Starbbuck:
"No, of course I have no sympathy for the masses of self centered P2F pilots who are ruining things for everyone else in their efforts to jump the queue".
I have now retired after half a century of professional flying. I started off from a very humble background with very little financial support. I joined the ATC and went solo in a glider in 1957. I then went through a lot of selection and got a Flying Scholarship (PPL on Tiger Moths) in 1958.
I was lucky enough to be accepted into the Royal Air Force as a pilot in 1960 after yet again, considerable selection procedures, which was just as well as I did not have two brass farthings to rub together.
I then went on to have a wonderful and rewarding career in aviation which has just recently ended at the age of 69.
Aviation is all about being in the right place at the right time.
However, I am absolutely fascinated by your statement about "jumping the queue".
What queue is that? Is there a law about jumping your queue? Is this queue laid down anywhere?
Is this the same "queue" that I found myself in whilst doing my civilian instrument rating at Kidlington at my own considerable expense (having been a training captain on four-engined aeroplanes and a Master Green instrument rating holder for years)? If I had wanted to join BA (which I didn't at my age), I would have been behind their OATS cadet pilots on the seniority list.
Now, if I had paid my own way through Oxford and had joined BA, which "queue would I have jumped"?
When you are starting to get your toe into aviation, life is generally !!!!!. Stick with it and keep trying if you truly love aviation. If you are up to it and you are lucky then you will make it just like I did.
Good Luck.