@alex90: thanks. But frankly, it has been quite long since I heard anybody hailing the UK as a world leader; more's the pity.
@Patowalker: what particularly annoys me is that, in the UK, two planes can be flying (outside controlled airspace), each doing their R/T with a different ground station (and perhaps with a different level of service, but I'll not even start about that). I hope this is a realistic example: one might be talking to Farnborough, the other to Brize Norton. So that the two of them, while doing the maximum possible effort in matters of communication, will not even be aware of one another's presence; except if told by the ground station they are tuned into - but these are under no obligation, and may well be too busy. Of course the pilots need to use their Mk1 eyeball anyway, there can always be nordo flyers around too. But in my part of the world, and in most, as far as I know, everybody flying OCAS will be on the one and only FIS frequency so that at least they hear what everybody is doing, and where.
That the UK sees a need to do as many things as differently as they can from the rest of Europe is less of a concern to me, basically; SERA is slowly taking care of that. And we should not expect everything to be the same as we are used to at home; indeed I must certainly admit my home country is less than exemplary on its rules for foreign Annex 2 aeroplanes. But, as said, the UK has a lot of room to make its rules of the air simpler, and more conform to the rest of the nearby world.
Regarding regional QNH settings: again, I am not for defending the system, and I am sorry if my words may have come across that way. But if anything is to be done about that anachronism, it will have to come from EASA.