Yes I fully agree the AUK version is better.
What I'm asking is - how does the UK opt out of ICAO? Or has it? Is the UK terminology an EASA/JAA standard? Or is the UK just going it alone?
What about ATC Standardisation?
If I remember my law correctly ICAO publishes different types of instructions, some are mandatory and some are recommendations. I think these are the SARPS, standards and recommended practices.
The mandatory ones you have to follow to be a member (I think this would be the standards), the recommended ones you can opt out of but then you have to publish a difference to ICAO, you will find a lot of countries have these. They vary from Norway using yellow paint on runways to the UK having a load of them including phraseology. If you go in the UK AIP there is a list of the UK differences and there is also an ICAO document somewhere that lists all the countries and their differences.
Regarding standardisation some is being changed, such as "after" changed to "behind, behind". However in some cases it will stay because the CAA are convinced they are safer, and I think I have seen somewhere that eurocontrol made a study on wake turbulence and said that a system with more categories (like the UK one) was just as safe but more efficent. It's probably on skybrary somewhere if you're interested, I don't have the link unfortunately.