Jumpers Update

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2014/01/man-falls-to-his-death-at-jr.html.

A "man on the inside" who is feeding me information, who I will not name for obvious reasons, has sent me the photographs you see above. I will neither confirm nor deny whether or not he or she took them personally. Also, before anybody gets any bright ideas, I have cleaned the images to remove any metadata. What you see here is the West Wing balconies I describe in the background article that were the suicide method for that poor disturbed patient. I have heard rumours of further patient suicides and attempted suicides at the JRH which have been kept out of the media. And they say you can't keep secrets in a big institution?... It's a piece of cake. The NHS makes Area 51 look like a market square. As you can see, the five foot glass parapets have been replaced by an enclosed window, exactly as we porters advised before the site had even been built. I wonder who will claim credit for "coming up with the idea"? Will anybody apologize to we, the porters, for ignoring our advice and therefore causing a tragedy through incompetence and culpable neglect? Do any more pigs need fuelling before takeoff?

Devotion

 

A friend sent me a remarkable video. It's only two minutes long, but it tells an epic story. The centrepiece of the upload is a visual representation of an event in Leeds in 1956. I don't know if it is a photograph or an AI render, you can hardly tell the difference these days; but either way it has astonished and moved me. It depicts nurses on an open-plan ward kneeling down around a table at their station starting their shift by saying a group prayer for their patients. The narrator then explains in a poetic style, with ecclesiastical chanting in the background, how actions like these used to be sacred. Nursing used to be a job traditionally done by nuns. These actions were not just religious; they were an expression of patriotism and a love of the nation's people. This has now of course changed beyond all recognition. In just the space of a few decades it has become "an illegal act, one that could bring its participants into direct conflict with the regime." Did he know the story of Sarah Kuteh too? See: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2016/12/nurse-sacked-for-praying.html. We now have a "profane" authority that feeds us cultural Marxism and greedy corporations that sell medical treatments that kill; and then they cover their arses in corrupt courts. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBzoBP3kG3A. This video is painfully nostalgic, but also inspiring. We have not lost these memories and perhaps they can drive us to build a better country. I left the following comment on the video that the creator gave a heart: "I'm a former hospital porter with 23 years service and this short video stunned me. A nurse was actually sacked for praying recently. Sarah Kuteh, an ITU sister."
See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.

Andy Owens in FT

 

The paranormal investigator and hospital porter, Andy Owens, has had a letter published in Fortean Times. MEP&DBP came to my attention a few months ago when he announced he was going to try and solve the mystery of a missing person in Glasgow from almost sixty years ago, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/03/hp-seeks-missing-boy.html. Fortean Times is a monthly magazine based in the UK that covers anomalous phenomena like ghosts, UFO's monsters and similar enigmas. Its name relates to the famous supernatural writer and researcher Charles Fort (1874-1932). I've been a regular reader of it myself for some years now. Along with Nexus, it is an essential journal for anybody with esoteric interests. Andy's letter can be found in the current issue at the time of writing, issue 450 for November 2024. Being a HP is actually the perfect occupation for a Fortean investigator because hospitals are one of the top places to find ghostly apparitions. There's a lot of discussion as to why that is. Generally such apparitions are often of people who have died sudden, unpleasant and/or violent deaths. Hospitals are buildings full of pain, suffering and fear; they are the place where people are most likely to die. It's a complicated subject though. The letter describes reports of strange encounters his colleagues reported in the hospital where he serves. These include unsourced sounds like footsteps and even seeing human figures where nobody should be there. Also, objects sometimes move when nobody is touching them. Andy himself experienced a strange sound when doing mortuary duty with a fellow porter during the nightshift. He also saw the door to an A and E cubicle move by itself. He shares my own frustration with the doors that were badly designed. I even kept a mental hit-list of all the malfunctioning pieces of equipment in my hospital that I knew off by heart. If only we had helpful ghosts that opened the doors for us, Andy laments. When my time comes, if I am trapped on the earthly plane I will do that favour for all my EP&DB&SP's still living.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/12/hospital-pm-scares.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/07/alyson-dunlop-on-hospital-ghosts.html.

Malinformation 2- Marjorie

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/11/malinformation.html.
A while ago I wrote an article about the pros and cons of civvy receptionists, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/04/civilian-receptionists-yay-or-nay.html. Along with Rebecca another character stands out in my mind. Her name was... I'll call her "Marjorie". Marjorie was different to the other receptionists brought in by ISS Mediclean when they took over the service. She was older, close to retirement, and had no experience or training with the company or NHS. She was local and lived around the corner from where I used to live, although I never knew her previously. She made herself very unpopular with the portering staff from the get-go because she immediately appointed herself de facto supervisor of the department even though she held no portering grade at all. Her role was receptionist and dispatcher in the Maternity unit, later the Women's Centre, with no formal authority over us at all. She was also made a minor celebrity by being featured in the hospital newspaper in the column Radcliffe People, a spot that gave a profile of a particular staff member in each issue. This was an honour never afforded to me in all twenty-three of my years, yet Marjorie made within a couple of months. She was the right kind of staff member, you see. It seems she was being groomed by management to play this role; she was encouraged to act like our boss even though she wasn't. I remember she insisted on always keeping the key to the lodge safe so we couldn't even access our payslips without her permission.

Along with the general sense of privilege Marjorie was encouraged to feel was a certain amount of malinformation. For some reason, when there was any kind of mysterious criminal behaviour in the hospital, porters were always the first to be blamed, especially by her. This is despite the fact that, as I've explained before, all the worst offences in the OxRad world were committed by civilians, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/05/killer-nurses.html. There was an instance in the late 1990's when a number of staff had complained that their lockers in the Theatres department had been broken into and items of value had been stolen. When I was speaking to Marjorie about it she didn't go as far as automatically to accuse the porters, but she did say: "I can't imagine a nurse doing that." I could have made the point that she had almost no experience of hospital life, let alone awareness of the scandals I have reported on, but I didn't. With retrospect it was just as well because it turned out that two porters were to blame. A pair of brothers who suddenly handed in their resignations and left the country just before the net closed. I'm the first to admit we HP's are not perfect, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/12/hps-and-psychos.html. Despite this, it annoys me that Marjorie was enticed deliberately by management into this narrow-minded and entitled attitude. She was clearly being used by them for some purpose... but I'm not sure what exactly.
(The illustration above is not an actual image of Marjorie.)

