"...your experiences of working for them..."
Generally benign experience in my time with the department of many names, because all the corporate butchery has been directed at other areas, resulting in the termination of many careers and the odd suicide. Now they have killed off or left bleeding everything else it seems our corporate leader has ATC in his sights. Results? Stay tuned for details. Latest indications of the next shuffle of the deck chairs are they are applying their management methods (change the names of everything and make everyone responsible for somebody different every two years) is being applied to how ATC operates
"...and whether you can request a particular base (in my case, the ideal would be BNE)..."
There are only two (unless you opt for towers) so your odds are good. There are no guarantees though. If you get stuck in the wrong one there are opportunities to move later sometimes. BN weather will unfortunately kill a Pom fresh off the boat in short order, maybe you should consider ML?
