Minuteman, my dear chap! I see the reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated, for which I am much relieved. I note though, with heavy heart, your tone is somewhat more belligerent since you've been occupying yourself in aerodrome spotters corner. Heaven forfend that I might be the cause, but perhaps the real reason lies closer to home?
Your principal point of argument, much admired and sadly missed, has always been the warm and fuzzy feeling IALPA membership has given you late at night, especially when perusing your P-60, no doubt. I'd be fascinated to learn, truly, of your point of view now that Aer Lingus is well and truly circling the drain. Riderless and as paralysed as any near-dead horse can be, the Shamrock is flying off into the sunset, dispatching Airbus wide-bodies across a humourless Atlantic with 37, 17, 64 passengers and all the while the snouts in the trough back at home are rachetting up the suction ever higher. Quite a disgusting spectacle, when viewed from the safety of distance, but it must be truly heartrending when one is emotionally involved as you, so clearly, are.
The latest posts on the website refer directly to how FR management have threatened your own colleagues
Nonsense, dear friend. Under the current leadership, the world really is a simple place. Pilots are viewed just as any other cost centre, like airports, fuel, Air Navigation charges, and maintenance, all of which need to be kept under control in order to maximise profitability and all the wonderful fruit that falls from that tree. Fruit for all, by the way, including, perversely, those whom you claim we seek to subjugate unfairly.
You have always suggested that Union membership is a way to make more equal the battlefield and a means whereby the sorts of endemic exploitation those here are quite falsely claiming, can be avoided. I, and others, maintain that the future is best negotiated without a union, knowing at first hand, many times over, the sort of feral fecklessness that inevitably follows. A closer look to your own back yard would seek to make my point for me.
It is a choice, and when it comes to BLAPA/IALPA, I choose no. For all his warts, I would rather have a hundred MOL's thundering away in front of the cameras and even if he really does think of me and my colleagues as cosseted taxi drivers, so long as my airline is growing and my paycheck is bloated and regular, he may say and think whatever pleases him.
You may care to reflect upon the things that matter in YOUR life, dear Minuteman, as your airline implodes upon itself in the days and weeks ahead.
Oh, and in a much missed shared interest of years gone by...
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Good to see you, old friend.