Malinformation

 

I'm a big fan of Neil Oliver, in fact I consider him to be the new conscience of the nation. He has a perception and passion that crystallizes many people's experience of living in today's world. A few months ago he made an interesting video about what he calls "malinformation". This term obviously emerges out of that infamous 2020's buzzword misinformation, but it's different in a crucial way. Misinformation is information that is false (allegedly), a lie, created to deceive. Malinformation is information that is true, but people being aware of it has a bad effect of some kind on somebody for some reason. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a5fBGUqfBU. In one of those strange ways, the other day I had two supposedly unconnected thoughts pop into my head at the same time. Firstly, it struck me that it was malinformation to be proud to be a hospital porter. In fact I've had so many conversations with others that prove this. I remember being on an overnight ferry to Ireland back in 2002. I had gone on holiday with somebody I really shouldn't have, as I found out later. We spent most of the journey on the standard argument... "but you just push a trolley, Ben!"... "Yes but"... and you know the rest. Despite the fact I won the debate easily, as I always do when it comes to this one; my "friend" refused to change his position and he doggedly doubled down, wasting what should have been, and could have been, a happy sea voyage for us both. By the time we docked at Cork harbour he was very agitated and found a pretext to hurl abuse at me in front of all the other passengers as we were waiting to disembark. He had been subjected to malinformation and felt hurt and enraged by it. For him, this was like an attack by me, as if I had physically struck him or stolen his car. This encounter was not the only time it happened; and it happened with many other people. What is it about being proud to be a HP that makes it malinformation? I'm still not sure after about thirty-five years of experiencing it. Maybe it's because it discredits an established piece of generally received opinion that most people regard as essential for making sense of their world. It is strange, but by far the most hostile recipients of my particular brand of malinformation are HP's or ex-HP's; especially the latter. The best example has to be "Jack Shaw", see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-lied-to-jack.html. Perhaps it would force him to admit that he had been lured away by the bright lights of civilian life because he couldn't bear the low conventional status of HPing. He resented me because I was standing up to something he ran away from. He envied me. He envied me as a prisoner envies his cellmate who achieves a jailbreak. Perhaps readers have other ideas and can enlighten me, in which case, please do post them in the comments section. The other idea I mentioned, on reflection, probably needs a separate follow-up article.

Hospital Porters' Guild

 

Guilds are something of an archaic concept these days; in fact they have declined in most countries of the world during the last couple of hundred years. Guilds existed from the earliest periods of history right up to the 19th century. They are sometimes confused with a trade union; the two are very different, however a guild often served the purpose trades union are for in the modern world. A guild was an association of tradesmen which regulated the practice of their work, provided support and was a depository of knowledge and training. Guilds have influenced society in ways most people don't realize. A lot of towns have a public building known as a "guildhall", a meeting place for guilds. There is the City and Guilds, an institute for vocational education. The guilds founded public houses, which is why to this day they still have names like "The Bricklayers' Arms" or "The Carpenters' Arms". It could be even our very personal names were generated by the guilds. Common surnames in the English-speaking world are very often the word for a job: Smith, Gardner, Cook, Baker, etc. It may be that generally in the future, for reasons I detail in the other HPANWO media, we may have return to the days of the guilds. I think the first step would be to form a hospital porters' guild. There has never been one of those before. Even though some people are named "Porter" it must refer to a different kind of porter from the civilian world. A HP's guild would be of enormous benefit to our service. It would archive the endless tricks of the trade that are currently being destroyed through casualization and the haemorrhage of experienced personnel. It would replace the current corrupt and useless trade union movement. In Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, the author describes a foundry with its own internal company workers society. This group is frowned upon by the established steelworkers unions. No doubt a hospital porters' guild would be hated in the same way by UNISON. But what good have UNISON ever been? They threw us under the bus in the Great JR Hospital Porters Strike of 2015, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/08/jr-porters-strike-update-2.html; and all they do now is whinge about white heterosexual males and about how EEEEEEEvil we all are. To hell with them! I know a lot of people, even the six month wonders inside the HPing world, might wonder why we need a professional organization at all. I've answered that many times; too many to provide a link. Some of you may ask me why I don't go out and start a HP's guild then. I've done that. Really, the HPWA itself and The Gas Spanner HPANWO Radio show are an embryonic HP's guild. All we need now is our own pub, The Hospital Porters' Arms... Mine's a pint!

Marc Almond was NOT a HP

 

I've been working on my hospital porters "hall of fame" over the years and I'm always looking for new names to add to it. Sometimes an individual's service is rumoured or unconfirmed so in that case I tend to hold back from publication until I'm certain. I'd hate to commit the worst kind of third party stolen valour, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/12/mick-jaggers-service-confirmed.html. I have long been repeating the rumour that Marc Almond used to be a HP. This refers to the famous musician from the days of New Wave synth-pop. He was one half of the duo act Soft Cell and they had many great hits including timeless classics like Torch and Tainted Love. Unlike his fellow rock star Mick Jagger, I have found no evidence that Marc ever served as a HP. His most accurate biographies say he trained in art, drama and music from childhood and after school graduated from Southport College and then Leeds Polytechnic. It was at the latter that he met David Ball in 1977 and founded Soft Cell. He did some acting in his youth and starred in a few plays, but apart from that, music has been his only profession. I think the story of Marc being a HP comes from another urban myth that is truly revolting. He was supposedly admitted to hospital once and had to have his stomach pumped because it was engorged with semen after he had performed oral sex continuously at an orgy upon hundreds of men. This is false. It is actually a copycat jibe that has been spread about a number of other musical celebrities for many decades. Other targets of this joke are Rod Stewart, Elton John, Britney Spears, Jon Bon Jovi and even that real HP Mick Jagger. If you come across this rumour again, know that it is untrue. It's actually not possible physically. Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rock-star-stomach-pump/. So both rumours about Marc Almond are untrue. He was neither a hospital patient, with that affliction, nor a porter.

Must-Have HP Memorabilia

 

An Ebay seller called "retired-2020" has put on sale a unique piece of hospital portering keepsake. His or her list appears to consist entirely of old corporate branded giveaways and this particular item was brought to my attention by a brother porter. It is a keyring with a fob sporting the logo or Carillion PLC. It's about three and a half inches across. Source: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/315805854978. I am definitely not a fan of Carillion and spoke out against its partnership with OxRad; but like it or loathe it, it is a part of HPing history. It is even rarer because, of course, the organization that issued it has ceased to exist, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2018/01/carillion-collapse-update.html. This is the equivalent of a medal from the Battle of the Somme or a button from General Patton's tunic. And unlike military antiques, this one only costs three pounds. How wonderful low demand is for the HPing anorak! I'd like to buy this myself and I will in a week or so, but I thought I'd let readers know first in case you want it instead. If so then by all means get in there first. I already have a rich collection of old hospital portering relics. If it is not sold after that period I shall snap it up and add it.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/03/hp-on-ebay.html.

HP's Live here!

