The Liaison Council - a correction

A principal culprit in the Staff Travel fiasco has been the supine Liaison Council which, among other things, I have accused of dancing to British Airways tune, of being British Airways acolytes and of being irrelevant as representatives of the pensioners because they are appointed by British Airways and not elected by the pensioner universe.

I have also offered to correct with an apology any inaccurate information I have published. No apology has been requested from me but the Liaison Council representatives (who despite claiming to represent all pensioners nevertheless refuse to communicate with those they don’t like) have chosen to meet with the ABAP committee to protest that they are not appointed by British Airways so I’m going to pretend they’ve accepted my offer of correction.

Reader, make up your own mind.

This is how the Liaison Council works. Firstly it advertises vacancies in Touchdown. For some arcane reason vacancies are dedicated to specific geographical regions of the UK and Northern Ireland, but for our purpose that is of no consequence. Pensioners living in the designated area are invited to propose themselves for membership of the Liaison Council.

Then they are interviewed to determine their suitability by the present Council members. If they are deemed suitable they become members of the Liaison Council.

However, if it isn’t enough that they are vetted by a coterie of existing, like-minded Council members, they are also interviewed by a serving member of British Airways management. The role of this person hasn’t been explained but if it is not to ensure that the candidate is a compliant pensioner willing to support British Airways’ contentious pleas for a third runway etc and not a rabid critic of British Airways or, Heaven forfend, a member of ABAP, then you may call me Philip van Howells of Amsterdam.

Thus the Liaison Committee claims that selection by closed door interview by the existing Star Chamber, overseen by a British Airways gauleiter, means they are not appointed by British Airways and that it is unfair for me and others to refer to them as British Airways’ poodles.

(I pause there whilst I am distracted by several pigs passing overhead.)

Call me old fashioned, but the ABAP system in which candidates from anywhere in the UK and Northern Ireland offer themselves for election to the Committee, and all paid-up members of ABAP vote secretly to determine which of the candidates has the most support seems to be to have a ring of fairness and transparency lacking in the Liaison Council’s procedures.

Nevertheless, I accept that we don’t all share the same views nor the same values, so if I’ve offended anyone on the Liaison Council by suggesting that the Council, appointed in the way I’ve described, is in thrall to British Airways then they have my fulsome and wholehearted apology – but that doesn’t mean I believe you. Whatever fantasy you want to believe Councillors, you are un-elected.