Capt H Peacock - I took the view that if we are given further climb out of LHR and it looks clear on TCAS to give a good rate and get out the way into the upper FIR asap. I accept the risk of TA's and even RA's around the inbound holds but anyone with any airmanship would monitor this and adjust rates of climb accordingly.
Climbing for long periods in V/S is a debatable issue in itself ....
On this occasion the main point is the very short period of time given to level off at an altidue having already been cleared to a FL, and the associated CRM and cockpit workload issues, that left us with maybe 15 seconds to capture an a new altitude and change the alt setting.
The main pionts to be learnt from this are that we as a crew we failed to correctly reset back to QNH (although not an issue with that days value close to STD) and the controllers failure to maybe empahise the ALTITUDE part of his clearance.
Their are lessons to be learn't on both sides from this, and at the end of the day is a combination of circumstances that were high workload for both parties.
By discussing these issues on an open forum such as this maybe we can all learn from a situation where no harm was done, and store this away for future reference ......