Penguina,
PM me your address and I'll send you a form.
Pink_aviator,
I did the same as you - waited till I got my PPL so I could join as a full member not an associate. But in reality there's no difference, and no-one will know what you are. The Christmas Lunch is lots of fun, and you need to book by sometime soon, so it might be worth joining now.
I've got a lot out of the BWPA. I joined because I'd heard they had good social events, and I thought I might find people to fly with. Very soon afterwards they arranged the first Chairwoman's Challenge Trophy, a kind of mini Dawn to Dusk, designed to encourage low hours pilots. With no idea what I was doing, I entered...and won! I collected my trophy at the Christmas Lunch, and somehow got talking about the Dawn to Dusk with a much more experienced pilot. To cut a long story short, we entered that together the next year and came fifth, then won it outright in 2001!!! We've since flown to Ireland and the Highlands together, and have plans for flying in Europe sometime. An article in the BWPA magazine on "a CPL later in life" spurred me on to give that a go. Then when I was considering a North Sea flying job, one of the BWPA members who flew helicopters there invited me to stay and for a couple of trips out to the rigs. Another member is useful for legal advice. In fact, now i come to think about it, I doubt I'd have done half the things I've done in aviation without the BWPA. And by the way, the social events are good too.
I could argue as to why they are or aren't a good idea, but I'll do that better when it's not so late.
And I don't actually care about the philosophical stuff, since I find them a very useful organisation - and fun too. I'm a PFA member as well, and I belong to the Helicopter Club of Great Britain - but I get much more out of the BWPA than either of those.