Me too!
If you want to join a bunch of bureaucratic deadbeats, with little knowledge of the real world, and probably little of front-line aviation management and operations, and unemployable except by the CAA, in an organisation riddled with low-level corruption and buckpasssing, I wish you luck at the interview.
If you succeed you may, just may become one of the 10% who DO know what they are doing in their field at least, and have a genuine feel for aviation, aviation safety and aviation development.
But by the time you get there the exodus of those people, which started a year or two ago and continues as I write, may have finished. So you will be on your own, fighting the losing battle to be allowed to do a good job that the others eventually gave up on.
The UK CAA is now officially dysfunctional; no sense of identity or purpose, chaired and managed by bizarre imports from outside the air transport industry and/or the UK. It is supposed to operate as an enforcer of European rules, brought into UK law. It does this inconsistently and badly. In any situation of real threat, economic or operational, it retreats into its cave and does little or nothing effective. It is incapable of decisive action, even on small issues, always pleading some obscure law or regulation that prevents it, usually entirely spurious. Its backroom people produce reams of excellent studies and analysis, but for no perceptible purpose.
The UK CAA is solely concerned with generating revenue to sustain its staff's lifestyle and pensions, and this takes priority over any other task, including effective oversight of operators, maintenance, training and airfields.
That all applies to the Safety Regulation Group, and much of it applies to the economic regulation side of the CAA as well.
Have another cup of tea, old chap.
Last edited by Capot; 4th Aug 2012 at 14:01.