Gunshy67.
Interesting points you make regarding the perceived expertese of the Regulator's men. To this day, flying operations inspectors in Australia - and I am sure the same for UK - get precious little hands-on actual flying on the jet transport they are responsible for.
Even their annual simulator practice is less than the average airline pilot receives. Most of the time the larger the airline, the less importance is given to the opinions of a flight inspector. To trumpet that a procedure must be good if the flight inspector says it is, means SFA in the real world.
I am not dead sure of this, but I wager that during certification flight testing of transport types, the test pilot personally carries out all the handling required to initiate and complete a rejected take off.
I have not heard of this task being shared between the test pilot and his co-pilot - apart from monitoring duties by the co-pilot. Indeed, if the task was shared (as espoused by Nigel D), then the resulting FCTM would make it clear which specific handling of brakes and levers would be carried out by the PF and PNF (pilot monitoring).
Surely therefore, doesn't this tell you a story? That the most efficient and reliable method of executing a rejected take off is that the captain decides, initiates and executes the complete procedure with his own two hands and feet. To have the captain blindly initiating an abort purely on the basis of someone else on the flight deck yelling"STOP" is surely an abrogation of command responsibility. As Gunshy 67 attested, a court would rip the commander to pieces for accepting a subordinate's command to abort and if something went tragically wrong.
Despite Nigel D's assertion that his co-pilots are superbly trained - and I have no doubt that their training is excellent - co-pilots have been known to call the wrong call or make the wrong decision (haven't we all?)