Sell by date for rules ?
Looking at the RAF flight safety system from the outside I see a clear lack of risk management in the day to day flying environment, the answer to a problem seems to be to "do something" the fact that people point out that the something that has been done has greater risks than the problem it was intended to solve seems to carry little weight as long as "something" is done.
The result is a lot of well intentioned rules that conflict with each other and complicate the flight safety environment. An example of this would be from an airline that I worked for, it was SOP to check the aircraft position continually using nearby VOR stations, this was the way the airline had worked when it was flying an aircraft fitted with one INS that had 10 waypoints. The airline had moved on and we were now flying an aircraft fitted with a dual FMS that was fed position information from two GPS units, five DME units, two VOR units and had two IRS systems. It took a new and far sighted DFO to trawl the SOP's and remove the things we were doing just because we did it on the last aircraft type.
Having had the pleasure if reading one or two RAF flying order books I see them populated with out of date regulations and rules that conflict and far worse rules that are totally inappropriate for the operating environment.
It is by opinion that all the flying orders should have a sell by date, and a requirement to review rules to see if they are still appropriate and don't conflict with other rules. The thinning of order books and simplification of the system would not only have the benefit of clarity but it is likely that it would save money when people are not operating an aircraft to avoid breaking a rule that was intended to address a problem with the Argosy or Hastings.