What about the poor students, especially those who don't read PPRuNe. After all, you expect to be able to go into a school, ask a simple question, and get a sensible answer that you can understand, don't you? Let's have another look in Whirly's Crystal Ball:
Bloggs (newly arrived at flying school): I'm thinking of learning to fly.
Instructor: Fine, I can tell you about that.
Bloggs: A friend has one of these microlight thingies, so I was thinking about that. But I also think I might one day want to become an airline pilot. So what would be the best thing to do?
Instructor: Well, it's quite simple really. You do a JAR PPL, because that means you can then do an ATPL. Then if you want to fly microlights you just do a conversion, but you can't add that conversion to your newly acquired PPL, for that you need an NPPL, which takes less time so you could do it in the first place, but if you did you wouldn't be able to get a commercial licence without upgrading it, and no-one knows how you do that yet, and it's easy enough to get an NPPL once you've got a JAR PPL, but it'll cost you an extra £131 and you'll have to do another GFT. Easy isn't it?
Bloggs (totally confused): Er...well, suppose I just get a PPL, buy something cheap to fly, and think about the rest later?
Instructor: That's a good idea, first things first and all that. But if you're thinking of buying something, make sure it weighs more than 450kg, because if it's less it's a microlight even if it looks like a light aircraft and flies like one, and you're back where you started.
Bloggs: Er...maybe I'll take up tiddlywinks.