My inclination would be to scrap the IMCR, build more instrument training into the PPL and go for a European PPL IR with certain restrictions which is easy to achieve and acknowledged Europe wise
The problem with that kind of superficially attractive sentiment (disagreeing with which is as unreasonable as telling Bob Geldof to stop running pop concerts to stop poverty) is that in practice
the Euro IR has got harder and harder at every step. Despite the effort of a fair few people over the years, and despite wild claims all over the pilot forums of a "new and more accessible IR" being "just around the corner", "here by next summer", "here by next year", "with the CAA for the final rubber stamp", etc etc etc etc etc. Somebody with the will to search some pilot forums would have a field day digging out all the wild promises.
The political reality is that the IR is a qualification which carries a massive emotional weight and has the backing of the most powerful bodies in aviation regulation (airline pilot unions) which makes it really hard to make it "easier".
This is a consequence of Europe's "one and only IR for everybody" policy which has been in existence for as long as anybody I know can remember. This ties the IR with the concept of "professional pilot status" and that prevents any progress on a more appropriate private IR.
The USA has the FAA IR which, at its basic level, is directly applicable to private pilots. It doesn't teach you any jet type rating crap. You can use it with a PPL, to fly IFR around the place, and it is more than adequate (I know, I've got one and done enough European airways flying).
Then, if you want to fly a jet, you get a jet type rating and in that TR you learn the stuff you need to know to fly the jet. In practice, an FAA jet TR is comparable to an ATPL. This is how it should be.
But Europe never split things up in that way - for various vested-interest reasons.
There is a slightly reduced (about 25%) IR ground syllabus which is scheduled to arrive (according to some CAA release I read recently) in late 2009. That is ALL that is coming. There is nothing else.
Well, not until EASA do something, and the time scales for that are looking like 2012 and beyond. There is NO "private IR" proposal in the making right now. There was going to be an IFR add-on on the EASA LPL but this got clobbered by the LPL/LAPL committee which was loaded with VFR-only interests and which correctly understood that limiting the new EASA PPL to VFR only will ease its passage through the committees which are loaded with professional pilots, ATC and their union interests.
So be grateful that you have the IMCR in the UK. There isn't anything just around the corner to replace it.
It is indeed true that flying has moved on. 30 years ago, even an airline pilot has only a vague idea of where he was - until he got localiser established and intercepted the glideslope. Today, any pilot seriously going places has navigation accurate to a few yards. Yesterday I flew 150nm one way and 150nm back, and the two GPS tracks are on top of each other - within a yard or two. And within maybe 10ft vertically as well. I can fly a GPS approach, on autopilot, and if I flew it all the way to the runway I would end up in the middle of the runway. This is without WAAS/EGNOS, too. The world has changed. Maybe the regulators will wake up 30 years from now. In the meantime, the IMCR is a fantastic privilege which every serious pilot should get and which gives him similar rights to the full IR - except no Class A, min 1800m vis, IFR in UK only.