In reply to henwardian:
Also, subdividing the brit tech scale from about 6a upwards does seem like quite a good idea because there is such a wide range of difficulty in one grade.
I've been curious about this for a while. You hear it a lot, and it's close to being "common knowledge" - but how can one reliably tell, objectively? Could it not equally be the case that lower technical grade bands are just as wide, but it's the higher ones that get psychologically "magnified" by the harder climbers, because that's what they're focussing on?