BA & Qantas too
Strake,
I agree with you entirely on the "local" cabin crew. On my recent experiences with BA, mainly on the HKG route, the HK Chinese crew members have been quite excellent (worthy even of Cathay) and the contrast with many of the British team members has been very noticeable. There are still some good British BA cabin crew out there obviously, but they seem to be a minority these days.
By the way, I just had a very similar experience on Qantas between HKG and SYD - again, the "Chinese" crew are far better than the white ones. And I'm sorry to be racist about this, but the "Chinese" crew on Qantas seemed from their English fluency and Australian accents to be as Australian as the ethnically "European" crew - it was just their attitude that was so much better.