OK - now I have done a search and read about 8 pages of discussion and am not much further ahead on my quest for enlightenment.
Why in the UK are ATC not allowed to say "cleared for the ILS Rwy 23", or is that just a no no for a radar vectored ILS rather than the full procedural monty.
We were cleared to "descend to 2,800' and further with the glide"; we established and then I armed approach mode which is a bit of a palaver to disengage in our aircraft. The captain said that I should have just gone done in vertical speed to follow the glide as we were not "cleared for the approach".
I doubt many of us are stupid enough to descend with the glide before establishing on the localiser. What did ATC intend for us to do? Was he leaving himself an out for traffic ahead of us? or just avoiding the "cleared for the ILS" nasty? What does he intend? What if we lost comms?
Why does it have to be like this? It leaves us pilots dangling.