The key to understanding the UK ways of doing things is to understand that the system is privatised, and the only services available to GA are
- those mandatory under ICAO (basically just a FIS e.g. London Information)
- those maintained to keep some kind of lid on the rate of serious CAS busts which cause high profile airline / political annoyance
The UK allows fully non-radio flight in Class G and this includes IFR. This means it is 100.000% legal, with an IR or an IMCR, to bore a hole in cloud from Lydd to Aberdeen without talking to anybody. Some people will say this is not wise without a radar service, etc, etc, but the stats on IMC mid-airs are more or less exactly zero, zilch, nil.
This great freedom fits well with the privatised services. If the UK had e.g. the US or French style of Class E enroute airspace, and thus required an IFR clearance in this airspace, somebody would have to pay the ATCO salaries, and ATCOs are not cheap. A fully costed radar-qualified ATCO desk cannot be less than 100k euros a year.
If we had the services, given the privatised ATC, we would have route charges for VFR traffic, etc.
And if the UK adopted the Class E airspace, all the pilots currently boring holes in Class G IMC would be boring them in Class E IMC, illegally but undetectably, and I am sure this goes on a lot in France (by the French, as well as everybody else flying in France) and no doubt this is why we have the seemingly permanent notam saying there will be no VFR in the Class D airspace (FL115-FL195) over a vast area of France. I know a big turboprop driver who used to fly "VFR" there at FL195 and saved himself a bundle in route charges.
Which would you rather have? I think the UK system is OK.
I would bet that the vast majority of people who go missing off a flight planned VFR flight have their wreckage discovered nowhere hear their filed route, because they were scud running between hills, or got lost in IMC.
What gets up my nose is the other stuff (like mandatory ATC for approaches, which looks likely to make GPS approaches for ever irrelevant to the vast majority of GA) but that's another story.
IFR in Europe (the stuff you do with an IR) is a whole different topic, with its own tips, hints, gotchas, etc. Anybody interested in some links, drop me an email...