extraterrestrial? Really? There’s nothing in the article to support that. I thought the Daily Mail was a newspaper. I guess that translates into "codswallop".
Tip of the tin foil beanie to BABloggee Singhe for sending me this fetid piece of offal.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Todays ‘The Sun’ daily and equaly ‘trashy’ national paper had the main headline and front page dedicated to more UFO bull under the headline ‘Alien Army’
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ufos/article1336870.ece
Complete with quotes from a ‘Shaken Soldier’ who saw them over his base.and follow up reports and video of more UFOs seen over Bromsgrove.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Phil: “I thought the Daily Mail was a newspaper.”
As a Brit, let me disabuse you of that notion. The Mail is a right-wing rag with a proud history of support for the Union of British Fascists, and for the German Nazi party in general, and for Hitler in particular.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Phil, check out this further aspect to the UFO story… you’ll like it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7471724.stm
June 25th, 2008 at 8:34 am
“I thought the Daily Mail was a newspaper.” Oh you poor benighted foriegner, I just fell off my chair laughing… The Daily Mail is not a newspaper, its a third rate, reactionary tabloid.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:35 am
“I thought the Daily Mail was a newspaper.”
Ah, then you should definitely check out the Daily Mail-o-matic:
http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/
June 25th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Yeah, the Daily Mail is to “newspaper” what the Institute for Creation Research is to science.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Well, in Canada, our police force just tases these type of people/aliens/whatnots.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:46 am
The sighting was near Cardiff. Interesting. You’d think that the Sun might put a picture of a blue police box on the cover instead of a saucer.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:52 am
All of the above is true – anyone who still thinks that a British accent makes us smart has had another myth busted. It makes me despare sometimes the crap people buy & read – it just encourages the spreaders of this rubbish to make up more.
Aren’t our countries similar?!
June 25th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Has no one contacted Torchwood yet?
But seriously… it’s the “Daily Mail”. I think it has value as a bird-cage liner, if your bird can’t read.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:07 am
But look carefully at the information here:
* It was “a police helicopter”
* It had “a three man crew”
* It was near “a RAF base”, which is located “outside Cardiff, South Wales”
* It was confirmed first-hand by “a source”, who swore that “they are convinced it was a UFO”.
* It was backed up by “a police spokeswoman”, who confirmed something happened, and even said, specifically, the type of aircraft that was the victim (“an EC135T21″)
* The “a police spokeswoman” confirmed it was a UFO by avoiding saying that it was, just exactly like a real police spokeswoman would do.
* The article even says it was extra-terrestrial and happened at 1am on 8 June!
With so many details and specific sources verifying for a fact that this was an extra-terrestrial, who can ask for anything more? I’m certainly convinced.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:20 am
“Hovering above RAF St Athan”
Surely they’d never expect to see any unfamiliar aircraft there…
It looks like The Mail swiped the story straight from The Sun anyway – they didn’t even edit the attributions in the text…
June 25th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Ah, strange lights in the sky. Mystery continues to exist, mainly because we’re not quite smart enough to see the reality.
I expect if ETs ever do show up, they’ll be laughing their arses off(or the equivalent) at the funny way we interpret things.
GAry 7
June 25th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Anyone else reminded of a classic song by Nena from 1983?
June 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
This is probably the fourth or fifth UFO story that has run within the last year, and EVERY TIME without fail, they have turned out to be these floating lantern things!
You’d think that people would learn by now, wouldn’t you?
But then again, “Police Helicopter Chases Floating Paper Lantern” or “British Soldier Sees Fleet of Floating Paper Lanterns” won’t sell quite as many copies of the Daily Mail or The Sun.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:44 am
The Daily Mail is home to anti-vaccine campaigner and antiscientist Melanie Phillips. what more could you want in the way of antiscience bona fides?
Anyway, it’s OK. The Doctor told me about the UFO, and he’s already taken care of it.
The pilot is now in stasis at Torchwood HQ.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
But they have that picture! It must be true, how can you doubt the picture?
You know what’s really annoying about that article? They simultaneously use “UFO” to mean “unidentified flying object” and “extraterrestrial spacecraft”. They even seem fully aware those are two separate terms.
I’d be more convinced if I didn’t know that experience pilots have dodged meteors that were miles away to avoid a mid-air collision.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:53 am
@ GodlessHeathen.
I think that would constitute cruelty and the RSPB would be on your back in a moment. Even birds deserve to read unbiased fact based journalism and the Daily Mail wouldn’t know what any of those words mean and looking them up in a dictionary would count as research, an alien concept they will have nothing to do with
June 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am
One of the comments. Now that we know the outcome I’m laughing SO HARD.
