Lew,
It's happened a couple of times to me, when calling up just before BPK for transit inbound Cranfield. I am fairly sure that at least one of the days was a westerly day.
OK, so we need to be correcting instructors at a certain large commercial school at Cranfield, because, as I said, I got that trick as 'received wisdom' from there. Just goes to show not to trust everything your instructor says....
Basically the 'wisdom' was: call for transit this way, you'll increase your chances of an on-track routing, don't and you stand more of a chance of being told to route to the E/E lanes or even worse to go away. As I said my experience seemed to bear this out, but it was obviously co-incidence, and anyway I haven't been that way for a while.
As for the diversion via Baldock, given the number of airspace busts in that area, especially if I'm hastily planning a diversion in-flight, I think I'd take the Hemel routing anyday. Call me a wimp
foggy
[This message has been edited by foghorn (edited 16 March 2001).]