never bothered with those lighwallet, i know they can be good for newcomers who do not want to dl 40 giga or something, but even with a 8mega connection, it isn't a pain in the ass to download the whole chain...
everything is 40 giga nowadays, game movie, we are not in 2005 anymore....
Nothing can ever be "fully trusted" except your own node if you want to take that thinking to its logical conclusion.
However, for most of the time and especially smaller payments, SPV works great.
i still think that miners should only use core for their mining activity
I was of the same opinion but then I discovered that there are some places where internet connection is still a luxury.
People don't have limitless bandwidth and fast connection and downloading plus 40GB of Blockchain is a killer for them.
As for the miners, if they are professionals - and they should be if they mine, (because 'normal' bitcoin users don't mine anymore) of course they want to have full note wallet.