This is an understandably emmotive subject, after all to most of us it's a dream before a job. But at the nuts and bolts level it's a job to be filled, with the best person available in all respects at the time. To go back to the start, the guys that were much better at Shawbs may have been poor at IF or under the pressure of the OCU demonstrated undesirable crew skills making them unsuitable for METS. Attitude is a big thing but there is not one attribute that trumps any number of poor ones - even the best pilot in the world would be chopped if he was a nob that couldn't work with others (I'm not trying to setup any single seat jokes). I think we can safely say that none of us would want to pick bad eggs over good ones, there is always a whole picture that individuals perhaps only see part of.....
So, finally, in an attempt to soften the blow, when I came through guys had to pass FJ standard at Linton to stand any chance of even being streamed, as was mentioned by someone earlier, I'm certain we lost a lot of peole then that were a lot better than many of us today - the RAF just didn't need them and that was that, it doesn't owe any of us a job!
Sorry to the unfortunate few, however crappy the reason was there was one at the time and thats life.