 

Above is a picture of an excellent doormat that warns everybody in advance that hospital porters live there! I would get one, but I live with a pair of civilians in a ground floor flat. Even if you're not a HP you could get one to bluff away unwanted callers. The ODO pushers, people like "Jack", see here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-lied-to-jack.html, will never touch your doorbell I guarantee! The HP's doormat can be bought at an online store called Temu. Source: https://www.temu.com/uk/. If you put "chairs" into the search box you'll see they also sell some porters' beds. There are two white ones for £39.09. See here for details: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/10/porters-bed.html.

Infinity Agency

 

If there's one thing that has gone wrong more than anything else, in the last two decades with hospital portering; if there is a single central issue that encompasses all our other regressions, it's casualization. HPing has been downgraded from part of the traditional working class to what has become known as "the precariat". I think this is a deliberate policy. An employment agency is a middle man between yourself and any prospective job. A quick Google will find literally hundreds of them in my country alone. According to their own promotional propaganda, the purpose of an agency is to streamline the employment process by matching prospective workers with suitable employers. Rather than spend his or her life running from one application form or interview to the next, a jobseeker who signs up for an agency can sit back and let the agency handle all that. Sound good doesn't it? The problem is that an agency worker inevitably becomes a rootless drifter; moving from one job to the next, never staying long enough to gain experience, bond with their colleagues or gather long service benefits (should they even exist these days). Many agency workers are on zero-hours contracts, meaning that the agency is not obliged to find them employers who offer a basic week, a minimum number of hours. The workers become the very definition of Karl Marx' rhapsodic description of the typical communist citizen; he could be a farmer in the morning, a builder in the afternoon and paint pictures in the evening. Marx saw this as a good thing, but it is not. For most people, especially men, work is a part of our identity. In the days when the traditional working class existed, a job was not just a job; it was something you belonged to and was the centre of your society. In a town with a factory, the young men would all go and work there when they finished school. In that factory their colleagues would become like new family members. They often ended up marrying a girl from the offices. After a while, depending on the quality of their labour, they would be granted privileges for their commitment; more pay, longer holidays, a place in the company pension scheme, promotion opportunities etc. At the Oxford BMW car factory near where I live, in the good old days, when somebody died they would even be "laid in state"; their coffin would be placed in the middle of the shop floor. At a company wedding all staff who could be spared would attend and the boss would often give the couple his blessing.

Those days are over. Wikipedia defines the "precariat" thus: "A social class only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings. Classic examples of such unpaid activities include continually having to search for work, including preparing for and attending job interviews, as well as being expected to be perpetually responsive to calls for work yet without being paid an actual wage for being on call. The hallmark of the precariat class is the condition of lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence." It's a portmanteau word of "precarious" and "proletariat". This is also the definition of casualization. For employers only interested in maximizing short term profits and with no desire to create a long-term, high quality, sustainable industry, casualization is perfect because it means you can pay your staff as little as you like, within government minimum wage regulations, and provide no other facilities that cost money. No paid leave, no pension, no increments etc. So you make a fast buck with a cheap and nasty service. During my career as a HP I actually witnessed the transformation from one situation to the other and it's one of the most painful experiences I've ever endured. Agencies embody the old adage that conscripts make bad soldiers. How can an agency worker ever be committed to the job they do when they have not specifically chosen this occupation, they have no contractual rights to it and they could be shipped off to a totally different place in a week's time with no notice at all? What is sad is that I knew many porters who joined through an agency and fell in love with HPing in the same way I did. The sensible thing in that situation would be for management immediately to offer such a valuable asset a permanent contract. They often promised to do just that, but didn't keep that promise. I knew porters who had been serving in OxRad for three or more years through the agency and desperately wanted a contract, but management wouldn't give them one. It was almost as if they did not want hardworking, dedicated professional staff. (Why else would they have got rid of me so eagerly? See: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html.) I once asked about that to somebody in Trust HR and she replied that agency staff are there so managers can asses them without commitment and if they're any good they will be kept on. What she was referring to here is a trial period. In principle I have no objection to that at all. In a service as vital as HPing you should have to prove you've got what it takes. However, agency work does not constitute a trial period. During a trial period an employee is in direct employment by their employer for a temporary period; and that period is fixed, usually from three to six months. This is a test. At the end, if you pass that test the employer must put up or shut up; offer you a permanent job or let you go. An agency worker is stuck in a limbo of indefinite trial without even any temporary employment. It is not the same! I don't object to casual employment on a small scale; in fact such a thing has always existed in the form of "temping" or "stop gap" jobs for people whose lifestyle is suited to it, usually students or working mothers. The problem is that this kind of employment has expanded to the point where is it displacing all other kinds. It is now the norm, not the exception. I don't know what the solution to this problem is. To repair the damage done by casualization and restore the traditional proletariat would require a transformation outside of any mechanism I can image. However, I always believe in something coming out of left field. Very often the solution is something we can't image, but that doesn't stop it being there, waiting for the right moment. I hope that moment is soon.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-class-are-you.html.

The Messiah is a HP!

 

When I was on my recent tour of Dorset, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/08/dorset-tour.html, somebody gave me a copy of Fortean Times, a magazine that I regularly read which specializes in the paranormal, cryptozoology, UFO's and other strange phenomena. It is issue number 349, for January 2017. On page 24 is the "Necrolog", their obituary column, and this time the tribute was to Benjamin Creme, the Scottish artist and esoteric author who had just died at the ripe old age of ninety-three. Creme became interested in the occult as a teenager and reports that in 1945 he was summoned to a meeting in a parked car near Tower Bridge in London where some strangers told him that the Maitreya had just been born. In Buddhism the Maitreya is a future Buddha. By "the Buddha" most people generally refer to Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince who lived in about the 6th or 5th century BC and became "enlightened" after a long ordeal of meditation and ascetic discipline. However he is not the only one. According to legend, there are many others; in fact ten thousand Buddhas appear every kalpa. That sounds like a lot. Buddhas should be falling like raindrops. That is until you find out that a kalpa is a very long period of time, roughly 8.2 trillion years; far longer than scientists think the universe has existed. If you do the maths you'll realize that even ten thousand means they're still very occasional visitors and you'll be lucky to be alive at the same time one appears. The concept of the Maitreya was closely copied by Theosophy, a modern occult belief, in more recent times. It is not unlike the Jewish ideas about the messiah or the Christian Second Coming. Creme was told that the next Buddha was going to grow up in the Himalayas with his parents, but would emerge publicly when the world was ready. Creme became a modern John the Baptist like figure. He began writing and lecturing about the Maitreya, something he did almost continuously for the rest of his life. In 1982 he escalated his activities by taking out full page newspaper ads and speaking at press conferences, some of which were televised. He announced that in 1977 the Maitreya had left his home in the mountains and travelled to London. He was now living in the Asian community around Brick Lane in the East End. Very soon the time would be right for the Maitreya to go public and he would emerge onto a world stage to usher in an apocalyptic new era of happiness and harmony. Here's Benjamin Creme's website: http://www.share-international.org/. The reason I bring this up is that many people are curious about who this Maitreya is. Creme refused to give many details, but he did reveal that he was of the subcontinental persuasion, which is hardly unusual in London; but also he was very tall, about seven feet. This should make him stand out quite significantly and fairly easy to identify. However, the most important detail is that he was working as a porter at a London hospital... Yes, the messiah is a HP! This should make him easy to spot. If you are one of my EP&DBorSP's in London and you serve alongside an EP&DBP who looks Asian and it seven feet tall, could you please let me know? According to the article, in the early 80's he did permanent nightshift, but he may have been redeployed since. He must be pretty old by now, about seventy-nine, but he may not age as fast as mortal men. I'd love to meet him. I'm not religious, but I would naturally accept him as my lord and master, simply and solely because he is a HP. Interestingly, I've found out that there is a hospital called "Maitreya", but it is not in London or even the UK; it is in India, see: https://www.maitreyahospitals.com.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/08/apocalypse-soon.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/01/ben-emlyn-jones-live-at-truth-seekers.html.

