To Carnage
Heathrow is a totally different situation to HK. There is virtually no high terrain around Heathrow, You don't have a "no go" international border as HK does just 3 NM from base leg (for 07); At LHR aircraft can join the LLZ from about 6 miles from touchdown all the way out to God only knows where. Take the SIERRA drop in's for instance, some times it will not be known that this track shortening will be available until you have passed South of Sierra. Quite often it is a quickly agreed shortening after fairly serious co-ordination between (possibly) 4 different/busy terminal area controller's (each with their own requirements), and then it is juggle juggle trying to fit you in. Because this has happened it may mean that other traffic has to be widened out a bit, or even shortened, so where the hell has your great "track miles from touch down" gone to now. The bottom line is: North runway generally for landers, so we can more efficiently release departures; We try to sequence arrivals as close to the required sep minima as possible to have the most expeditious landing sequence; This place is very restricted for aispace usability because of the proximity of Chinese and Macau airspace, and high terrain; and no, it is not more efficient to allow aircraft to "fly the approaches by themselves" as the amount of RTF that would be going on in the speed control department would drive you mad and us mad. It's all pretty simple really, until the Wx turns to c**p.
HKG has an very narrow arrivals gate (particularly for 07) and I have read elsewhere on PPrune, someone suggesting that if crews don't play the correct "speed" game, then we take them out of the sequence. Well, to where? All that does is create a dangerous situation with (often poor English skilled) pilots not knowing what is going on, below the Min Radar Vector alt, and then we have one extra aircraft to later fit in (maybe at the expense of you)! Once an order is set in motion it becomes difficult to change, this is one of the reasons why Runway changes can be so labourious and time consuming.
Much of this stuff has been addressed before, but then I guess you can't be expected to know that.