Airbatic7eca
I think the phrase 'constant inflow and outflow of big jets' is pushing it a bit... I am an ATCO who controls for NATS in the London TMA, so I know a little about what goes on there; but you are correct about the generalisation that has gone on in this thread.
I cannot ever agree with anyone who thinks that using more than one language when providing an ATC service is safe, however I do agree with you in respect that there are instances of bad controlling everywhere.
Airbatic, your profile does not really tell us much about your experience, but a lot of what people are alluding to here is what is happening at major airports, not minor ones like Southend.
At many minor aerodromes you get a fairly high percentage of people who were unsuccesful in their training when it came to NATS - the UKs main ATC provider for larger airports and area control. Now these people have validated to the satisfaction of SRG, but at what is deemed to be a minor aerodrome.
These are poeple that in many cases, failed to validate with NATS. Yet very often, these minor aerodromes can be as, if not more, complex than the big airports because of the huge mixture of traffic they have.
Although nowhere near as busy, when they have their busy 60 minute rush in the morning, the complexity of the mixture of the traffic more than makes up for the relatively low number of movements when compared to a major airport.
I would also like to point out before I get shot down, that there are a lot of people at these aerodromes who have not been through the NATS and therefore cannot be deemed to have 'failed to validate' with NATS, but it is often the case trhat a large proportion of them do fall into the ex-NAts category.
Maybe this is why your personal experience of the UK is such - because you deal mainly with the 'minor' (for want of a better word) aerodromes??