411A, you do have a serious problem with opening your mouth without really knowing what you are talking about, and attempting an authoritative air. The World is not a simple place, and a lot of your ideas have not moved on.. with due respect to your experience.
If I carry my company's flight-plan fuel into Heathrow, I will arrive at the hold with at least one major alternate available for the first 20 minutes, and at least 2 for the first 5 on over 95% of occasions. Bear in mind that I am talking nominated alternates here, and I can always re-plan based on actual burn to nearer airfields... Bournemouth, Southampton, Stansted, Manston to name a few options available in the LHR area. If I have that amount of fuel in my tanks, then the weather will have indicated that I will have the commit-criteria weather available to me on arrival in the zone, a luxury we can use with multiple runway destinations. If the weather indicates less than that, or my experience dictates that there is the potential for greater delays due to external circumstances, then I will have more.
Bear in mind that the scenario I give above arrives with flight-plan fuel.. you can use the term "minimum" for that if you like, because it is the baseline figure presented to me on check-in. I will carry extra based on my experience, but not just because I have the ability to do so.
Fuel emergencies do not exist in the UK as stated above. If necessary, you will raise the status to a Pan, but as a professional courtesy if it even LOOKS like getting close to that state then I will have had a proactive word with the controllers first. On such a day however, there will be a lot of excrement flying around the area for them to deal with as well as us.
Despite your beliefs stated on here ad nauseum there IS still fat in the system and this generation of pilots are equally as capable of dealing with emerging problems on the fly as yours were. A degree of professional courtesy would not go amiss from time to time, rather than shooting-off an opinion without the requisite knowledge of current procedure to back it up.
Squid