Now for some common sense

Trust the British Ministry of Defence to take a practical step to end the week: the decision to shut down its UFO hotline.

In a nation that has long placed a high value upon eccentricity, this of course is going down hard. No doubt the self-appointed ufologists will redouble their efforts to defend the UK from space aliens, although government has pointed out that no report in the umpteen years of hotlining has produced a shred of credible evidence of alien presence. "There is no defense value in investigating UFO reports," says a Ministry spokesperson.

The whole idea of placing UFO investigation, such as it is, under the heading of defence again illustrates where this obsession started. A good many scholars have noted that with nuclear weapons and the start of the Cold War, the number of religious visitations fell off to nothing, whilst the number of UFO sightings and contacts increased exponentially. Those sightings and contacts appear to have been overwhelmingly hostile: no healing visions of saints or whatever here.

If someone is watching, they've probably long since posted warning signs someplace on the far side of Mars. The UFO phenomenon shows that our first response to another intelligent life form is not going to be friendly: it's going to be all-out war, war that our species will probably start.

And I bet you wondered what happened to the Neanderthal.