I originally had the Vodafone version and flashed to generic UK to get 1.2

I just gave up waiting and flashed to global. No problems. As previously mentioned, as long as you do a backup (I did mine to memory card), then follow the flashing instructions and restore your backup afterwards, there is very little that you lose. It just takes some time for it to redownload all your applications, but it does that for you, you don't have to go and find them again.

Overall much easier than you would think.