Betty Girl,
I think you generally post a lot of well thought out and balanced views here, but I am having trouble with your continued defence of all cabin crew.
None of the recent posters, as far as I can see, is attempting to 'tar all crew with the same brush'. On the contrary many are making it quite explicit that the majority of cabin crew they fly with are no problem at all. They are merely stating what is, in all honesty, almost inevitable in a company the size of BA - some people don't like their job, the people they work with (notably from other departments) and the company they work for.
In a work force of some 10,000 is that really so much of a surprise? There are indeed cabin crew who dislike pilots, regardless of the fact that many others are married to them. Just because most normal people are able to get along fine with each other it doesn't mean all cabin crew get on fine with all pilots (and vice versa).
A lot of this ill feeling comes from fairly minor 'snubs', in my opinion. If the cabin crew board the plane and the flight crew are already on board (pretty common on shorthaul) would you expect them to pause briefly at the (always open) flight deck door and shout a quick hello/wave? I would, I believe its simple courtesy. Would you be surprised to learn that probably 50% of cabin crew do not, for whatever reason, do this, heading straight to the back of the aircraft and requiring the Capt/FO to come down and see them?
Similarly I've had several occasions recently where a decent crew have got off the aircraft on a nightstop and walked off through the terminal without waiting for the pilots. These were not flights with a bad atmosphere, in fact on at least one of these occaisions we met up later for dinner.
These are small things, I agree, but the impression you get from working with a crew who behave like this is pretty negative. It doesn't take much (the odd yellow pen for example) to make people start jumping to conclusions here - 'Ahh, they're strikers, they didn't say hello when they boarded so it's obvious they hate pilots.....'