Bookworm.. The crews I have dealt with over the years, who have many different languages as their mother tongues, seem to manage OK and many foreign pilots have indicated their satisfaction with UK ATC.
What would you propose as a solution? The critical factor is safety. What's the easiest way of clearing someone for an ILS, using phraseology which he will hear in 60 different countries, which will guarantee separation from traffic underneath? "Cleared for the ILS" has been proved to be dangerous for us..
I don't hold with your view that the UK is unique. Have your heard US controllers giving instructions for an ILS approach? They're quite different to ours and they have crews from as many nationalities as us, probably more. I used to work at an international airport which didn't have ILS so the phraseology there was different to other places with ILS.. A thread on another forum dealing with approaches into Moscow is enlightening too, when crews have to deal with complex altimeter settings and different navigation procedures.
ATC, on a daily - sometimes hourly - basis has to adapt to varying procedures. Bad weather comes along; maybe a piece of airspace is closed (for a variety of reasons) so defined routes go out of the window and for controllers it's like working at a brand new unit with a 110% workload...
That's the name of the game - we all have to adapt..
For Firestorm - I am not familiar with Birmingham but it's quite safe for a radar controller to descend you below MSA within the RVA. How else would you carry out an SRA?