Non-Humane Service

 

"CABAL" has written another essay. This is one MEP&DBP wrote some years ago and so, like we all do, he has changed his perspective a bit since. This is a snapshot of his feelings in the summer of 2012. (2012 was my last portering year. And even in that year I only enjoyed six days as a HP.) This piece is written in CABAL's usual poetic style and expresses his feelings of frustration and demoralization as he goes about his duties in an environment that neither supports his honest attitude nor protects and cares for his welfare. The issues he raises I have covered myself; an incompetent bureaucracy, untrained and overworked civilian staff, pointless rules invented to achieve nothing and just tick boxes. It matches a lot of my own thoughts and feelings at the time. I still sometimes find myself slipping back down into such "red pill rage". There's nothing wrong with that in small amounts. You'd have to lose your humanity not to experience it sometimes. CABAL himself calls them "a few bitter memories". The problem comes when that is all you feel, every day and every week. If you find yourself in that situation then you need help. That is not an insult or criticism, just a fact. Don't be ashamed to ask for it from anybody you can trust. The world is not all misery and evil, even in the NHS. It can just look like that sometimes because misery and evil have a habit of jumping to the front of the stage drawing attention and making themselves very conspicuous, thus covering up everything else. Source: https://dreamingspireart.wordpress.com/2024/07/25/non-humane-service/.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-work-by-cabal.html.

Strikebreaker

 

Once you start looking for HPing themes in fiction it's amazing how much you find that was previously invisible to you. Even a story set in the distant future out in space echoes resonantly with the tones of the gas spanner, the patslide and the lodge. Strikebreaker is a short story by one of the biggest names in science fiction, Isaac Asimov. It was first published in a literary magazine in 1957 and has since been added to several other periodicals and a couple of Asimov's numerous anthologies. Its original title was "Male Strikebreaker" which implies scabbing is a women's thing, which is not true and therefore the editor's choice made no sense to the author. The story is set on a tiny planet called Elsevere, one no bigger than one of the real minor planets of our solar system like Vesta or Eris, only this is an exoplanet; it orbits another star. A group of astronauts from earth have landed on it and created a permanent base by excavating tunnels and chambers inside it. However, their long isolation has caused them to develop some unusual political and sociological traits. Because there is no natural biosphere on Elsevere they must recycle everything they use and process all waste very carefully. The threat of scarcity and austerity looms constantly and this his has led to a highly rigid and authoritarian society; including a caste system in which people are socially segregated depending on what job they do, similar to traditional communities in India. A visitor arrives at the colony, a sociologist called Steven Lamorak who is doing a study about the community, but when he gets there he finds that there is some tension in the air. Water on the planet is reused over and over again, extracted from sewage by distillation and the toilet waste is separated and used as fertilizer for the indoor farms. This job is handled by somebody called Igor Ragusnik and his family. He is the community's untouchable, a dalit. Now he has gone on strike and is refusing to process fresh water. This would eventually lead to the death of the entire community from dehydration or potable disease. His demand is for an end to his social segregation, for his child to be allowed to play with other kids and for his wife to be able to talk to other women. He is adamant and refuses to back down. The government of the colony refuse to comply also. They know that this stalemate will result in all their deaths, but the taboo of breaking the caste system is so strong that is surpasses even their survival instinct. Lamorak decides he has no choice but to intervene and volunteer to do Ragusnik's job for him in order to save everybody's life. This would force the water processor back to his duties because his clout over the others will be gone. None of the other castes know how to do the job so Lamorak has to give himself a crash course from instruction manuals. Ragusnik is obviously furious, but Lamorak tells him that he has won the moral argument and that he needs to stop now before people die. He has achieved his aim of making the other people on Elsevere aware of his feelings and so they will subsequently begin to question the fairness of their caste segregation. Ragusnik reluctantly returns to work and the crisis is over. However when Lamorak returns to the governmental offices expecting gratitude and friendship for saving the people of Elsevere, he is forbidden entry and is informed very brusquely that he is being deported and banned permanently from the planet. The reason being, he has done the work of the untouchable himself and so is therefore now also a dalit. Strikebreaker is approximately a ten minute read. Source: http://blog.ac-versailles.fr/villaroylit/public/Strikebreaker.pdf.
 
The allegory in Strikebreaker is obvious. We HP's are all Ragusniks. The caste system described in the story actually exists, but not just in India and other places where it is very formal and regimented. It also can be found in Western capitalist societies in the form of the social class system. This is becoming more complex as history evolves, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-class-are-you.html, but is remains an unspoken and self-organizing imperative. It is not codified by law; there is no statute prohibiting a senior registrar from marrying a porter, but the rule nevertheless exists. It is enforced by peer pressure, social approval or disapproval. Such psychological and cultural forces are very powerful and history has shown they are broken far less often than official regulations. This became obvious to me when I realized that "Jack Shaw" was far angrier with me than he would have been if I had set fire to his car or stolen his wallet etc, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-lied-to-jack.html. Unlike some people, especially the trade unionists at my hospital who are very leftwing, I don't think social class structure is necessarily a bad thing. In fact it may well be inevitable and natural in an organic society free from the social engineering we see so much of today. It is worth noting that in the story, Igor Ragusnik lives in a much bigger and more luxurious house than anybody else on planet Elsevere; it's a way to compensate him for his loneliness. However, when that class system causes people to behave with groundless and senseless hostility to those "beneath them", or even the opposite in the form of inverted snobbery, that society enters into a serious pathology. For example, extreme class division over many generations produces distinct racial differences between the different classes. We see this in India with the dalits being easy to spot from a difference because they tend to have somewhat darker skin. (This may be because of invasions of the so-called Ayra from what is now Iran and Afghanistan in India's ancient past. To this day there are populations in those countries whose appearance is hardly different from white Europeans. Conversely the Tamil people of southern India have distinct facial features and skin almost as black as an African's. The many language groups of India support this hypothesis.) Over time this has a dysgenic effect, reducing intelligence, adaptability and mutual fertility. HG Wells' novella The Time Machine projects that progression into the far future in which humans have changed into the beautiful but passive "Eloi" and the degenerate and aggressive "Morlocks". I have never asked any of the John Radcliffe porters' persecutors the vital question: "Why are you doing this to us?" I suspect the answer, after a long pause, would be: "Dunno!" See the links below for details. So I reject the socialist vision of universal equality and a classless society, but at the same time I oppose the mindless chauvinism we experience in our conventional world. Can't we live in a world with different classes, but with respect and humanity shown to all people? We all have a place. We are all different, but we are all equally important.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/well-take-it-from-here.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/how-dare-you.html.

