Spodman,
Ref your comment "3. IFR vs IFR - Weather absolute crap, traffic passed but they aren't talking, radar tracks (sorry, symbols) about to merge. Confliction in enroute G airspace." This IS what happens now, I agree, but there has never been a midair/nearmiss when both IFR aircraft have been on the same frequency and both getting Directed Traffic/an Air Traffic Advisory Service. Besides, if the other aircraft wasn't talking, you'd hardly be likely to go thru his level would you?
Weasil,
You are correct. However, our G is a bit different to yours: we are currently provided with a full Flight Information Service, which includes a full traffic collision avoidance servcie as required by ICAO Annex 11. You guys don't get that, I believe (although you do get separated!?). Many of us actually argue that our class g airspace is really class F since the Directed traffic/Collision Avoidance Service is an Air Traffic Advisory service.
Re Self Separation, I quote from the shiny pamphlet: "Pilot to Pilot exchanges should not take place in E" and "pilots using these procs...should not use radio arranged separation, but should use radio alerted See and Avoid. That is they should visually avoid traffic that ATC has informed them of.". So there you have it, another definition of radio-alerted see and avoid. If it wasn't so pathetic it would be a joke!!
The upshot of that is that we are not allowed to jibber between ourselves to self separate. If I can't do that, I may as well just stay IFR and get stuck with the pathetically huge separation standards provided by ATC, because by the time I pick up some twit in a VFR Citation, it'll be too late. So I don't want E, I want G(F???)!!
As alluded to already, VFR vs IFR Class E ops in NAS rely TOTALLY on being able to avoid the other aircraft by picking it up visually and manoeuvring away if nec. BASI, and thousands of other pilots know this is a fanciful method of preventing midairs.