"It Doesn't Work!"

 

I've said many times that it doesn't bother me so much when civilians look down at porters, but it causes me a lot of distress when porters look down on porters. I recently wrote about a very disturbing conversation I had with a fellow HP in which he argued for his own worthlessness and became annoyed with me for disagreeing with him, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-delegation-argument.html; and he is not alone. Most of my brother and sister porters really like the idea of dignity statements. As you know, they work best when you have another HP with you when you are carrying one out. However, there were a handful who were rather irritated about the concept. "It doesn't work, Ben! They don't care!" they used to say to me. I found this cynicism over dignity statements upsetting, especially because it was coming from a HP. Ironically these HP's tended to be the individuals who complained the most about nastiness and passive aggression from civilian staff. What I offered them was a solution to passive aggression, a viable and potent defence against what they seemed to hate so much; but they just threw is away like a piece of rubbish. The fact of the matter is, dignity statements do work! How do I know that? Because everybody knows what humiliation is; it is as universal to the human experience as birth and death. What I do not understand is the desire to inflict it onto others without provocation. I have never experienced that, but I do know those who have that desire exist and that the dignity statement completely disarms them. It disarms them because they always know when they fire a humiliation missile at somebody and it bounces off. My cynics sometimes point to an example of where a dignity statement allegedly did not work. A civilian friend of mine, a HCA, once came to me and told me that she had been talking to "Miss stuck-up little bitch nurse" (one of many!) and the nurse had mentioned to my friend that I had DS'ed her a few days previously. "Why does Ben do that?" she apparently asked. "What does he mean by it?" However, I am almost certain that the nurse said this to my friend because she knew this HCA was my friend and would report back to me that the nurse had said this. It was a forlorn attempt to neutralize the dignity statement. Despite me explaining this to my portering cynic, he stubbornly insisted dignity statements were "a waste of time!" and that "they just make you look stupid!" It is sad, but some people deep down do not want to be free.

Would I Ever Have Left?

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html.
There's a question a lot of people have asked me and I have asked it to myself: Is there any situation in which I would have willingly hung up my gas spanner? After serious consideration I have decided that the answer is almost certainly no. When I look back at what I endured during my twenty-three years of service; and none of that made me even consider it, what could hit me in the future that could be worse? My brother and sister hospital porters still serving keep me informed and they tell me that in the decade without me that has just passed, things have got far worse. (I'm not claiming there is a causal link there!) I have reported a lot of these nightmares on the HPWA and The Gas Spanner radio show. However, had I been serving, none of these ordeals would have induced me to leave. It's possible I would have been dismissed because of my stubbornness when it comes to matters of principle; this almost happened twice before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/delivery-suite.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html. But to instigate my own departure from HPing? No way! I was so institutionalized that I actually couldn't imagine myself as anything but a HP. As I've said before, it's more than "just a job, mate". Envisioning myself as anything other than a HP was like envisioning myself as a centaur or a leprechaun. Not only that, but on a practical level, what else could I do? I have no formal education, no qualifications except a GCSE pass in English and French. I have no skills outside those needed for HPing and it's hard to see how most of those could be applied to any civilian profession; they are exclusive to the work HP's do. As a result I now work in a simple self-employed civilian state. I was also socially institutionalized. I lived inside a relationship bubble containing my brother/sister porters and people they all knew or were related to. I once joked about this, that I knew nobody else outside that bubble, but even at the time my laughter had a slightly sombre undertone. There are no support organizations for ex-HP's (except the HPWA of course!) or in fact for any NHS veterans. We literally jump into the dark, landing in, what for many of us, is a completely alien world. This does not affect all HP's. There are some of us who get through our service with "one foot in the lodge", doing our duties without really caring about it or getting deeply involved emotionally. I don't understand those people, but I know they exist. I was never one of them; I could never be one of them. This is a big subject that I cover elsewhere, but I do believe in fate, to a certain extent. We are definitely the directors of our own lives, yet we direct within the framework of a basic storyline, some changes in our lives are ordained by "higher forces". If what happened to me in 2012 was "meant to happen", that it was simply the time in my life that I needed to move on from HPing, then this destiny was fulfilled the only way it ever could be; I was forced out.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html.

Hospital Civilians Drug Patients

 

One of the best things about being a hospital porter is that you know you're one of the hospital good guys. Now, I am very well aware that we're definitely not perfect, for example: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/05/paul-farrell-jailed.html; but generally speaking we're lilywhites compared to the civilian professions. Very often when some act of scumbaggery occurs in a hospital, fingers instinctively point at the porters, but this is a myth that is losing credibility with each turning of the news cycle. Catherine Hudson was a nurse at the Blackpool Victoria Hospital and she has just been sentenced to seven years in prison for gross malpractice. Her accomplice, Charlotte Wilmot, has been described as a "healthcare worker" which probably means a nursing auxiliary or HCA; and she has got three years. The two served on a stroke unit and during nightshifts gave their patients extra sedation to keep them quiet in order to make the nurses' jobs easier. Hudson and Wilmot made spiteful jokes to each other on Whatsapp. I don't think that alone is necessarily insidious, as I've said before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2020/05/sick-hospital-video.html; but in this case it does seem to have served as incitement to genuine malice. Source: https://news.sky.com/story/nurse-and-healthcare-worker-jailed-after-patients-sedated-for-easy-shift-13029474. This "culture of abuse" went on for at least a year. It ended when a student nurse, known only as "Nurse A" for legal reasons, blew the whistle. She had been doing a stint on the hospital wards and discovered Hudson and Wilmot's conspiracy. Management at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust made a public statement praising the decency and courage of Nurse A... but in private I am sure they are cursing her name. I suspect once she qualifies she will be blacklisted and find a lot of career obstacles mysteriously appearing in her path. I am sure this "culture of abuse" is everywhere, and management know it and look the other way. Occasionally it pops up, like in this case and the terrible one in the background link below; but the only thing managers lament is the scandal it causes. It's the law of the jungle on those wards and the patients are the prey.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/12/nhs-nurses-destroy-patients-doll.html.

