How did you get a CPL without understanding basic air law regarding public transport?
I do understand basic air law regarding public transport thank you - passed that first time (along with all my other ATPL subjects). Seems that most other people here don't understand it. As has been established, it is legal for somebody to hire an aircraft then hire a pilot to fly it, without an AOC. Admittedly that is not specifically spelled out in my air law books, but neither is it specifically excluded, which may explain why there has been so much discussion here. But it is legal.
JAR Ops 1 is available on the net and applies to you when you operate the way you have been on some of the occasions you have described!
Not true actually. If somebody hires an aircraft, then separately hires the pilot to fly the aircraft, it is a private flight. So perfectly ok to (for example) hire a SEP and operate it in IMC if you and the pilot were happy to do it.
to them why your operations ALL of them are legal in the EC
I actually asked whether they were legal, and got a lot of different replies, some of which have turned out to be valid and some invalid. What I have now established is that they were legal as long as I did not pay for the hire of the aircraft (which I have admitted doing on a couple of occasions last year at the request of the people who hired the plane and won't be doing again). So most of the flights I did last year were fine, and I will ensure that all future flights are 100% legal too.
There were some on this thread who were authoratively lecturing that it was even illegal to hire a plane to fly myself and a colleague around for business...