jocko,
I understand all the points which you make but as the saying goes "all good things come to an end".
I speak regularly to ATCOs at ScOACC,many of whom are English,and I have never heard any suggestion that it is anything other than just another area in which to live/work and certainly no suggestion of anti English feeling (except when it comes to sport of course).
There is no rush of people wishing to leave ScOACC and of course when people have failed to validate it is often a first choice for an alternative posting and we don't then see loads reapplying to come south again.
Staff at LATCC were pissed off at moving to Swanwick but we got on with it. We lost a major city and a few international airports but people are coping. Every city has good and bad points-there are only a few roads in Southampton I would walk down at night.
No you won't find a Knutsford or Wilmslow within 10 minutes of work but plenty of affordable and luxurious housing within 30 minutes and Glasgow is only around 35 minutes away for those who crave the city life.
I suspect the longer the anti-McNERC feeling goes on the less sympathy you will find you have throughout the organisation and hence the inevitable will become even tougher to manage both for the individual and for the organisation as a whole.