Tailwheel,
I agree with you completely, but there is a lot of drowning in self pity on this issue and I don't think I have ever heard a single apology from any of the pilots who resigned for totally playing their cards the wrong way.
It is said that a good gambler never gambles more than they can afford to lose. The problem I have here is that they gambled away the chances of those that weren't directly involved in the process without our vote as we stood there with dreams of our own without so much as a pot to piss in.
The decline in standards of training with the myriad of pilot sausage factories that have sprung up, together with pay-for-training and declining salaries has been as a direct result of how poorly this part of aviation history was played out.
We must learn from our past or be doomed to repeat it.