A cardinal question in the transport of cosmic rays and solar energetic particles is the description of scattering in the fluctuating magnetic fields of the heliosphere. Most of the initial descriptions assumed simple isotropic scattering times. A major breakthrough in this field concept of quasi-linear theory (QLT) introduced by Jokipii in the nineteen sixties. The classic QLT considered slab turbulence with a uniform background fled
with small fluctuations superimposed. Later there were several efforts to extend the linear perturbation model to include second order effects. In this work we put forward an alternative approach: the pitch-angle of energetic particles will be taken relative to the actual local field as opposed to relative to the background field. The structure of the fluctuations is described with three complex quantities corresponding to the curvature, divergence, twist, and shear of the field lines. We focus on the role of
shear close to perpendicular pitch angles, that has been a sore point of the QLT.