A Safety and Airworthiness Empire? Yer avin a larf, aintcha? The whole point of tuc's testimony is that the process of UK Military Airworthiness provision was broken (mainly by RAF VSO's I'm sad to say, though hopefully that makes your day Tourist) in the early 90's.
So what, that's decades ago, time has moved on and so have we, etc etc. Unfortunately the short term gains that those idiots sought then came at the price of the loss of corporate knowledge, never mind the poor sods who paid the price in resultant fatal air accidents. The MAA doesn't do Airworthiness because it doesn't understand it. It may bother you with lots of form filling, courses, papers, definitions, etc, etc. Unfortunately those are the actions of a bureaucracy, not an Authority (because they have none!). Some Empire, if only!
As tuc says, all this stuff should be invisible. It is part of Air Safety when all you should be concerned about is the other part of Air Safety which is Flight Safety. That is all I had to concern myself with as a Sqn FSO back, ...well a long time ago. The reason why the Mk10 seat that killed Flt Lt Cunningham never had a Safety Case was because of the deliberate sabotage carried out against the Royal Air Force by its own Very Senior Officers, and you say that they have your full support? Says it all really.