421C,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand you to be saying that FCL.008 was intended to carry out its objective to review the requirements for IR, but to ignore the objective about IMCR (or at best pay lip service to it).
No-one ever promised that FCL008 would "save the IMCr". That has been totally clear from the start and has been repeated on various fora for months. FCL008 set out to find a training process for the full IR acceptable across Europe and an intermediate qualification acceptable across Europe. The EIR may be. The IMCr isn't.
That is, the IMCR isn't acceptable.
If there had been an objective to "save the IMCr" they would have written that in FCL008's ToR's, instead of "Review the requirements of the UK IMC rating and other national qualifications for flying in IMC and consider whether there is a need to develop an additional European rating to fly in IMC with less training but also with limited privileges"
But given what you say about the attitude to it, reviewing the requirements of the UK IMCR is a bit pointless, as we already know that the answer is "you can't have it".
You seem to be saying that the requirement to "Review the existing JAR-FCL requirements for the Instrument Rating" will produce results, whereas the requirement to "Review the requirements of the UK IMC rating and other national qualifications for flying in IMC" won't. (The en-route IMC rating is a pointless and dangerous fudge.)
The uncharitable amongst us might assume that FCL.008 is merely an exercise to stop IMCR holders whinging without actually doing anything for them. Sort of Euro Sir Humphrey at his best.