YYZ Instructor Unfortunately, you are wasting your time pining for days of old! You might wish that things were different (do I detect a bit of trans-Atlantic jealousy, perhaps?), but they are not. The airline industry in UK is in excellent health, unlike that in North America, and it needs new people - lots of them.
However, there has developed an expectation among baby pilots here that 250 hours' flying (not training) is all they need to acquire to be 'owed' a jet job, and certain organisations have capitalised on that over the past couple of years - Ryanair in particular, but others as well. The Solid-Airline lot that BAP refers to look to be a prize example of a scam perpetrated on impressionable wannabes - avoid!
However, the airline industry here could not afford all the new guys to go off into flying instruction, however valuable such flying might be, and there is no intrinsic reason why a 250-hour pilot cannot enter TR and line training and thereafter (with around 350 hours) perform adequately as a co-pilot on an airliner. Most modern airliners require far less skill and thought to fly (at a basic level) than your average piston twin! Most military organisations put their new pilots in charge of far more complex equipent at a similar number of (far higher quality) hours, so it's not a non-sequitor.
The SSTR argument is a distraction from the issue; SSTRs are a legitimate training device offered by many bona-fide training orgainisations and aimed at a wide variety of pilots who, for whatever reason, wish to equip themselves with a type rating to make themselves more attractive in the marketplace. The real issue is operators like Ryanair that have contracted people to fly for them while either paying to do so or while not being paid. That is where the immorality lies, not with SSTRs which are no more immoral than a CPL/IR.
Scroggs