Bridge1[+2] / Lightroom not working together bug

Question

Why is it that these two programmes seem so incompatible?
Many of the [non-customisable] shortcuts are different, F2 is rename in one, yet is batch rename in the other for one particularly pointless difference. LR is choosing to break with convention elsewhere. But for no good reason that I can see and I've looked! There are many more.
A much bigger problem though is that if I update an Image in Bridge it updates the sidecar file that goes with the Raw file, so in theory LR should see the differences.
If you look at this screen shot, you'll see that is not the case.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/435164417_1d27ffbe22_o.jpg
Pics are focus test images and the pic in Bridge have been darkened, desaturated or colour boosted, just for illustration of this bug. And as you can see nothing has changed in LR, not even after visiting another folder in LR or restarting LR.
BTW I have updated to ACR3.7 and Bride2 Beta shows the changes done in B1 no problem. Reimporting the images has no effect as they are already in library. Rendering previews again also has no effect.
Though if I delete a file and then reimport it, the changes are implemented. So yet another clunky workaround. But if I make a change in LR nothing happens in Bridge2 Beta, not even if I refresh. And when I restarted Bridge2 to see if that happened I get no thumbnails at all in the folder, just icons ?!? Another restart of Bridge and images appear, but still no change to reflect LR alterations. :-( Changes written into XMP box is ticked BTW.
Not only that, Bridge allows you to rename Jpegs and Raw Files together [hooray for common sense, though serious boos for always incrementing file no. sequencing], but if you try and move JPEGs and RAWs to separate folders to get around LR's [bizarre] refusal to recognize file extensions, you find you cannot. The reason - they are now paired and they move together in Bridge. Which would not be an issue bar LR's extension bug. So because of LR I now have to leave Bridge and move the files using a different file manger, duh!
I'm curious, were the Bridge team and LR team not allowed to communicate or were LR engineers simply instructed to do everything in a different manner even if the tasks were identical in each programme? As the conflicts between the two are simply baffling. The only other explanation I can think of at present, is that it is foolishly assumed that no-one will use them both.
It's only a few days until LR's price goes up and I only have 2 days trial left, I'm still not convinced it's a sensible investment as Bridge is so much quicker to use at present, for far too many unnecessary reasons. Syncing and processing a large no. of images is very quick + easy in ACR anyway and as no-one at Adobe seems to have commented on the various complaints here regarding LR, I may well be sticking with Bridge. At least the engineers there respond and give feedback on the forums. If I knew a LR 1.1 was imminent I may invest my cash, but sadly it's not looking promising at the moment.
LR has great potential, but seems very broken at present in silly little ways and if the next iteration is not for another year.....it's sadly not worth paying for at present. And if a bug fix is announced after the price rise, I can't see me being tempted to spend the $400 it'll cost here in the UK.

Answer 1

> A much bigger problem though is that if I update an Image in Bridge it updates the sidecar file that goes with the Raw file, so in theory LR should see the differences.
If you look at this screen shot, you'll see that is not the case.
You have to import the xmp data in LR to get it to recognize the changes. Metadata-xmp