Dear me, dear me, some of you seem a bit p***ed off with me, but I speak as I find, as anyone I work with will tell you.
Zippy - as I'm speaking from personal experience, I don't consider my comments to be arrogant. How you find them is entirely a matter for you. Our atsas tried to do a few favours for the local crews a while back, and when one or two slot allocations went against us, the ops manager of that particular airline stamped his feet, had a little pink fit, and told our guys not to interfere ever again - does that sound like the great big "team" you refer to?
Now, we don't interfere unless the individual atco is feeling generous. The flight crews understand, and are grateful if we can help at all. On more than one occasion, I have phoned flow from the VCR desk to see if anything can be done to bring an estimate forward. More often than not, it works, thanks only to the guys at flow pulling out the stops - THANKS FLOW, GOOD JOB, KEEP IT UP!
I used to complain about pilots not coming to see us, but not any more. Our unit has a steady trickle of pilots coming over to see us, so that isn't an issue.
Rescue 3 - SITA or AFTN, it makes no difference, I can only go on the info I have, and since it comes through on the AFTN, then that's what I use. After all, it's my ass in the wringer if I let someone go ahead of their slot, not the ops people.
1261 - I don't know where you get you're information from, but last time I checked, I didn't work for NATS! Oh yeh, and I STILL don't need to know!