Well Good Evening, Whisleblower, and what a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance in particular.
If so, prove you are that irritating Irish, former cornershop running, ex-KPMG (and you wonder why they do all the vote auditing!!??) muff-haired tool. Make something public on here just before it is announced to the world by media
Ok, WB, you asked for it.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a struggling, once proud Irish Airline called Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus plodded along for years and years, sucking furiously on the teat of the Irish state, immune for such inconveniences as fiscal responsibility and competition. The pilots had a union, called IALPA, lead by a no-neck, polyester Dwarf called Evan Cullen. Perhaps you've heard of him?
The flight attendants had a union, the baggage handlers had a union, the check in staff had a union, heck even the catering division had a union. The catering division is especially noteworthy because, when the catering division was done away with due to unrestrained cost that tested the limits of even Aer Lingus' bountiful management, the union insisted that all those workers turn up, and get paid for doing, wait for it, absolutely nothing at all.
Then, one horrible day, the government sold off a large chunk of Aer Lingus and said that it would have to pay its own way in the rude, snooty and hurtful world of commercial real politic, a strange and foreign concept to those 'workers' at Aer Lingus who had, for years, grown fat whilst protected by a
giant latex condom called SIPTU.
Meanwhile, across the car park at Dublin Airport, was a small, squat white building, much much smaller than the grand and imposing facades of Aer Lingus head office that towered above it. It has the word "RYANAIR" in big blue letters across one side of it. Ryanair, sadly, is a company not blessed by the great latex condom of SIPTU, and though some of the Ryanair pilots were members of the Aer Lingus union, not much ever happened. Ryanair got on with the job of making money and taking tens of millions of passengers profitably around Europe and gave jobs to thousands of pilots who would otherwise be flipping burgers and driving taxis, or eating dog in South Korea. Aer Lingus, meanwhile, lost money like a drunken sailor and prepared for the launching of its stock on the open market, pleased that the public would thrill to owning a small piece of such a great, Irish success story as Aer Lingus and the great latex condom of SIPTU that had, for years, protected it.
But then, the unthinkable happened! The evil sorcerer who runs Ryanair made a lightning raid on the Aer Lingus stock on day one, and commenced proceedings for an hostile take over at €2.80 a share. The no-neck polyester Dwarf of IALPA fancied himself as a match of the evil sorcerer at Ryanair and the pair famously met on an Irish television show where the Dwarf was eaten for breakfast and made out as the fool his mammy had always told him he'd become, in front of millions and across the world. This was too much for the little Dwarf, though, and when partially recovered from his resultant quivering rage, he hatched a cunning plan. A plan of such cunningness, that the evil sorcerer would be thwarted in his attempt to take over Aer Lingus, and better still, Mullingar Mandrake would be made to rue the day he's exposed the Dwarf on the tellie, and called him a failed pilot.
Hell hath no fury like a Dwarf Scorned.
The Dwarf summoned all his eager pilots together by the light of a full moon one night and said, "Listen lads, we've gotta stop this
O'Leary, or well all completely
, roit! I started dis ting called TAILWIND as a moity stroocture to stop da coont in his tracks, like." The Dwarf was glowing with rage, and so the pilots all listened as he went on.
"Yez have arl gotta hand over da yoyos to stop dat coont O'Leary. Oyl be takin' €55 touzan from da captains, and terty foiv touzan from da eff-ohs, so I will. Yez have arl gotta pony up da yoyo's, and dem dat don't will be sent to
in' Coventry, right, so
' hand it over."
And the pilots did. Those that could got the funds straight away, for Aer Lingus was nothing if not a generous employer, and others mortgaged their houses. What the Dwarf didn't tell the pilots though, was that even after all this lolly was gathered together, the Dwarf was short of what he needed to make an impact on the '
', something the poor little Dwarf had been embarrassed with all his life and so he struck a dreadful bargain with the devil of leveraged financial instruments.
Still with me, Whistleblower? It gets more interesting from here, so you might want to look away. After laying down all the pilots hard earned savings as 20% of the total he needed to penetrate deep, deeeeeeep within the recesses of the evil sorcerer, he borrowed the rest, the 80% of the rest, and then bought shares in Aer Lingus at various prices in the high €2 mark, and rested back on his tiny haunches, satisfied that he'd stopped the sorcerer once and for
in' all.
The first hostile take over failed and the Mandrake of Mullingar, the evil sorcerer slinked back to his white building and got on with making money and hiring loads of pilots, some of whom were straight out of flight school. For days and days, all you could hear was the tiny, high-pitched giggles of the self-satisfied Dwarf who'd slayed wicked Mandrake with his cunning, cunning plan.
But then, the share price dropped. And dropped and dropped and dropped. It seems the markets didn't know about the power of the great latex condom of SIPTU. "Stupid share market", said the Dwarf.
The market dropped and the Aer Lingus pilot’s investment in themselves became more and more worthless. Oh well, it was only €55,000 per captain and €35,000 per FO. Not that much at the end of the day. Isn't that right, Whistleblower. Unfortunately, the thing about leveraged investments, or margin investing, as the Dwarf and all the pilots were soon to discover, is that the bigger the margin, the bigger the responsibility when it all goes pear-shaped, and pear shaped it DID go.
Mandrake made another hostile bid for Aer Lingus, which was slowly consuming itself within the protective custody of the great latex condom of SIPTU, offering €1.40 this time, and just like the first attempt, it was at a great premium to the market price. Alas, Mandrake failed again and again the Dwarf giggled, even though by this time his was sitting on cumulative losses of over €67.2 million of other people's money.
These days, the shares are worth €.56 cents and the banks who loaned the Dwarf all this money to skewer Mandrake, wanted it back because, out of nowhere, all the money left the world and those that had lent it in the good times, wanted it all back now. All the pilots, all of them, have now been forced to sign personal guarantees involving their houses and other assets they'd spent a lifetime accumulating in the hope that one day, the Aer Lingus share price will rise back up to the high €2 mark so they can break even and look forward to a retirement free of worry.
Asked whether there'll be a third attempt, Mullingar Mandrake was heard do say. "Nah,
'em. Let 'em burn."
Aer Lingus, rather bravely, put the great latex condom of SIPTU on its board, and feeling left out, the Dwarf approached the late, lamented Dermot Mannion, one-time CEO of Aer Lingus, and said he too wanted a seat on the board. Mr. Mannion wiped away his tears after a time and smiled down upon the Dwarf and asked if he was on crack.
Evan Cullen has presided over the greatest betrayal of trust and has personally engineered the greatest financial ruin of represented pilots in the history of organised labour. Evidently dissatisfied with this blistering apotheosis of failure, he has in recent days, personally contacted the head of the Large Cases Division of the Irish Revenue Commissioners, and dropped all the contract pilots who work for Mandrake of Mullingar, up to their nostrils in shyte.
All this from the head of a pilot union, ladies and gentlemen, who seeks to reassure you of the benevolence of BLAPA/IALPA whilst pleading for your support under the guise of giving you all a free suppository of 'dignity and respect' and at the same time, blowing a whistle, as I'm sure the dwarf might well put it, on fellow pilots to the Irish tax office.
Will that do for now, Whistleblower?
There's more, of course, but that is a story for another day.