I agree with everything in your post above. The thing I disagreed with is
"Penetration of IMC which is unauthorised in that particular airspace is virtually irrelevant to safety if the pilot is instrument capable and has sufficient resources to be aware of his obstacle clearance in all phases of flight."
I am still going to disagree with it. It doesn't help to personalise my context or motive or call it 'political correctness'. It's a statement I think is silly, for all the obvious reasons. You have your views, I have mine. I am not going to ascribe motives to your views, please don't to mine. Or is it that someone with different views must have an "agenda"?
Political correctness has no place in discussing accidents.
I find it odd, almost extraordinary, that a "conforming" view of IFR should be labelled "political correctness". The very reason I raise the subject is because this is an accident thread. I find the endless smilies and nudge-nudge wink-wink references to "VFR" etc etc on any thread related to IFR pretty depressing. A dominant theme in the CFIT and IFR accidents I read is "ad hoc" or "non-conforming" flight in IMC. People don't have accidents very often departing on a SID, flying an airway, arriving on a STAR and landing off an approach within minima. "Conforming" IFR works. Of course, sometimes one needs to use off-route IFR. But I still think trying to conform as best one can is better advice than doing non-conforming IFR "properly", whatever that is.
One thing we are in agreement over is terrain awareness/alerting equipment. It's impossible to know for sure, but I think the great majority of GA CFITs happen to aircraft without terrain awareness/alerting. Of course, a few years ago, this would have been a bit meaningless, since so few light aircraft had the kit. Today, I have to think a significant % of piston aircraft used for IFR have some form of terrain alerting - and I am not sure I've
ever read a CFIT report involving such an aircraft. I guess the need for TAWS is a bit non-intuitive, because you can spend 99% of your time in IMC thousands of feet above any terrain within 50nm, let alone 1000'/5nm, when flying in the south of England or northern Europe. But the holes in the cheese line up often enough for (?) one or two pilots every year that the investment has to be worthwhile. Of course, the technology is not idiot proof and there is the risk that someone uses it to take chances they wouldn't take without TAWS, but in the CFIT reports I've read in the last few years, you have to think even a simple portable with graphic terrain alerting would have had a >50%(?) chance of averting the accident.