The US 45 deg joins work well, but so does a UK DW join, but only if you happen to be approaching the field from the live side. The question was about airmanship/safety when coming in from another direction. In that case, even the US system can require some extensive manouevering, loss of height, potential conflicts with other joining traffic etc.
I agree that the CAA advice could be modernised: many aerodromes have ATIS and/or active ATC chatter to reveal circuit direction, so there is no need to arrive o/h for that reason alone.