Excellent post, Pixy, & good to air your frustrations but I regret to say that it is part of aviation. It has been like this throughout my career in the Uk, Europe and Middle East. Your "washups" (new term for me), surveys, Pilot/Management meetings will never change the arrogant stand taken by most Management teams. Something very strange seems to happen to certain pilots when they take up a management roll and they quickly lose touch with their own backgrounds. The other management "trained" ( I use the word for lack of others) group never seemed to have the basic skills to communicate with the flying group. They quickly lose the motivation too.
In the ME, you have this huge corruption problem.That stops any motion in it's tracks once the situation is regarded as unlikely to get past the corrupted individual who is there through nepotism alone. Your only option for an enjoyable stint is to back-off completely & just do what you are contracted to do. Fly, enjoy, get back to Base, sign the Tech-log & enjoy your time off with family & friends as best you can in the region. Leave the irritation behind you.
It is not just the Middle East. I could give countless boring tales from my own experience but nothing will change and never will.I will offer one tale though . Sometimes, Management know & lay down, openly, the ground rules. At interview, one company told me that a job offer was likely. The CP leaned forward and said; "Look, we just want you to come down here & fly our planes. We don't want you in Training, we don't want you in Management, we don't want you hanging round the Office on your days off. If any of that changes, we will tell you" . Actually, I liked the honesty but something better came by.
Pixy, enjoy,your flying, sign the Tech log & go home. You will live to see a fruitful & enjoyable retirement.