First of all thank you PPRUNE_Radar for the rant....made me grin somewhat! Fair point also that "The voice of pilots (whatever they fly) will be much louder if people work together rather than looking only after their own interests".
ComJam - "GLIDERS WITHOUT ANY TYPE OF TRANSPONDER ARE MORE OF A DANGER THAN GLIDERS WITH ONE......you cannot possibly disagree with that, therefore they should all have them...it's a total "no brainer".......Following that same logic, You can't possibly disagree that driving with a bloke walking in front of you with a red flag MUST be safer than not and so we should ban everybody from driving unless there's a man in front of each vehicle waving a red flag. Remember that over 3500 people are killed each year in road crashes, so it would make "sense" as lives are important aren't they?
ComJam - "Only one of the aircraft involved needs to have TCAS fitted".....Err, that kind of emphasises the point that the technology doesn't work to the benefit of everybody, only to the big airplanes (whose lives are presumably more important). How would two non-TCAS equipped aircraft be made aware of a conflict risk ?
I agree with many of the respondants that there is a need to ensure (and improve) flight safety but any 'improvements' need to be for the benefit of all AND proportionate - I think also that we all need to be realistic and that GA (not just gliders, but homebuilds, light aircraft, microlights, parascenders and balloonists) is being squeezed more and more by commercial operations. Perhaps, once oil reaches $2.20 a barrel in the not too distant future, this pressure will decrease as the low cost operators realise that the markup on a sandwich isn't sufficient to operate a jet for a tenner per ticket?