An interesting debate. Severe turbulence is never pleasant. A few years ago I was flying south west from Dakar at night and entered severe turbulence that induced a 3000'/min ROD in a 4-engine heavy with max thrust applied. I would have dearly liked to have had an air traffic controller respond to my RT as they will in Europe - even if it is 'Standby'!
That said, I also had severe turbulence (mountain waves) east of the Rockies where the Mach went from 0.86 to 1.1 and down to 0.5 quicker than I can type it and all we could do was to hang on and attempt to fly attitude. Sadly, the US controller seemed less than interested - but fortunately we came out the other side fairly quickly.
In both cases, it is something I would prefer not to experience again - and night always makes it worse. However, whenever I find myself in an emergency or urgency situation I welcome the crisp and professional response of the UK controllers - in my experience they are generally superb.
