Then why don't 'we' tell NATS to go whistle, when and if neccessary. Instead of the 'has beens', whose career paths have taken them to staff jobs and divorced them from reality (in many cases for too many years), dreaming up these daft ideas from behind desks in Kingsway, why don't they get out to the units and flightdecks and find out what REALLY is or isn't required. There is a great danger with this ever-burgeoning phraseology loading that the 'core' instruction is getting lost in the mire.
There is no need whatsoever for 'degrees'; prefixing the instruction with 'heading' is all that is required and as for millibars - what the hell else am I setting on the b...y altimeter. How can the numbers '1002' or '987' be misunderstood or confused with anything else but a pressure setting when combined with an instruction to climb or descend?
And we pay these people?