UK CAA's website is at
www.srg.caa.co.uk
Up to a point, it's not a bad website. However, one of their more bizarre balls-ups of recent years was when CAA privatised it's publications department (now known as Documedia). When they did this, stacks of airworthiness data was surreally transferred to Documedia's copyright. So, being now a commercial company, they make you pay for this data, and will only provide printed copies at a price.
So, BCARs, STCs, AANs, ADs, MPDs, TCs, and various other documents are not readily available to the casual investigator. This is despite many of these still being CAA copyright, the excuse that some of these aren't seems to be used for not giving us any of this data online. Of course, it helps them keep using this dreadful phrase "the authority must be consulted", giving them the right to keep changing goalposts, rather than making policy clear, public and universal.
Regarding implementation of overseas ADs, the requirement for compliance isn't automatic. What normally happens is that CAA is notified of an overseas AD, reviews it, and then decides whether or not to issue it's own. This case, if I read it correctly, is rather odd. AAIB issued the same recommendation
2001-45 to CAA and FAA. FAA have implemented it, CAA haven't.
Regarding LAE/ LAME issues. The UK has a particular problem over the term Engineer which just about everybody feels is theirs exclusively. But you are quite right, somebody qualified to do maintenance, hasn't necessarily been equipped to make those sort of decisions (and of-course, vice-versa). Separately to that, much of UK aviation tries to work in a "no blame culture". In that, most Brits would consider the appropriate treatment for the negligent LAME would have been suspension and retraining / requalification, not emprisonment. AAIB does not allocate blame, it recommends ways to make things safer, an approach we're quite happy with - but at odds with many other countries (and in this case at odds with UK CAA). Whilst you are right that there probably are grounds for similar prosecution of other LAME where other faults have been found, to most of us here the treatment of the chap who serviced G-ZAPS was the anomaly.
And as to minimum standard = minimum cost, I think this occurs everywhere. I've seen it far worse in the US than anywhere in the UK, but let's face it, accountants rule the roost and also few customers will go for the safer operator, they'll go for the cheaper. Which is exactly why safety measures must be mandatory - when nobody is allowed not to comply, it ceases to be a commercial issue.
G