While I have been droning on about the negatives, I agree with WTD in that there are still some real professionals out there.
I suppose like any company or department, a few stand out at both ends of the scale. There are some worth mentioning because they were a joy to work with and taught me so much about the tricks of the trade as well as how to do a good job despite the seemingly constant cr@p from above. It was these few that always gave me hope that very high standards could be achieved if we had support rather than hinderance.
It is worth noting that my experiences are specific to LHR, not LGW, where the latter situation was relayed to me by good friends at VS traffic at LHR and those that came from and temporarily went to LGW.
Sounds to me like you have a goodun at LGW. Worth his weight in gold IMO.
The clincher for me is that Aviance have lost a lot of good contracts at LHR despite the feeble competition.