Good old 'Dan Dare'! Sadly missed, at least by me in a purely self-loading-cargo capacity, since their demise in 1992.
Chugalug2, you have my sympathies over the injustice which you feel you as a civilian suffered at the hands of "union power" and "supine" management sixteen years ago. But the connection from your anecdote to "usurping the powers of junior commanders" seems tenuous. And the inference seems to be that not only would you not
allow serving men and women to join a legal representative organisation, but you would not
allow civilian aircrew to join BALPA if you had your way: otherwise the anecdote is pointless.
Where I think most or all BAFF members would agree with you is over the importance of junior commanders and the need to support them. As long as BAFF remains a membership-based all ranks organisation (as opposed to a universal organisation representing everyone, or everyone in a rank range) the majority of members are always going to be in the rank range Cpl to Flight Lieutenant, or equivalent.
"Commissars", "continental cousins", etc. Commendable attempt on a full set of stereotypes, although you forgot "battles stopping for tea breaks".
With respect, your comments seem to be based more on how you imagine a representative organisation would operate within the military, rather than on anything BAFF has done, is doing or is proposing.
In your endorsement of AL R's post, you have yet to explain how organisations like the
Association of the United States Army, the (US)
Non Commissioned Officers Association, the (US)
Reserve Officers Association founded by General Pershing in 1922, the (Australian)
Defence Welfare Association or the (Australian)
Defence Reserves Association are in your opinion tending to usurp the powers and effectiveness of junior commanders.
Sure, these are quite disparate organisations but after all that was my earlier point: there is NO "one size fits all".