The other side of this is that, for example, in France, every ATCO can access your flight plan immediately, whereas in the UK a VFR flight plan goes to more or less nobody apart from those explicitly addressed, and even then they will most likely bin it unless you are landing there so by the time you call them up they won't know who you are...
So the 'freecall' v. 'contact' is a bit of a bodge to cover for the lack of a known traffic environment in the UK Class G which is the result of disjointed ATS funding
