There was me thinking the attitude we keep being told about is commercial wanting to get rid of GA, it would appear it is the other way around
BEagle, the attitude that LoCos should only have operated from airports fully contained within CAS is a tad naive for an obviously intelligent person, you will be fully aware that there are only so many landing slots and places to park. Also why do those of us who live in areas not served by such Airports have to travel massive distances when we already have airports on our doorsteps.
Having seen exactly how the airspace process works I can only assure everybody just how difficult it is to obtain new CAS and the depths that are gone into to minimise inconvenience to other users. Lets be honest comparing UK airspace to US airspace is like comparing apples with oranges, they have so much more space in the first instance to play with, a very quick cursory glance at a UK chart shows just how close we all are here in the UK.
Whilst being a huge advocate of GA, and the "right to roam" outside CAS with no ATC contact Commercial aviation is a huge industry generating Billions of pounds for the UK economy. It is wrong to try to limit such an industry simply for our own pleasure. I think we probably have it close to being right as every new application process for CAS has to be looked at in minutiae with every concerned group fully involved with the right to respond to every application. However in the same way that we shouldn't just think we can have CAS everywhere we want it , those in GA also have a responsibility to accept that there are places which do require the additional protection