“It’s about time some of these events made breaking news rather than being hushed up and us having to ask for files to be released under the freedom of information act. Police Officers would not report a UFO unless they were very sure it was one and something from not around here. If it was another aircraft but they couldn’t be sure what type of aircraft, they would have said so. They simply wouldn’t risk their careers and the risk of humiliation if they weren’t 100% sure if was a UFO! The sooner people realise this sort of thing REALLY happens, the better!”
…PAPER BAG! PAPER. BAG. On fire!
June 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am
BA:
To say that “UFO trashes Journalism” implies journalism had something worth trashing. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that the advertisements had the only truths that could be relied on in newspapers, and we all know how William Randolph Hearst supposedly said “You supply the pictures, and I’ll supply the war.”
Maybe I’ve mentioned it before, but about a hundred years ago a relative discovered a “ghost” was a cat. The reporter with him refused to write the story, saying “Everyone wants to read about a ghost. No one wants to read about an old cat.”
I don’t think things have improved one whit. As I compare stories I know firsthand or have looked into myself with what’s reported, I’m sure of it.
If anyone doubts that, I invite them to examine how newspapers handle vaccination stories. Note how they bury the fact that there’s *no* link between vaccines and autism deep within a story, and lead with headlines and interviews that suggest such a link exists.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Well, I have to say I’m slightly disappointed…
Given that it was the Daily Mail, I thought it would be much worse.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:18 am
“very purple prose”
Weird, this is the second time today I’ve heard the word “purple” used as a negative adjective.
The other being on PZ’s blog:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/now_i_guess_i_must_vote_for_ob.php
“James Dobson has given his screeching purple anti-endorsement,”
SO…. what exactly does purple mean in this context?
June 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am
I just wanted you British readers to note that not ALL of us Americans are stupid… I’ve known for years that the Daily Mail is not exactly high-quality journalism.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:28 am
It is. Your error is in believing that a newspaper has an obligation to anything other than selling newspapers.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I just gotta say that I love that picture. Looks like the coppers got a shot in at that UFO and it’s about to crash land. If a police helicopter can take down a scout ship of the alien invasion force, I think we’ll be ok.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
It isn’t extra-terrestrial. Based on the picture evidence it is the Jupiter 2. The Robinsons have returned and are terrorizing the police.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
The Daily Mail actually was a fairly respectable newspaper up until the 1970′s. It used to be the one my parents took, so as a teenager I got to watch its decline and fall.
But it’s not just the Mail. Most of the British newspaper industry went the same way then or shortly afterwards. If any Brits here are ever tempted to claim superiority to the Americans, they should just go and take a close look at the junk in their local newsagents – and remember that many of their compatriots actually believe that junk.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Phil, your description didn’t do this thing justice. I was thinking, “Another credulous reporting of a UFO by a paper with low standards? Big deal.” But then for some reason I went back and clicked on the link anyway.
Good heavens. That Science Photo is hiLARious.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
‘The Daily Mail actually was a fairly respectable newspaper up until the 1970’s. It used to be the one my parents took, so as a teenager I got to watch its decline and fall.’
Well, they actively supported Mosley and the British Union of Faschists and thought that Hitler and the Nazis were doing good work.
I suppose it depends what you mean by ‘Decline and Fall’
June 25th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Heh, that random Daily Mail headline generator is classic. So far, this is the best one:
“DO LESBIANS KILL THE COUNTRYSIDE?”
June 25th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
@Danny,
Nice one. That headline generator is great.
Incidentally, there is a game called “Man bites Dog” in which the aim of the game is for each player to come up with headlines made up from words on cards dealt to them. Perhaps the Daily Mail gets their headlines after a particularly hard game.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Interestingly, there seems to be a video footage:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f00_1214113883
June 25th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I have a feeling someone at the daily mail doctored that image. Here’s the real photo
Did someone say doctored??
June 26th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Bloody Torchwood. They clearly can’t cope without Tosh.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Hey Phil, I thought you were a skeptic.
“I thought the Daily Mail was a newspaper.”
You obviously haven’t been subjected to enough of their homophobic, Xenophobic, sensationalist, fundamentalist and obviously so far to the right views (you would imagine they would return via the left) “codswallop” yet!
Still love the blog though.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:18 am
OF COURSE it was an “extra-terrestrial” encounter; it did happen away from the surface of the Earth. I’m sure the article just meant that the chopper was flying really, really, really, really high.