Colin, the problem isn't with people's knowledge or lack there of in the use of
Morse. The problem is that with scaling down amateur requirements until they
essentially become little more than a joke even for hf use people will just go
take their tech tests and be ready to go. At least when there was some minimal
code requirement in places there had to be a bit of work put forth to get a
license above a straight tech to use any hf. Of course, times used to be that
code was required to get on the air at all which I think was a bit much but
simply doing away with it seems a slap in the face to amateurs. As to what
governments do, don't even try and use that excuse lest we need to look at the
actions of governments from World War II through today. The general population
was not the ones who decided to have no code and certainly hams were not the
ones who made that decision.
Tom
Tom Brennan KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html