Hello BIK
Time you were NOTAMed off as U/S, buddy, because your signals are really confusing everyone now that you're scalloping so badly.
Of course, controllers (I'm not one) are entitled, and most welcome by the majority of us, to use this site for the following reasons:
1. there's a good chance that the controllers who participate in Pprune are also recreational, or semi-professional, pilots who, I'm sure, would have a vested interest in ensuring that any system they participate in as flyers offers an acceptable level of personal safety; and
2. like other safety-critical occupations (eg pilots, medical profession, emergency services etc), for a controller to lose a life on their sector or shift (particularly when the distress event is protracted and very personal) would have to be one of the most shockingly traumatic events they could experience, even when the causal circumstances or subsequent events are beyond their direct control. Now imagine what the post-disaster trauma would be like for a controller if the catastrophe (eg a mid-air) was due to a failure of the system to provide the controller with adequate decision tools and safety-net processes for them to provide their function safely? Even though the controller would probably escape litigation, if it could be proved the mid-air disaster was caused by systemic failure, this would only offer a small comfort to the controller who, on waking every day, would first ask the questions "if only I had done..." or "what if I did...."! Do you think the controllers on duty, when the mid-air collision occurred at Bankstown last year, just went home, got a beer from the fridge and put their feet up in front of the TV? Even though that particular accident was not of their doing, I'm sure they went home, probably cried and asked themselves the same questions as above, while thinking about the horrific final moments of that family, particularly the children.
No, to be fair BIK, I think the controllers are entitled to have a say in how the NAS is designed and implemented, if for no other reason than to ensure that any system they work with provides them with the requisite safety-nets so that they never have to face a situation like the one above, and its associated post-event trauma.