Obviously Airservices is wasting an enormous amount of cash employing all those controllers when we have such a highly skilled complement of pilots who could do the job without leaving their flight deck. Yes, I know that you do it at non-controlled aerodromes with lower traffic levels and lower capacity aircraft, but air traffic control is established for those situations when pilots can't safely and efficiently do it. My 80 hours of flight deck observation when training for ATC did not give me the idea that I could jump into a DC-9 and land it, nor did I feel competent to comment on how the FO was managing, yet you skygods know it all. You're as bad as - no, you're worse than engineers.