Finally, I am concerned that there are pilots here who don't actually understand fully what VFR means
A perennial problem arising out the fact that licence privileges are at odds with the ICAO definition (in the UK, but not in many other countries) and that there are loads of pilots who are now in IFR only operations who have never really flown VFR (beyond ab initio in the circuit).
One of the problems is that some of the latter later have rings all the way up their sleeves and end up in a management and/or regulatory capacity despite a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of flying outside controlled airspace.