Risks
I think this might be a fundamental difference between rallying and flying; with flying, you don't take risks and always think through to what might happen.
When a pilot does something that has an element of risk to it, you will find that he is quite often lambasted on these pages (viz., Air Ambulance/Audi/flowing river scenario) by some rotoheads.
Jon, If you are planning on going down the modular route (i.e. PPL first, hour building, CPL/ATPL), then just simply get your PPL and worry about the hundreds of decisions that need to be made concerning that. Then you will have a lot more experience and knowledge to decide how you want to proceed to the next step. For a start you need to think about
1. Which country
2. Which aircraft
3. Full-time/part-time tuition
There are past threads here on all these subjects.
Once you have your PPL and have a little more understanding about day-to-day heli-ops, then you can decide whether you want to continue - you will find that most Police/HEMS pilots sit around on their backsides most of the day, drinking tea and playing cards. Not much excitement there.
If you want to go down the integrated route (i.e. from ab-initio to frozen ATPL in one full-time course), then you need to do all your research up front.
However, and I mean this kindly, if you want to be taken seriously, your attitude to risk must change; nobody would employ a pilot who thinks the way you do. And yes, Rotordog's philosophy is very common amongst rotary pilots.
You don't have to justify yourself to any of us Jon, but, I'm afraid to admit that your posts come across as being a little starry-eyed about the business. Spend some time with some heli-ops; see whether it is the sort of thing you would enjoy otherwise, stick to a PPL, have fun flying occassionally when the weather is nice and you don't have to put the aircraft back!
Cheers
Whirlygig