Hats

 

The picture above is a still from the 1972 film Carry on Matron. Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068339/. (I find the Carry On's generally a remarkably rich source of information for everything HP-esque. I might one day do a longer article dedicated to that particular film because it is set in a maternity unit, like where I served for nine years of my career.) Here we see a desk and/or senior porter in the uniform of his era, played by the actor Derek Francis. He is dressed in a white-and-tie, as you'd expect from more recent codes; but his uniform includes a jacket and peaked cap. Porters in hospitals are traditionally bareheaded and mostly have been for as long as records can be found. (This is a pattern I see across the civilian professions too. The traditional nurses' bonnet has also gone after shrinking considerably over the years until it was just a folded napkin tucked into a ponytail. They were phased out soon after I joined up.) I think I'd like to have worn a hat as part of my uniform. Possibly for general duties something more utilitarian would have done, like a baseball cap, the kind the police wear in some countries. The peaked cap would be suitable for more public and formal roles, like desk. A hat gives a sense of professionalism and position; self-discipline and authority. I, for one, think we should introduce it for our own uniform. Please comment below if you agree or disagree.

Is Lucy Letby Innocent?

 

Why is it only now that the question has entered the mainstream media that Lucy Letby might be innocent? Her trial is complete and now all that's left is for her to live out her life behind bars. This will not be a happy life. She will need to be held in permanent solitary confinement because HMP Bronzefield is home to some very mean bitches and some of them are mothers. How will they regard a woman who kills babies? What would they do to her if they caught her? Therefore if a mistake has been made it is very important that it be corrected. To be fair, a few journalists have raised questions previously about the neonatal nurse from Cheshire, such as Peter Hitchens, see below, but these were largely curtailed. It is possible publicity has only increased now because the end of her trial has lead to reporting restrictions being lifted. These restrictions are unfortunately indispensable so that the public, and therefore the jury, could not claim to be biased about her case. The downside of that is that the government, police and judiciary have a monopoly on the narrative given to the media and therefore said public. Lucy Letby graduated with a nursing degree in 2011 and began her service at the Liverpool Women's Hospital before moving to the Countess of Cheshire Hospital. She was determined to be a paediatric or neonatal intensive care nurse and she trained hard to qualify in that discipline. She once told people that general nursing was boring. Investigations began with typical NHS passive aggression and dithering; in 2015 a group of consultants "asked" the nursing officer to "move" Letby to a non-clinical role. She was transferred to a patient liaison team. Naturally it is a sad fact of life that in a neonatology unit (At OxRad this was called a SCBU, Special Care Baby Unit; usually pronounced "skuh-boo") babies are going to die regularly. They are often born prematurely and so cannot breathe by themselves or digest food. However, that particular unit had always experienced an average of two to three deaths per year; yet in a single month, June 2015, they suffered three. A fourth baby nearly died with a similar pathology to the other three, but was happily saved. There was another death the following month. Then the head paediatrician of the unit noticed that there was a single common factor; Letby had been on duty for all of them. This could have been a coincidence; after all she was known to put in a lot of overtime. The Trust board and Quality Care Commission rejected concerns on this basis. A year later following a number of other unexplained deaths the doctors once again petitioned the board for action, but the board refused. Interestingly once of their concerns was for the Countess of Cheshire's reputation, the very thing they used to dismiss me, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html. Following a fresh investigation by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, they concluded that the anomalous increase in deaths existed but had no obvious cause and therefore management could not be blamed. Around the same time Letby won an official grievance for being taken off the unit and was returned to frontline clinical care, this time at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool. Her accusers among the Countess neonatal team were ordered to write her a letter of apology. The police were first called in April 2017 and they immediately set up an undercover investigation to establish the cause of the deaths on the Countess neonatal ITU called "Operation Hummingbird". Eventually, after more than two and a half years since the spotlight of suspicion first shone on her, Lucy Letby was arrested. The irony is not lost on me that the decision to begin investigations against me took just eight days. The police found some personal journals in which she expressed negative and aggressive emotions. These included the words: "I am evil! I did this! I killed them on purpose!" This has been interpreted by some as a confession, although Letby never confirmed that formally. For all we know this could have been the ramblings of her imagination, a dream diary or notes for a fiction project etc. She did seem to have a rather morbid fixation with the tragic side of her work, looking up the relatives of the babies who died on social media. Most incriminating of all, she altered the patient notes, something also done by Dr Harold Shipman, possibly Britain's worst serial killer. She took medical records home with her and hid them in her bedroom, which is in itself a gross breach of confidentiality law. Letby's explanations for this behaviour were totally inadequate; for example she claimed she only took these classified documents home in order to shred them. However, the hospital has its own shredder; I used to take records to it myself in carefully sealed bags. After Lucy Letby left the Countess unit the unexplained deaths and injuries stopped. She has a whole life order on her sentence which means she can never be considered for probation.
 
