I'm all for taking everyone with us on this, Engines, particularly the men and women at the very sharp end. What I'm not for is the good old British fudge, whereby we make lots of changes, rename everything and everybody and basically carry on as before with the same jobs being done by the same people as before, ie pre and post Haddon-Cave.
It is because that Report dodged the real issue, of naming and shaming the real culprits responsible for this mess, and instead in time honoured way fed a few sacrificial lambs for slaughter that the MAA is the incompetent inept bunch of jobsworths that it is. If that is what you mean by:-
it is possible for the less competent engineer to make airworthiness a 'fetish', a sort of 'holy grail', instead of applying their professional judgement and expertise to solve the problem and get the aircraft into service. I've had first hand experience of that (thankfully uncommon) side of the argument.
then we are indeed in violent agreement. It is that kind of jobsworth attitude that raises the hackles of the likes of Roland and has the effect of alienating the very people for which Air Safety strives, Military Aircrew. That is why the MAA and MAAIB have to be free of the MOD's malevolent dead hand. Their civilian DGs will have to have a lot of discretion to exercise thanks to the dysfunctional mess that is UK Military Air Safety. An unenviable task which will mean coming clean about the extent and cause of this scandal. For a start they need to show Haddon-Cave for the sham it is, and tell us all about what really went on during the so called 'Golden Period of Airworthiness'. At least then crews will be better informed about problems involving their fleet, their systems, and what is planned to deal with them.
It won't be easy, there will be many problems, but at least there will be the chance to get the military fleets airworthy again. At the moment that just isn't going to happen.
Tourist, you say you know little about RJ, well me too. I'd want rather more to reassure me that it was a viable prospect than a 'made in USA' sticker (dated presumably 1964, though that is quite close to your chosen Golden Year of 1968, I guess).