Bokkenrijder the problem with all those threads is you are only ever going to hear one side of the story. That is the problem with them and indeed the problem with pprune entirely. When was the last time you saw anyone who was happy take time out to go and write about it on pprune? Not denying it surely isn't all a bed of roses over there but don't let pprune fool you, there ARE many happy people there and I know a few of them.
(Talking only of EK, all I hear of QR is negative!)