LO,
I love your philosophical point. But, while there is indeed a danger of those 'in the know' being the Lory, on the other side of the coin the critics/doubters run the risk of looking like Harry Enfield's "You don't want to be doing it like that!" character.
I would argue that the majority of the time you're best leaving aircraft design to full-time aircraft designers and engineers, and leaving development of military operating procedures to military pilots. That's my personal take on it and you may well disagree. But I'm also one of those dullards who believes that doctors know more than me about medicine so I don't question their every decision, and I don't walk around public buildings tapping on walls to check that the structural engineer has got his calculations right etc. And sometimes those people do indeed get it wrong.
Jetex,
I don't know the detail of why the -B is still preferred to the -C for the UK buy. I recently sat through a presentation about it from a suitably senior rank who flashed up some bar charts (with no scales) with the ubiquitous 'TEPIDOIL' procurement cost labels that were supposed to conclusively prove that the -B was the best for us. (Can't remember what half of them stand for I'm afraid - Training, Equipment, Personnel, Infrastructure.... Logistics? I'm sure someone who reads these forums is a procurement guru?) Some of the woolly handwaving was that cats & traps cost more initially, fatigue airplanes more quickly, require more pilot currency training, require larger deck crews, who all need training and accommodating on board, steam generators need building/maintaining etc. I'm assuming that the smart people have done their sums right, and that the auditors who probably check the figures for multi-billion pound programmes quite closely have done their job right. Perhaps if you're really interested a FOI request might get you some documentation that puts figures on all the various bits that you could challenge?
From my personal perspective, it's horses for courses. With a -B you've got less range (but enough to go bombing in Tain from Cottesmore) and slightly smaller weapons bays (but big enough for a healthy number of SDB2, or similar sized stores), but you've got basing flexibility (the old 'the world's full of 3000ft runways' thing) and lower overall costs to operate off boats. I'm fairly sure though that it's a BMW 7-series vs Mercedes sort of an argument - they're different, but either one will do the job very nicely.
Double Zero,
In case you still don't feel that your question's been answered - both the lift fan and the nozzle can provide a component of thrust forwards to decelerate the jet / make it taxy backwards. But it's just the same as for the Harrier - you've got to ask yourself some serious questions about why you're doing it as the chances of FODing your engine have just gone up an awful lot.