I thought this was an interesting comment from elsewhere worth repeating from a very well respected and very experienced avaition journalist:
It's disgraceful/shameful that the IMC rating was allowed to be led quietly and meekly to slaughter through a process not fit for purpose for these types of ratings. If the reps spotted this problem with the process, why weren't they alerting everyone to it months ago and objecting to it? Are they under self-agreed gagging orders or didn't they notice ?
2) Some of the other reps in the meeting 'deciding our IMC future' use VERY different classifications for their airspace, and their 'picture' of what really happens when pilots are let loose mixing it with commercials in IMC is not something you can break down that easily. I'd love to see the content of the UK pitch and perhaps even more interesting how long they had to get the message across. I suspect I will be shocked if I ever find out!