EK permanent basings are impossible!
If you will be based in a country, you will have to pay local taxes, and that's not only the employee, but also the employer has certain fiscal obligations to fullfill. Let's just think about social security, pension schemes etc etc... If you look at the EK books, it's quite easy to see where to company makes it's money compared to other airlines: cost of manpower. One of the main reasons EK makes a lot of profit, is because of the low cost of manpower. By opening up permanent basings, the routes flown by these people will suddenly be less profitable. Knowing EK, this will never happen.
What is a possible scenario? Temporary basings! EK could for example allow people to be based in London for 3 or 4 months. They will not pay for a hotel, but will give a financial bonus to people to find their own accomodation. It's a win-win situation. It will cost less to EK (otherwise they would have to put guys in an expensive hotel with daily allowances to be paid), plus EK will have standby people covering Europe (from London, it's quite easy to get you to any European destination and still be able to fly onward to Dubai with a split duty..) As for the crew: some guys who still have a house in the area would love to take the extra money (let's say half of what it would cost EK to pay hotel and allowances) and spend a few months flying from their real home.
That's how I would do it, but then again, little Alan probably has more relative brainmass (*) then I do...
MR8
(*) relative brainmass = size of brain / size of body