I have been instructing since the mid 1970s and the "nuts and bolts" of teaching people to fly have not, in my opinion, changed a deal since then but what has changed is the ever increasing amount of bureacratic nonsense which we have to put up with which does little to enhance common sense, safety and plain old "airmanship"! My hallucination is that matters have only got worse since we have gone over to the European Rules etc!!
I don't normally wander around this forum but I found this during a serch for something completely different - still, I thought I'd my twopenny'worth! I'm just a simple controller but when I started in the business the book that set out the rules for getting a licence was small (about the size of a C150 checklist if that helps to put it into perpective) and maybe 30 pages from cover to cover. It's now an A4 book with 131 pages, and probably has a commensurate number of people at Gatwick to check that each licence meets every rule. Does it mean that you get better controllers or ATC service? Well, posters in this forum are probably far better placed than I to judge that - but it doesn't seem any better on the inside. And the reason for the weighty tome - does the fact that it came in at the same time as the European harmonised licence - which, incidentally, doesn't make a controller's licence any more recognised by other States than the previous UK one - give a clue?
In truth, a lot of what was is in the new book was already in place in the UK but when things get harmonised across Europe all that seems to happen is that the worst bits from each State are drawn together and the new rulebook!
OK, rant over. And I promise not to venture into this forum too often - but I just wanted you to know it's not just pilots that have to put up with this sort of thing.....