Nobody was laughing at
you, poss. The smiley
is used to make it clear (often it isn't in written communications) that the writer is being ironic.
There is a great deal of elitism in aviation. A UK instructor will probably think the UK/JAA PPL (and CPL and ATPL) are superior to the U.S. ones. This is merely the tip of the iceberg of prejudices; others are that N-reg aeroplanes are poorly maintained, that people go on N-reg to save money, etc etc. That's before you go higher up and ask people in the training establishment about FAA v. JAA instrument ratings; there are some massive emotional attachments there
I've done both the FAA PPL and the JAA PPL, both standalone, and I reckon the FAA one was harder on actual flying skills. The FAA one also has an oral exam which you won't pass unless you actually know the stuff - the FAA one was about 1hr while the CPL one was half a day. The single FAA PPL written exam somehow manages to contain a similar scope of stuff (in terms of revision) to the seven JAA exams; I found the latter a piece of cake. My experience of U.S. training (I did only the IR there) is that it is rigorous and is not a holiday.