I could be wrong (and if I'm sure Mr Undulates and his team will put me right) but I don't think AUK commisions any events, they just put on whatever an Organiser happens to be prepared to run.
Absolutely. AUK is not an organising body. It's up to organisers to come up with ideas for events and put them on the calendar. There's the occasional prompting to organisers in PBP years (and last year with pre-qualifying) where we would like to see events to facilitate an agenda (e.g. PBP qualifying) but it's still down to organisers to actually put the events on.
Whether that's right or not is another matter. I can certainly see arguments for increasing involvements in encouraging the longer events and providing some overall direction for the calendar.
The important thing to me is that the focus and emphasis of the organisation remains on the longer events. The Olympic motto is "Stronger, faster, further". AUK's should just be "Further..."
That's not to say the shorter events, and the award structures around them aren't important. But they're a means to an end, of encouraging riders to the longer distances, rather than an end in themselves.
Of course not everyone will have the time, means or inclination to progress to the peak of the pyramid. And that's fine. It's a great strength of AUK that it's such a broad church that nearly everyone can make their own personal objectives and find their own measure of achievement.
But the organisation needs to be dynamic, and continue to encourage that progression up the ladder. If it stagnates, either through a focus entirely on the base of the pyramid with no-one moving upwards, or just on the peak such that there is no base of new riders to draw from then we all lose.
