The French controllers I talked to yesterday all seemed to want to help and gave me nice straight lines unlike the CFMU!
Agreed the French controllers are very nice and generally long DCTs across the country are the norm.
However in my experience crossing the London TMA at FL100 at 140kts as I was a while ago going from Brussels back up north or indeed going into Biggin from the north is less a case of "not tolerating" being vectored around and more that as a slow piece of traffic you simply have to be moved around a bit sometimes and that often ATC will make reference to waypoints that are not on your flight plan or call radio aids by their full name rather than their ID and that unless you know the area well, which to be honest even now I don't really know that well in IFR terms at least, it is very useful to have a diagram of the area you are crossing in front of you; whether that be a physical chart or if you are lucky enough to have an IFR GPS that can display airways. I mean it helps for example because you can see at a glance what ATC is trying to do with you and ascertain whether it is acceptable or not.
If you can get London Control to give you your filed route or shorter every time you are a better man than me sir!
Plus there is other info like Grid Safety altitudes that will be clearly presented should the need arise to use it...