Officeboy,
To correct your incorrect judgement. The demoted captains are going onto FO's payscale for the same year of service. i.e. 5 year Captain gets demoted and goes onto year 5 FO payscale. So you are wrong.
Slim, you rant about BALPA doing nothing for anybody. Well, the company have told people they are being made redundant. So BALPA negotiated a deal for those individuals with Qatar and FlyDubai, so they go there for a specified time period (I think 2 years) and then come back to Thomson at the same position they left from. So your stupid comment is void. That is a good deal in my book.
I don't think the sun shines out of BALPA's arse by a long way, but give credit where it is due.