Granny,
A couple points, first the controller from the UK that was recently hired has barely 12 months validated tower time. Serco has a requirement of having a TOWER and APP validation with minimum 5 years experience.. this person only has 1 of the 3 requirements. It's pretty sad if you need someone with barely a year's experience to teach you all in OMDB. I know of a couple good controllers already working there that have suggested how to move more traffic.. i'm told the resistance comes from the management and the regulator. Just over a year ago, I along with another controller were turned down in Dubai because we did not have busy tower experience. We both had APP ratings with more than 5 years.. I am not at all upset for being turned away but my point is firstly don't have a double standard and secondly don't turn into an ATC school.... I thought we were here to provide ATC service.. not to teach approach control.
Second point, holding.. What you say is all a mute point really because it's all based on opinion. As the sytem in the UK works well the system in north america works just as well and we run just as much if not more traffic than most European airports. In Toronto if we needed to hold we would open the stack 40 miles out and it was the area controller who was responsible for it. Everything worked out great and we still managed to run 3-5 miles down each parallel runway. There are a 100 ways to skin a cat mate... of course everyone thinks their way is best....