First of all my apologies for wrongly accusing the management of UK airspace
.
I quite concur with @foxmoth: it is up to everybody to do all they can to ensure safety; and while we may trust the commercial operators to put in a big effort, not the same can be said for all recreational pilots/owners/operators.
I am afraid that, with all respect, I cannot agree with the pro-Flarm point of view:
* Flarm gives a false sense of security: seeing a lot of traffic easily tricks one into believing one sees all traffic. That will never be the case;
* Flarm is not certified and if it were, it would become as expensive as a "real" transponder;
I do however much like the phrase "I use my eyes, aided by the Flarm"
And also I agree that the risk for mid-airs is much higher with small aircraft, powered or not.
What would help is the creation of a "mini"-transponder with much less electrical consumption, by reducing either the transmitter power or the frequency of transmissions. Even better, creating a "low power" mode in standard mode-S transponders, but that might be difficult technically.
Worst of all, there seem to be a type or school of pilots who, even if their plane carries a transponder, do not switch it on - and the same type never calls FIS, when flying OCAS. The one near-miss I lived was with such a guy - I checked his plane later, disguised as a spotter, it had a full Garmin suite. The first thing we should try is to get rid of that mindset among our community.