Mike, I appreciate your calm and balanced view but I fear it will be swept away by hysteria and hyperbole.
For what its worth, consider the situation of Vinyl. When CD's arrived people danced on the grave of vinyl and many people sold their vinyl collections.
Now, a whole new generation are turning on to vinyl because of the purity and warmth of the sound and the pleasure of handling an 'artifact'.

Maybe Fell Running/racing can be like that and it should be preserved with original ethos intact so that, in the future, a generation to come can rediscover its purity, simplicity and honest challenge.

Who cares if, as the doom mongers say, the initial impact of an Ambleside Rule would be to damage the popularity of the sport? It never was aiming to be 'mass participation' was it?