A lot of people online have been speaking out ever since the news reported on her charges and I have been contacted personally by three individuals asking me for my opinion. A lot of them reckon she was set up as a scapegoat to conceal the institutional irresponsibility of the Trust board and unit management. I think not. If this were true then we would see NHS nurses being carted off to the slammer every week. What's more, if that were even half true, it hasn't worked. The government has now turned its attention towards the Trust officials and ordered the DHSC to carry out the "Thirlwall inquiry" which is going to destroy a lot of careers and might even result in some criminal malpractice charges. They also face a class action lawsuit from the victims' parents. The New Yorker magazine's Rachel Aviv wrote a very long article claiming that Lucy Letby was a victim of bad luck and wilful bias in analyzing statistics. She also rejected the testimony of one of the expert prosecution witnesses, Dewi Evans, because he had been criticized for his unreliability in previous cases. Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/lucy-letby-was-found-guilty-of-killing-seven-babies-did-she-do-it. (This article is currently invisible in my country. I have included the link in case that changes.) The Guardian have published a similar article: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question. I have written a lot about Peter Hitchens in the past, for example https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/06/hold-your-nose-and-vote-tory.html, and am doing so again because he has joined this movement. He doubts the qualifications of the jury because the case involved a lot of specialist medical knowledge. There is no direct evidence against Lucy Letby. Nobody has even caught her in the act. None of the path reports have been designated as unlawful killing by a coroner, meaning that malicious intent does not have to be the only cause of what was done to the victims. None of the babies had, for example, a stab wound or unexpected injection mark. The defence could not, or would not, put expert medical witnesses of their own on the stand. It was only outside the courtroom that several doctors voiced their scepticism. The test to reveal insulin overdoses, for example, did not detect the drug itself, only the antibody response which can "cross react" with other substances. Similar doubts have been raised by other toxicology results listed on the path reports. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNB0CaKI3IM. Several people, including those who know Lucy Letby well, have said things like: "But she doesn't look like a serial killer!" or "She seemed so normal!" This is not evidence of innocence. Serial killers often do appear normal. In fact excessive normality is a bit of a red flag for me, for example: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2019/10/peter-croft-and-ben-emlyn-jones.html. Psychopaths have to wear a "mask of sanity", which is actually the title of the first book about the subject. They tend make this mask as conventional as possible to avoid suspicion. Because there is no real personality behind this facade there is no reason why it should have any oddities. People with eccentricities are usually those who are most likely to attract repulsion and distrust, but they tend to be pretty harmless... A name leaps to mind immediately! A good fictional portrait of the "Mr Perfect" who is really the opposite is Patrick Bateman, the antihero of Brett Easton Ellis' book American Psycho and Mary Harron's 2000 film adaptation. Letby was considered so ordinary by her peers that her nickname was "vanilla". However, this is not evidence of guilt either; some people are just naturally very nondescript. If Lucy Letby is the victim of a miscarriage of justice then is it deliberate or accidental? There seems to be no motive for a conspiracy to frame her. Nobody has benefited from her imprisonment, as I have said. She is not a white straight male so will not aid government's attempt to "balance the conviction rates". Is this supposed miscarriage therefore accidental or maybe just a product of the subconscious drive to assign blame so that things simply make sense? The justice system is supposed to control for that, but there are numerous examples of where it fails abysmally to do so. If this is the case, then an appeal would definitely be justified; but on what grounds? I think there is only one way, the same way accusations stuck to her in the first place: circumstantial evidence. Hypothetically, if Lucy Letby is an innocent woman wrongly incarcerated then eventually this will become very obvious through the same kind of research that was done to incriminate her in the first place. If the mysterious deaths continue then what could be the cause of those? Maybe the data gathered by the Thirlwall inquiry will help. Unfortunately building a statistical case to exonerate this young woman will take a long time, hopefully less time than the four years Operation Hummingbird was running. This article will probably be the first of a series of publications on this subject and I will shortly be presenting a special episode of The Gas Spanner about it. This will include a listener's question and answer session, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-gas-spanner-programme-89.html.

The Work by Cabal

 

My good friend and EP&DBHP "CABAL" has put ink to parchment again; this time his article is simply called The Work. It was originally written in 2009 after just two years of service, and fifteen years is a long time in hospital portering, in fact it is in anything; and his opinions have changed. He has republished this for St Theo's Day 2024. I remember him when he first joined us. CABAL had previously been assigned to a hotel in North Oxford and so had no experience of HPing or any other kind of healthcare work. He was put into it by an employment agency, the most common way anybody gets into HPing these days. I am against agencies for anything other than small scale temporary work. It is the old adage that conscripts make bad soldiers. An agency employee is literally thrust into anything and everything whether he or she likes it or not. Why should they feel any commitment or loyalty to their "placement"? It's not something they have any contractual relationship with or have any incentive to become attached to. They are less likely to bond emotionally with their colleagues or take action to gain better pay and conditions. A few decades ago agencies made up about ten thousand workers nationally. Today that figure is nine times as much. The justification is that any HP who impresses management can be offered a contract at their discretion, but some porters have been waiting years. I'm all in favour of a trial period for new employees; you should have to prove you've got what it takes to be a HP, but not for an indefinite length of time. State employers also have no incentive to favour good workers, and as I've said many times before; they strangely seem to want the opposite for some reason, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2019/05/sarah-kuteh-loses-appeal.html.
 
CABAL describes his first day in HPing and how it feels so transient and unique, before the familiarity of experience kicks in. I felt exactly the same when I started in 1988. His experience also totally gels with mine and he has also read Hard Work by Polly Toynbee, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/05/hard-work-by-polly-toynbee.html. CABAL then brings up a thorny subject, internal racism. HPing in the present day, like all low paid and low conventional status jobs in Britain, is done primarily by recent immigrants. The JRH lodge was filled with people from all over the world, but there were significant numbers in particular from the Philippines, Eastern Europe, the Indian subcontinent and Africa. A lot of us felt that the Filipinos especially practiced a form of national nepotism. I don't really mean that as a criticism; perhaps it is just human nature. We are naturally a tribal species after all. Many of the native porters felt they were being discriminated against in this situation. That demographic of course includes myself; but, whether it was justified or not, I never experienced that emotion personally. I found that my loyalty to my EP&DB&SP's drowned out any sense of resentment I might have otherwise felt. This is difficult for me to write about because I know CABAL and we're good friends. He is from Poland and his life has therefore been shaped by the current government immigration policy. I bear him no ill will personally and felt happy serving alongside him, as I did many other of my brother porters from around the globe. I understand why so many people want to come and live in this country, even risking their lives crossing the English Channel in totally inadequate craft. Wouldn't I do the same in their shoes? I once spoke to a young woman in sterile supplies. She was Hungarian and her mother back home in Hungary did the same job at a large hospital in Budapest. The mother earns less in a month than her daughter does in a week! However, detaching emotions and elements of my personal life and taking a step back... I oppose government immigration policy. Most native British people do. I know many people who are not racially native but have been born here who agree with me. CABAL is right that one of the reasons for this quandary is because many natives in the UK are essentially priced out of the job market. For some of us, especially if we have large families, it is actually more lucrative to remain unemployed than join the "precariat". The cost of labour has dropped so low it is just not worth working. My solution would be to find a way to raise the cost of labour and therefore enrich the activity of employment. Mass immigration is just keeping a leaking bucket full; the government is not plugging the leaks. I would include making work more pleasant and fun as well as a way to make more money; which is really what the HPWA is all about. There is a lot more CABAL could have said and he ends his article with a summary. Again, these are issues I totally understand and have covered extensively. I think we both feel inspired by the words of Polly Toynbee, that HPing has the potential to be a wonderful occupation in every way. Doing it is very important because it is an essential element of a team on which millions of people's lives depend. Why is it not? Can't we make it so? Source: https://dreamingspireart.wordpress.com/2024/06/01/the-work-an-essay-2009/.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/04/cabal-on-breathtaking.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/08/cabal-on-paper-mask.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/05/cabal-on-nurses-day.html.

