Haven't read the whole thread but in the UK a CPL is purely an exam passing exercise on the way to becoming an airline pilot, with a starting salary as low as 20k p.a. in the RH seat of a 737, or worse a RH seat of a turboprop doing night cargo, while furiously thumbing through the airline job ads looking for something a lot better.
Nothing to be proud of, IMHO. No more than doing a Masters in Multimedia at one of UK's many second-tier "universities".
Outside of air transport employment, the scenarios where a CPL is usable outside the AOC context are very very few. I can think of a paid company pilot, and very little else.