Always feel a little miffed when someone senior to me complains about my superior lifestyle due to being on a base! If that's how you feel then perhaps you should have applied for a base yourself! Of course scavangepump may not be senior to me, but that doesn't explain the many who constantly complain and who are.
I never was a massive fan of having separate AOA unions, but after reading the discriminatory views of scavangepump and ill informed posts from CR about the bases in this thread then perhaps it's not a bad thing after all. Tend to agree with BTK comments, but as for others reading this post then if you really are of the opinion that being HKG based makes you somehow superior to people on a base, regardless of seniority, then perhaps the US, EUR, and AUS should follow the Canadian example of negotiating with CX. Of course we could try running a system based on seniority, but even if the company were to play ball I suspect some of our HKG members would still feel more important than others and expect to be treated accordingly!