It is paragraph 7 that's the killer.
The fact is that most of who fly in IMC conditions, most of the time, fly EASA aeroplanes (which includes all CofA Pipers, Cessnas and Grummans for example). So, unless that CAA proposal is resolved in the way they hope, then the de-facto shelf life of the IMC rating is until 2014, after which it is nearly but not quite useless, for the vast majority of pilots.
G