OutsideCAS,
The problem is that you're talking purely from the perspective of someone who A) understands how badly paid pilots are B) How much work pilots actually DO and C) Someone that thinks that pilots should earn decent money (or at least presumably)
What you [where by you, I actually mean anyone who is involved in professional level aviation] have to understand, is that the general public believe - REALLY believe - that a brand new, out of the box first officer will earn somewhere between £50 and £80k a year. I'm not kidding you, the other week I asked someone what they thought a pilot earned and their view was a captain would be on well >£200k and a first officer £100k. Therefore, sad as it is, the travelling public just don't believe that a pilot earns that little. Then also compare that the national average wage is alleged to be around £27k - so what you're trying to highlight is that these poor little pilots, who only work a max of 900 hours a year, who potentially don't even have 5 GCSEs earn the national average....
You can see that this could be hard to drum up sympathy. You need to paint the whole picture first - and very few have the appetite to hear that.
[And as this is PPRuNe....clearly *I* know that 900 hours is flying time, doesnt' include duty time, doesn't have any factoring for stress or tiredness etc - but most lay men DON'T understand that!]
Major Cleve - I'll come work for you - do you accept (f)ATPL holders with little experience, looking for a first break with a questionable sense of humour...