You want something ridiculous?
Police helicopter on a task geostationary on a London Class A CTR heliroute physically in the way of a helicopter following heliroute: No separation required, only traffic info and wx conditions.
Police helicopter on task geostationary 1NM displaced from a London Class A CTR heliroute not physically in the way of a helicopter following heliroute: Heliroute closed as not separated.
Now THAT is ridiculous.
Lost count of the number of times SMF spotted loss of separation in severe CAVOK between aircraft off-route in London CTR (West) generating INANE paperwork for jobsworth investigators.
You want something else ridiculous?
London CTR (Central) in confines of Northolt RMA, (say Wembly area), Heathrow controller is required to separate in Heathrow Control Zone. Running out of ideas? Heathrow transfer the traffic to Northolt who may apply reduced separation in Heathrow's CTR within their RMA.
Now THAT is ridiculous.
Heads should roll for condoning such inconsistencies.
London CTR downgrade to Class C is long overdue in view of the amount of helicopter aerial work going on and enormous un-necessary workload generated by Class A compliance. The great pity has been that many of the here-today gone-tomorrow individuals in Ops management have never done the job and have not had intimite knowledge or understanding of the sector or workload involved created by the myriad of cumbersome and incompatible London CTR rules. The whole thing needs cleansing by someone who knows what they are talking about, and there aren't many of those about.