Wicked Witch, I am not sure if you work in ATC at Jersey - I presume you do, judging by your knowledge of the situation. But I can't help thinking that you might be a newcomer, because the CI Zone is a lot less busy than it used to be, and the types of aicrraft that used to come to Jersey haven't really changed much in terms of class. There have been jets for 40 or more years, and a lot more than there are today. There were BAC 111s, B737s, B757s, Tridents (for a few years) and even L1011s. I worked in Jersey for a few years and it was fun! Lots of interesting things going on.
It is much more boring these days and, whilst I accept that "progress" has to be made, I do feel that the quality of controlling in the Zone seems to have dropped to a sort of Lowest Common Denominator level. This doesn't imply criticism of the Jersey controllers, but just the system that they are required to follow.
In the UK there are different standards of controlling in terms of both the controllers and the way they control, which I guess (never having been a controller) is due to the local manager deciding on the implementation of what he or she deems "best practice".
"Best Practice" might be a peculiarly British idea, but whoever's it is, it is a pretty stupid idea which doesn't seem to take account of individual, such as local, needs. It is pretty sad that we are going down this LCD/best practice route, and it is not just happening in ATC or specifically in Jersey.
And I mean no disrespect to any ATCO who is just doing his or her job as required by the boss. Jersey's ATCOs are polite and generally helpful, but you are still vectored all over the sky these days, and that never happened 5 years ago. What has changed?