P. Pilcher and Roy Hudd are both spot on the money in my opinion. However, it was the European airlines, led, I believe, by British Airways, who started the rot with insisting on taking only cadets who had passed through their own ab initio training schemes and who had "not learned any bad habits" out there instructing or in air taxis. I appreciate that there isn't as big a General Aviation industry in Europe as there is in the US, Canada and Australia, (and perhaps that should be "was", as it has been thoroughly gutted in Australia of late), but I still believe there is nothing better in culling out the dross while giving command and commonsense experience to a young pilot that a trainee will never get in in-house airline training than 1000 to 1500 hours of GA flying before he or she gets to sit in a jet.
With the current shortage, the airlines are beginning to reap what they have sown by making the job so unattractive, both in lifestyle and in remuneration terms, that they simply aren't getting enough youngsters willing to put themselves through the mill for so little perceived reward. However, we, the pilots - or a significently large number of us - have not helped the situation over the years by stabbing our colleagues in the back by being so willing to work for peanuts just so we could fly a big jet by undercutting groups of colleagues who have attempted to stop the rot by taking industrial action. The way so many European charter pilots almost gleefully flocked to Australia for a paid summer holiday back in 1989 to totally destroy the Australian pilots' position in their fight againt unreasonable company practices is a case in point.