Tuc and Exrigger,
From my POV the resistance to regulatory change came from the embryonic MAA itself. I met and chatted with the guy who drafted 05-130 (Parts 145 and M) who said that it was messed about after 'acceptance' of the draft and prior to publishing. The dis-jointedness of its content shocked him.
Shortly after my first reading of Mil Part M, I noticed that it could not work because someone had not permitted the issue of a 'MIL Form 1', an essential part of that regulatory system. I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that this was down to the powers in MOD reading 'Form 1' as simple replacement for a 'Serviceable Label' (MOD Form 735) and ignoring it. i.e. they didn't understand the Form 1s significance.
Those MAOS and DAOS standards defined personnel responsible for tasks and part of my job was to educate, explain and clarify why the Accountable Manager (which became the nominated DH) could not be a Group Captain and had to be the budget holder, not a mere budget manager. i.e. the person who gave the Group Captain his budget to manage.
Post H-C, the first thing the MAA did was not to try and adopt the MAOS/DAOS standards, but to squeeze the bits of those standards into where they already "complied" and then set about re-wording all the other bits (through issuing the new set of RAs) to suit the status quo. In essence: some Post-It Notes had been placed on the regulatory wall, but all the cracks had only been cleaned, not even whitewashed, to look more presentable.
The use of Airworthiness Reviews fell at their first attempt when that aircraft failed the very first AR question (it did not have a valid Maintenance Programme) but this was ignored by a certain Eng O and stated as a Pass! (I again assumed that this Eng O was chasing a promotion rather than proving a system worked)
As for training standards, there are now serving technicians with EASA Part 66 licences to allow them to work on A330, A400, G500, Beech350 and the like. Also, I believe the Cosford syllabus is similar to EASA standards, probably because MOD can't staff its own full training syllabus. Finally, the EU Mil Airworthiness Regs (EMARs) also cover technician training so there may be some input there too.