I'm happy to be corrected as the stories were all second hand told down The Bridge House...
Either way, I think the policy was a rather foolish sledgehammer to crack a nut and please don't misunderstand me - I'm a firm advocate of Raw Data and "proper" visuals when possible. I recall going out of base to Athens doing 6 sector Greek island days where if you flew the SOP way you'd spend half your life in the hood waiting for a procedural approach on a CAVOK day, or go wall-eyed building an FMS magenta line for your "visual"