Totally agree with you Centaurus.
Fly a bus myself and i enjoy it much more when i can take out the automatics and fly the STAR manually. It is much better than only turning some knobs and kick out the autopilot at 500 feet.
However like you mentioned already not every captain likes it when you do this. Even on a calm, cavok day with almost no traffic around. But on the other hand some company's prohibit the use of manual thrust on the A32X. So you can't blame pilots from this outfit to be a bit rusty on the use of manual thrust.
Personally i think it's part of your job to keep your handflying up to scrath as well. If the autoamtics fail on a demanding SID/STARt at least you know what you are doing.
FT