Been away for awhile <G>....
Over here, one reason you don't hear to many folks say descend now is because that isn't the proper phraseology. Descend and maintain means descend now... What you will usually hear over here is either descend at pilots discresion or cross XXX at and maintain... Do we sometimes just say descend and maintain when we don't need you to go down right now? Sure, but that was already explained rather well by AF-1.
As to the direct thing... We have been briefed by the companies that they have spent quite a few bits of money investing in flight planning software that looks into the most beneficial route of flight ( unless of course we have a traffic flow management route in effect due to weather ). When we up and give someone direct that then takes them out of the most beneficial wind component, the pilot flying is happy, but then the company is unhappy and sometimes actually makes a call to either us, or an acars to the flight deck when the dispatcher figures out they aren't on the flight planned route and has them get back on it. Thus making the workload even more for someone else a hundred miles away.
regards