Conflict Alert
Absolutely right, it is usually the blind leading the blind when it comes to instructors these days. There are a few older, wiser heads around but not nearly enough of them. It is one of my pet gripes that when those of us that have many years experience, including airline-level check and training, seek to get back into some instructing, we are greeted with a bureaucratic nightmare that not only costs a fortune and takes a long time, but is completely unnecessary. And this at a time when the CAA admit that the experience pool in the instructor population is way too shallow. How about making it a bit easier for us to give something back into the system?
If you went to one of the sausage factories, it is perfectly possible, even likely, to be instructing other CPL hopefuls when you have never actually seen any bad weather up close and personal. That is just crazy.
I'm glad my own training was different - we used to head out to the LFA when the wx was down to 1000'/3km. Only way you ever really learn just what bad wx looks like.