All this suggests to me that either:
1. Our regulator is hell bent on wiping out all forms of aviation beyond RPT or the military, who by their size, political power and financial resources are somewhat immune to the imposts of overregulation. For nefarious reasons we stakeholders at the bottom of the pile could never comprehend.
2. Our regulator like their regulations are infested with inane concerns for legal liability, blinding them to practical, common sense solutions to risk management.
3. Is it time to swallow our pride and accept that the rest of the world is not necessarily wrong, anymore than we are not necessarily right?
Accept that our regulator in their arrogance and ineptitude has embarked on a folly that has bought ruin to an industry and has achieved none of the aims set for it by government and squandered vast sums of public money on a myth for no appreciable return?
Is it time to embrace the best of the rest of the world while there is still a chance to prevent an industry from complete collapse?
From the time we get out of bed every facet of our daily life carries risks which we must choose to manage, or not as is our wont, its called freedom of choice.
Our bureaucrats have taken it upon themselves to attempt via the criminal code, in our industries case, to legislate common sense thus closing off any likelihood of liability falling on them or the government for every choice or action we may choose to take. We see this not just in our own industry, bureaucrats are meddling in almost everything we do in our daily lives.
Trouble is, the more they meddle, the more the "unforeseen"consequences of their meddling needs to be addressed, creating a never ending cycle of action and reaction, creating ever mounting restriction and cost.
For aviation, overlaying all this is the self interests of all the parasitic industries that have sprung up to feed off the aviation industry as a result of bureaucratic meddling. The security Industry, big banks who control our major airports, development sharks who control our secondaries, the regulator itself who operate in their interest rather than the industry they regulate, unions, and the myriad of self interest groups within the industry itself, all creating cacophonous political noise that overwhelms the political classes ability to see the wood from the tree's.
This has allowed the regulator and its stable mates and minions to subtly position themselves outside the law, empower themselves to the point where they can even dismiss a minister who attempts to rein them in and open a conduit for their more senior managers to avail themselves to the trough of soft corruption.
The current arguments over what is "legal", what is not, what is "legal", against what is common sense, what is "legal" what makes no sense, all illustrates the confusion that exists within our Industry caused by regulatory malfeasance.
In 2009 Robin speed wrote a warning article "The rise and rise of the regulator".
It is sobering to realise just how right he was.