The trouble with all of this is that we have colleagues who do not play the game.
For example, the CAA used to allow a 1 hour 30 minute commute from home to starting duty.
How many colleagues have you flown with who have driven up from Cornwall or who have commuted into the duty from France? (Read the Colgan report).
How many colleagues have you flown with who have spent half of their rest period on the golf course?
They are the ones who are letting all of us down. In the eyes of the management, we don't have a case for these individuals have proved time and time again that they can commute for four hours and spend half of their layover time playing golf and still get into LHR on time from a CAT III approach.
If we could stop this sort of rubbish going on then the rest of us might stand a slight chance of being taken seriously by the public and the authorities.
I have said it before but I will say it again, I had an F/O fall asleep in the middle of an SID when he was PF.
I had an F/O who made the SOP call at the Outer Marker but failed to respond to the 500 foot (incapacitation call) for he was asleep on short final.
In both cases I suspected that they had not spent their off-duty time wisely.
In short, if we don't get our act together and put ourselves above criticism then we shall never be taken seriously.