Maybe a good time to try and visit an ATC agency to see that most of the time we are not sitting on our arses twiddling our thumbs
Took your advise a while back & decided to pay swanky state of the art NATS (at Swanwick) a visit just to see how ATCO personnel get down 'behind the scenes' so to speak. Must admit I was overwhelmed by the observation of how ATCOs conduct themselves. The floor room (where the different bands/sectors get delegated to controllers) looked like a bloody stock market floor. It can get very vocal in there & from an outsider perspective it seemed to look unorganised & panic/ frenzy like at times the way you lot go about your business
All in all the trip was a right eye opener ( I too had the notion that ATC weren't as busy as they made out to be when pleading with them in the air) . Anyway to summarise , my respect for ATC has grown tenfold on the back of that trip, especially after watching the amount of traffic (Ga/commercial etc) you guys have to juggle on those massive LCD screens. After shadowing this controller who was working the South East (apparently most busiest area band) sector, it finally dawned on that this guy is responsible for all those endless amounts of lives in the air at any given time
As a commercial pilot in training it was to see nice or (rather educative) to see the other side of the coin .....cheers for keeping the skies safe guys (& girls)
P.s: Someone really needs to give those D&D guys some action...they really seem overly chilled back there...its a ghost town so to speak