Honourary HP's

 

Where you born on June the 1st? If so, firstly, happy birthday for last week. Secondly, could you please email me at bennyjay74@gmx.co.uk. I'm doing some research into a connection between St Theo's Day births and hospital portering in general. I'll ask you a series of questions such as: Have you ever been a HP? Is anybody in your family a HP? etc. When my research project is finished I'll be in touch to let you know if there is a statistical significance. I will be asking professional pollsters and statisticians to help me. I could therefore make you all honourary HP's! A number of celebrities might qualify such as the actors Morgan Freeman, Edward Woodward and Bob Monkhouse; the actress Marilyn Monroe; the musicians Ronnie Wood and Jason Donovan; and Dinesh Karthik the cricketer.

Happy St Theo's Day 2024!

 

In advance!... Apologies, but I will be away on St Theo's Day itself this year, so... On behalf of every serving hospital porter, every former hospital porter, and everybody else who loves, appreciates and supports us, with all the Pride and Dignity of my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Porters, I'd like to wish all my friends and readers, a very happy St Theo's Day; in advance for this St Theo's Day, Saturday the 1st of June.
See here for The Gas Spanner St Theo 2023: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-gas-spanner-programme-85.html.

Cabal on Nurses' Day

 

Nurses have an equivalent to the hospital porters' St Theo's Day, International Nurses Day. This takes place on May the 12th, although in the United States they have National Nurses' Day which is on May the 6th. (Americans stubbornly insist on being different about almost everything!) My brother porter "Cabal", an articulate poet, essayist and commentator, has written his own opinion piece on Nurses' Day. It is honest and fair, and positive; being complimentary where compliments are deserved. I totally agree with his assessment of a HP's carbolicky cohorts. He also links to a rock video with a very nostalgic 80's ambiance. It is of a Polish new wave band called Lady Pank. I'd never heard of them before Cabal told me about them; but then Poland does not export a lot of its contemporary culture. The vocalist looks a lot like the actor Rufus Sewell. The song is called Ratuj Tylko Mnie which means "Rescue only me" and it is about a sick man in hospital with a desperate desire to be attended to by a nurse, with the sexual insinuation inevitable in pop music. Source: https://dreamingspireart.wordpress.com/2024/05/12/tribute/.

"We're Porters Through and Through!"

 

A reedited version of an article I wrote on the original HPANWO blog in 2008.

I guess by now you'll all be thinking I'm a bit bigheaded. "What a conceited sod that Ben is! Strutting around like that, posing in his uniform." Well in a way you'd be right. I'm a bigheaded hospital porter, an arrogant tradesman! But I'm not bigheaded in the sense that I think I'm better than anyone else. I don't believe I'm worth more than any other human being; I just don't believe I'm worth any less. I think I've unknowingly created this image of myself as a persona that is meant to be a kind of satire of other arrogant tradesmen, simply because HPing is not meant to have them. It's fine to be arrogant if you're a celebrity or in the armed forces, and this satirical self-character I've created is a reaction to this elephant-in-the-room double-standard that is blindly accepted and rarely questioned. I suppose I want people to ask the question: Why, oh why is it different if you're a HP, or cleaner, dustman or in any of the other so-called "lowly" jobs? Why are there even such things as "lowly" jobs as opposed to "non-lowly" ones? As I explain in the other articles, the reactions I get from people vary from ridicule to rejection to hostility and even violence: "But you're only a porter! What do you mean you're 'proud'!? Hang your head and bow your shoulders in shame! Do it! NOW!... Please! You have to for my sake! Don't you know what you're doing to me? You're making my whole worldview fall apart. I have to reassess everything now!"

Hard Work by Polly Toynbee

 

A reedited version of an article I wrote on the original HPANWO blog in 2008.
I was given a copy of the book this book by a retired doctor I met on July the 6th 2008. I was attending a party hosted by the Lord Mayor of Oxford to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service; I was representing the porters for our hospital's principle trade union UNISON. The doctor had been a young GP in 1948 and was one of the first British physicians to sign her practice over to the NHS. The 2003 book Hard Work by Polly Toynbee chronicles her experiences as she does some of the worst paid jobs in Britain. The author is a veteran liberal journalist who has been raising awareness of social injustice for almost forty years. There is serious poverty in Britain today; and for a change it's not because of unemployment. Fewer people are out of work than during the Thatcher years of the 80's, and most of the poor are not unemployed, but working. A whole sector of super-low paid jobs have emerged under the Blair regime. This has resulted in the emergence of an underclass of employed poor numbering over three million. The majority are women and a large proportion are foreign workers; simply grateful to be in this country after having escaped even worse poverty in their homelands, they are ripe picking for slave labour by public service contractors. The poverty today is less in-your-face than it used to be. Poor people don't wear cloth caps and flannel and more; because of low-cost fake designer clothes, poor people dress the same way as the rich. I found this book very poignant and the author is clearly enraged over the issue, quite rightly. She spent a few months with an employment agency going from one low-paid job to another: care home worker, shop assistant, school dinner lady, bakery worker and... hospital porter.
 
