B2B
The man you describe was an idiot if he didn't have a chart with him. Whether the presence of a GPS made him less safe is a matter of debate; I am sure that if you raised it in a CAA Safety Seminar you would get the "right" answer
But VRPs are often hard to spot; that's a fact. Personally, I fly "VFR" whenever there's a nice view to be had out of the window, but I always navigate fully IFR, and it's a lot easier to do that. I also get the impression that ATC much prefer people knowing where they are relative to navaids.
I've had several cases of ATC (RIS) telling me I am breaching some airspace; I knew I was 1-2 miles outside it (GPS, DME, radar fix etc) and a subsequent phone call to the ATCU revealed that they were telling me I was breaching "just in case I was" because "they get a lot of VFR pilots breaching their zone". One such place reportedly had 30 breaches of their Class A CTA the previous day ...
So perhaps VRPs don't always work when it comes to CAS avoidance.