Hi Sunfish, thanks for a very well-reasoned and well-written post. I fear you may be misunderstanding me somewhat. I'm in what I think is a quite privileged position in aviation, with a relatively secure income and a fair amount of insulation from unnecessary costs and BS - but that doesn't mean I haven't had a gutful of overregulation, over-complication, and unnecessary charges. It's getting beyond a joke, not just in aviation but in society in general. One of the greatest growth industries of the last couple of decades has been the imposition and administration of regulations, and I think a lot of us are plain bloody sick of it. We're even seeing the success of governments measured by the numerical quantity of new legislation they've foisted on us, for God's sake. So I'm philosophically far closer to Dick and yourself than you might think. It's just that I've got a couple of issues with some of the discussions here.
One is the pointlessness of a lot of it, and what I think are unreasonable expectations. If a government monolith has just spent a huge amount of time, money and energy on new licensing regulations, however stupid and pointless (can anyone tell me exactly what the real benefit of Part 61 is?), they're just not going to suddenly bundle the lot up and throw it all in the nearest skip, however much we think they should. A lot of the carping negativity here doesn't achieve anything, either. "Squealing on Pprune"' is a long way from "starting a political pressure group", after all.
Second is the constant ad hominem bull**** we see here, in which Dick is sadly a regular offender. Dick, with almost clockwork regularity you slag off Skidmore as having no awareness of costs, due to his military background. How on earth would you know? Consider that, as was mentioned earlier, the bloke started a successful aviation business, and owns his own aircraft. Is it just possible that someone in that position might have just as much appreciation of costs and fine margins as, say, a bloke who's sitting on a huge pile of money, having sold his electronics empire for a fortune? Had that ever occurred to you, Dick, or do you just prefer to keep trotting out the same trite old lines because they happen to suit your view of the world? I just fail to see what continually slagging the bloke off here achieves. When I suggested calling him up and talking to him instead (have you ever done so?) I was quite serious, because it might actually be constructive.
I suspect you're right in that nothing is going to make much difference, but surely the best chance, if there is any, is to engage with these people in a mature and sensible fashion. What's going on here is more the internet equivalent of hanging from trees, making hooting noises and throwing bits of bark and dung at passers-by. Great fun, but hardly helpful in solving what are some very real problems.