Obviously her experience with hospital portering interested me the most. As a young journalist in 1970 she worked as a porter at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. Then the foreign crew was made up mostly of people from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean; today they are mostly from Africa, the Arab world, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. Why? For the same reason: They are cheap, willing and easy to exploit. The hospital has changed since the author's last portering tour; the greasy red-bricked Victorian buildings have been knocked down and replaced by a steel and glass PFI corporate fortress; like the new development at my own hospital, the John Radcliffe. She does an outstanding job of researching the life of a porter there. The observations she makes are very perceptive and really strike a chord with me. There's the frustration of working in a depleted department of a depleted NHS; unsanitary levels of hygiene, inadequate equipment, training and tools to do your job. She understands that portering has the potential to be a truly enjoyable and satisfying occupation for all involved. She enjoyed her contact with the patients and the camaraderie with the other porters. She realized how important the role is and says: "The porters seemed like the life-blood of the place or perhaps like the engine oil that greases the system." We have a position and duty that can help patients at their hardest times: "Trundling along, waiting for lifts patients like to chat and tell their operation stories, worrying about what happens next, confiding about their families or the doctors and nurses they liked and feared." She also became aware of the social violence we have to experience from the Conformist Regime through the absurd and inhuman status hierarchy: "We knew the snappy receptionists in some clinics, the downright rude nurses in some wards, the very friendly ones elsewhere, the places where nurses would let you stop for a quick coffee, other kitchens where you would be chased away. An arrogant male staff nurse was the worse: 'You, porter person, come here!' he snapped with deep disdain. It was ever thus, the notch above in the hierarchy is always the class in any workplace that gives you a hard time; the Kulaks, the foreman. This was hospital life from the underside; where passing doctors belonged to another universe, even the young medial students (they never held the door open for a porter with a patient, letting it swing without acknowledgement). The nurses straddled the two worlds, snooty ones placing themselves beyond communication with porters and cleaners, the nice ones helpful and welcoming. You could bet that those who were nice to porters were nice to patients too. One thing became clear: people are recognized more by their status than their face. I was now a porter first, myself second. Passing by in the corridors and wards, I saw several consultants I had interviewed in the past; one of whom I knew quite well. But porters are part of the invisible below-stairs world, the great unnoticed. None of them ever recognized me". She sees that the pay structure is "Byzantine". The contractor itself employs so many agency workers that the staff are all paid differently for doing the same job. The fact that the ancillary staff at the hospital were contracted out gave her a feeling of being divorced from the health service family (as I do too). And the agency staff were "twice removed". Agency staff also have no contractual rights to the job they do; they can be hired and fired at will, which explains why they're so beloved by the PFI cowboys. They also don't have rights to things like negotiated pay deals, most are not unionized. Things have improved slightly since Toynbee wrote the book. At my own hospital the existing crew, including myself, were transferred over on the ROE scheme- Retention of Employment- which allowed us to stay in NHS employment and merely be seconded to the contracting private company. But because of the turbo-charged turnover of the casualized portering service, we pre-contract staff are already in a small minority working alongside agency slaves.
 
Toynbee feels very strongly that the situation could be improved through proper funding and long-term investment in the cheap-and-nastyfied public sector, and I don't deny that she's right; it would be a vast improvement. But in reality the problem runs far deeper than she realizes, and its solutions therefore have to be more drastic. This is an issue I address in more detail in the other HPANWO blogs. If you are a HP or work in one of the other so-called "menial and lowly" professions then quit walking round with your head down and your shoulders slumped! Hold you head high and let your arms swing! Polly Toynbee doesn't have her own website, but here's her Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Toynbee. You can find out more about Hard Work here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/991577.Hard_Work.

"Don't Tell 'em We're Porters!"

 

What I consider one of the most important messages for hospital porters was one I wrote in an article in 2007 on the main HPANWO Blog so I have reposted a new reedited version here. It is still equally relevant:
A few months ago I spent an evening down town with some of my brother porters. We drifted from pub to pub as lively fellers do, sampling the beverages and talking to people. All at once a group of attractive looking women came up to us and we began a conversation. One of my friends, Steve, not his real name, immediately took me to one side and whispered fiercely in my ear: "For God's sake don't tell 'em we're porters!" He then turned back to the group without giving me a chance to reply. One of the girls then asked: "So what do you guys do for a living?" Steve replied: "We work up at the John Radcliffe Hospital." "Oh really." she said. "Doing what? Are you a nurse?" Steve shrugged. "No, we… just help out."... "We're porters." I interjected in a loud voice. There was a tense silence. Steve glared at me. The conversation continued for a few minutes then the girls said goodbye and left the pub. Steve was furious with me: "Why did you do that, Ben!? What the hell were you thinking of, telling those girls we were porters!? Do you think I want to women like them to know I'm only a hospital porter!?"

There are pimps and drug dealers who are not ashamed to declare publicly what they do for a living; why is it that HP's, people who provide essential services to society, feel that they cannot? Not only HP's like myself; but cleaners, dustmen, road-sweepers and those who maintain public toilets. We talk about getting a "good job" and "I want a better job". This usually means a job that earns more money, but not always. A policeman, fireman or member of the armed forces enjoys a high-profile job without being extremely rich. It seems to me that we live in a world where jobs have been categorized into a hierarchy of status. Different levels of status have been arbitrarily attached to jobs within the hierarchy that usually do not relate to that job's importance or contribution to the human world. A stockbroker enjoys high status, yet society could easily function without them (some might claim it would even be better off), however the man who removes and processes our rubbish is vital to human wellbeing. Without him every city would have long ago been buried under a mountain of its own waste. But if you were to meet a stockbroker and a dustman at the same time, who would you consider the most important?

Any system of groundless values is part of what I used to call the conformist regime. There's an interesting scene in the film Babe that gives a perceptive summary of the conformist regime. The scene begins with the little piglet, Babe, trying to follow his adopted mother, Fly the sheepdog, into the farmhouse. Fly turns to Babe and says: "I'm afraid pigs aren't allowed in the house." Babe asks "Why's that, Mum?" and Fly replies: "That's just the way things are." That's just the way things are. It just is. So many questions are answered with that non-explanation, and we simply accept it. I imagine that when Fly was a puppy she asked her own mother the same question and got the same response, and again when Fly's mother was a puppy etc. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp_2UmOEQvU. I've previously mentioned another example of a very frustrating and upsetting aspect of HPing, "Popping the question", see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/10/popping-question-responses.html. This happened less and less later in my service because word got round the hospital about what my answer would be. It didn't take long though until I discovered a much more sinister side to these questions, from one of the ODP's- Operating Department Practitioners, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-lied-to-jack.html. The solution is to see the conformist regime for what it is and reject it. But that can't happen by courting favour from the system. That can only happen if your self-respect comes from within and is not dependant on how others see you. It means being proud to be a porter, or a cleaner or a toilet attendant or a road sweeper even if every other person in the world demeans you. It actually means that Steve should be willing, even eager, to tell those attractive girls we met that he is a hospital porter. If they then lose interest in him because of that then as the old saying goes "If I ain't good enough for you... then you ain't good enough for me!" Since I made the decision to do that I actually felt happier because, even though I may have fewer friends, and have had even fewer girlfriends, I know that the few friends and lovers I have had are true friends and lovers who accept me for who I am. I also enjoy the notion of doing a job that is important and essential regardless of its status. I find it more interesting, exciting and rewarding. My experience with Steve hurt me more than anything any civilian has said to me. I'm not really bothered when I hear: "Porters? They're shit!" I get bothered when I hear: "Porter? We're shit!" It doesn't matter what civilians think of us; what matters is what we think of ourselves. Unfortunately some of my brother and sister porters have a passionate belief in their own worthlessness and will staunchly defend it from all borders. As you can guess, these porters don't get on very well with me. But a friend to all is a friend to none.