Personally, I'm of the opinion that's the bean counters talking. I'd also like to think it's far more extreme than their honest opinion, and they're merely using it for corporate leverage...
Despite the number of crews who bother to thank you on the RT for a direct being shockingly low, from the people I've spoken to on fam flights, they've always been very complimentary of the UK in comparison to many other countries.
While I'm not endorsing this as a suitable reply, I'm sure the airline folk who wrote the report would notice the difference if we all stuck to flight plan routes & levels, and stopped co-ordinating the nice continuous climbs and descents, enforced level restrictions 24/7 and complied with all MATS 2 level capping even just for a week...oh the extra fuel burn