There are significantly greater expectations put on us in terms of de-conflicting VFR and IFR traffic, fulfilling a duty of care towards all airspace users, as well as different restrictions put on how and when we can reduce separations between IFR and IFR.
Let's face it: The FAA pushes more traffic, more types of traffic, has less incidents per flight hour and at less cost per flight hour. The environment is complex but flight safety and efficiency rankings are still at the top of the league.
I thought improving flight efficiency and the removal of gold plating and over-regulation was something that the UK CAA aspired to? Some of it is really within its control such as the manuals printed for ATCers. Others ain't.
For these reasons I still think one must still be able to draw comparisons with different major airports across the world. Use 'crude' metrics if you wanna use that word. Not doing so is like turning a blind eye to what the rest of the world is doing. An analogy is like saying why traffic lights in London roads are always out of sync causing traffic to move so slowly. But Washington synchronizes their traffic lights so they move more traffic! But ah, you can't just compare these traffic lights with Washington, it's like comparing apples and oranges.
So anyone who dares to draw any comparisons are told they shouldn't and the London continues to have its own traffic problems while refusing to draw any expertise from abroad.
Ain't ideal and about time the regulators are pushed.