@Nameless - I may be a little paranoid but I think we may be witnessing a very small part of a larger 'conditioning' regarding the existence of ET life/UFOs.
I have always gone along with thinking that if some UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft with alien pilots, if our governments had knowledge of this relatively recently (last century onwards..), then I fully believe there would be a deliberate process of acclimatisation. The reasons being that if ET life is a fact, the public would find out sooner or later and despite possible initial problems, there may be a lot to gain from an admission by the authorities.
Of course I also believe the number of people with all the pieces are few and others only have small pieces at all, the rest of us have nothing, unless we have an interest in UFOs ourselves and have sought out information.
You will remember sometime last year a BBC sports reporter told on air how we witnessed a large flying saucer flying low over rural England about 5am whilst he was on his way to work. It was quite a big thing for a BBC reporter (who had no prior interest in UFOs) to state he saw something that was not an aircraft but a big saucer, with no visible means of propulsion or lift. The story wasn't relegated to some obscure BBC channel but was included in the day's regular bulletins, basically it was included with all the 'normal' news and although there may have been some inter-colleague ribbing over the matter, the report was at no point ridiculed by the BBC.
To me, that story about the reporter and you mentioning about Radio 4 etc, it kinda looks to me like there is more serious UFO reporting going on in the BBC in the UK.
Considering that in many things the UK takes it's lead from the US, being the powerful one of the two allies, well the US seems like to have paid heed to the Brookings Report about possible societal breakdown, were the truth of flying saucers to become generally known.
If this indeed was/is the line taken by officialdom in the States, and they decided to withhold the knowledge about ET's initially but over a period of decades, to slowly make the idea/reality of other sentient life more palatable to the public, then I think it follows that the UK may do pretty much the same with one difference: when politicians wish to announce unwelcome news, the often leak part of it deliberately ahead of time, to get people already suspecting the full news, so that when they do hear it they are nowhere near as angry as they would be having just learned afterwards - this is often goes along with 'testing' the water in a way. The US could easily 'ask' the UK to be the 'guinea pig' in this and try to gauge the reaction as little by little, more official UFO information is made public without ridicule in the UK.
If it goes ok over here, the States might follow having been observing closely what happens here. All this is pure speculation but then again, so is most of UFOLOGY! I say there is a fair to strong chance all this could be true if one root fact is actually true: if UFOs exist and 'they' know about it, what's written above is the way I see it playing out at this stage of the game.
I would welcome input from anyone else on this idea? Danny Torrence - what say you? (sorry guys, it's not often I get to take the piss in such a way - if your reading Steve, you wont mind!
