Wow...British English is so different than USA English.
One of your questions was about (I think) was about having traffic pointed out even if your TCAS wasn't working or another plane didn't have a transponder working.
I would want you to point out (transmit a traffic advisory) the traffic. We still have eyes you know.
And most airliners have two transponders, so advise us of lost transponder and we would switch to the other one. BUT, sometimes we are dispatched with one inop (this is roughly the UK equivilent of U/S...which we think means unservicable...here in the USA, US means US) and if the other one fails we are out of luck.
Our airline was the testbed for TCAS in the USA. TCAS is vital...especially with an overworked ATC system. IMHO, I wouldn't allow TCAS to be placed on MEL (this means minimum equipment list, but can also mean multi engine land...the former is the case in this post)