Re: Handover already cleared to land
With regard to the PAR (and you know I'm old and among the most harsh when it comes to my fellow ATCers...), I can see the problem. There's just not enough standard phraseology to cover all situations (can you imagine?), and this one might have been a bit tough to do concisely without sounding terse. When somebody calls me and just passes a callsign, I say (essentially), "how may I be of assistance?" That's what happened here. When the aircraft checked in with only the callsign my first thought would have been, "he/she has an additional request. Let's hear it."
Of course, it MAY have been that the controller was reading the newspaper, etc., but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on this one. In my opinion, nothing mean-spirited was intended.