Well, well, well, what a response to a perfectly normal request!! What a lot of tosh being written by some people. Whilst I might be setting myself up for a barrage from Hug Monster, I rather feel that his initial response was way over the top. Relevant points are:
1) We are all a team
2) We are all busy
3) We are all trying to keep planes apart from each other.
However, as ATCOs we are not psychic, and we do not know what you are supposed to be doing unless you tell us. If a previous controller has put you on a speed control for separation purposes, then it is not something which really should get forgotten. (For the benefit of our colleague from UAE, it is considered coordination if a pilot is requested to report any restrictions to the next controller. Funnily enough, we do not always have time to phone everything through!) To 'forget' it in a busy environment is like 'forgetting' to level off at your cleared level, and has the same impact upon safety. What does worry me though, HM, is that you seem to be suggesting that pilots (of which I am also one) are incapable of remembering an instruction they were given not 30 secs ago. Also, there are TWO of you up there and only ONE of us down here.
Whetever, as a training captain I would hope your attitude on the flight deck towards things that bug you is better than the one you displayed in this thread. Otherwise I wonder how your poor victims (sorry, colleagues) feel about flying with you.
This thread started as a simple reminder that these separation-ensuring instructions are not given for the fun of it, and should perhaps come higher up your list of priorities than they seem to. Seems quite reasonable to me. By the way, our priorities are Separate, Order and Expedite (to paraphrase MATS). Perhaps you understand now why it is such an important issue to us.
Tin hat now going on.