kwackers wrote: In practise these days I find you simply overtake half a mile of traffic and you might get a chance to insert yourself into the stream a few tens of yards back and perhaps wait for an extra light change or more likely the only place with a gap just happens to be the front of the queue.
That's usually been my experience. Most vehicles at the very front have someone right up their rear bumper so there's no space to insert myself in the queue until they start moving.
kwackers wrote: I must admit on a bicycle on more than one occasion I've had a driver take enormous exception even to the point of partially overtaking, pulling alongside and forcing me back to the kerb whilst on the horn and gesticulating wildly!
Thankfully, I don't seem to face aggression when rejoining – I get this behaviour when I'm already in the traffic queue
kwackers wrote: So in that respect I'd disagree that as a general rule filtering into moving traffic is safer than stopping ahead of the stop line and taking primary.
I'd be wary of passing the stop line (ahead of an ASL if there is one) unless the junction is very familiar, as you could find yourself in the path of a turning HGV. One of my regular junctions (no ASL) is on a bus route where anyone over the stop line can risk a collision – I try to warn any cyclists/motorcyclists I see there. Personally, I feel the safety of ASLs is, at best, limited, and at worst, can be dangerous. There's one near me which I will never use as it conflicts with school buses turning into that road – a particularly stupid, irresponsible design .