Women who Love HP's

 

I'd like to use this year's Valentine's Day to pay homage to a very special kind of woman. Women who love hospital porters. This is not my own partner; I don't have one at the moment. I did once and she was also that special kind of woman, naturally. What is so special about loving hospital porters? After all, are we not loveable? Of course we are, but we're not supposed to be. We live in a culture where relationships have been reduced to a disposable consumer product as much as everything else. The average endurance of a romantic partnership, should you be lucky enough to find one at all, is far shorter than it used to be. Convention demands that when we encounter a suitor we assess him or her as we would any other product; what can this man or woman do for me on a practical level instead of what personal qualities it is about him or her that we admire? The practical assessment includes the social status one achieves, how you measure up to others in the great hierarchy of life. This can involve a "trophy wife/husband". To fall in love with somebody of low social status means sticking two fingers up to convention and saying: "I love this man/woman!" despite conformist pressure. Septimius Severus once said: "Most men would rather face an army than the scorn of their peers." But for women you could multiply the armies by a hundred because most women find it harder to resist peer pressure than most men. They have to put up with their friends and neighbours frowning at them and muttering: "You'd think she could find a bloke with a better job!" Other men will come up to her and say things like: "What do you see in him!? He's a loser! I could give you so much more..." The amount of moral courage necessary to stand in the face of all that is incalculable. To stand and say: "I don't care! He's a great man for many reasons. And you mention his job; well he's doing one of the most important jobs in the entire world. I'm proud of him for that!" I won't be sharing this post on social media like I normally do; I'll leave it here only for dedicated HPWA readers. One reason, I must admit, is that several names come to mind when I think of these special women and I don't want to embarrass them if they recognize themselves. One had a husband who was a famous vampire hunter, as well as a HP. Another helps run a UFO group in the east of England. Her current husband is not a HP, but her first one was. I hope those two and all the other great ladies who love HP's have a wonderful Valentine's Day.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/02/valentines-day-livestream.html.

Downtime Guilt

 

I've had an angst-filled letter from a brother porter at a UK hospital, one I count among my valued readers of the HPWA and listeners of The Gas Spanner. He is unfortunate enough to have a management team whose understanding and experience of hospitals is nonexistent. He was in the lodge with some of his fellow porters one day when a manager walked in and asked them in a demeaning tone: "Don't you chaps have any work to do?" As I read this I rolled my eyes and groaned. What the manager was objecting to was what is known as "downtime", something we porters more often call "between jobs". In hospitals, our workload is unpredictable by its very nature. The number of porters you have on a shift is not the number you need to carry out all the particular tasks at a particular period of time, for that is impossible; it is the number you need to do whatever is required of us at the maximum estimated workload rate for the entire shift. In fact it is sometimes necessary to call in supernumerary staff for a situation like a major incident. It's not like a factory where there are orders and schedules for everything that allows us to plan in advance. The inevitable result is that for certain time periods we will have no work to do. Anybody with any knowledge at all about HPing would realize this. Anybody who asks such a stupid and insulting question to porters between jobs has no such knowledge. Maybe it's a sign on the times. During the last few decades, management has changed from being a role given to people within an organization with the right skills and experience, to a separate profession in itself. Head porters and other administration staff are more often parachuted in from business school or polytechnics than being promoted seniors or supervisors. We can spot them a mile off; they are usually very young, very smartly dressed and as thick as sluice water. They are the people most likely to become "good idea fairies", see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/good-idea-fairies.html. They also hate being called head porters, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/08/sometime-in-themid-90s-i-had-rather.html. This stupidity is not as recent as you might think; in fact an old porter once told me there was a blockhead at the Churchill in the '60's with a bee in his bonnet about portering downtime. He had all sorts of hatchling insights which he was sure would to "solve!" the "problem!" like cutting the postroom staff down to delivery only and making the lodge porters sort the mail between jobs. How the mail was supposed to be sorted during busy shifts had not occurred to the solitary cerebral neuron he used to think with. In some hospitals they have even tried to abolish the lodge altogether. The "new lodge" at the JRH appears to be specifically geared to be a transitional phase leading to that kind of future, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/08/new-lodge.html. I've seen porters standing in a line outside the lodge door and even sitting on the floor. What is really horrid is that management appear to be trying to manipulate the porters emotionally. They want us to feel "downtime guilt" whenever we are between jobs. They do this by making changes to the lodges such as less comfortable chairs, removing privileges such as TV sets, kettles and microwave ovens, and the aforementioned visits from desk warriors to ask snide and sarcastic questions. Do they really think that if they inject some kind of whip-cracking negative incentive we will somehow overcome this appalling laziness baked into our portering bones? A laziness that magically disappears whenever we enter a busy workload period... coincidentally!

Matilda Pigtail Girl

 

A while ago I wrote an article about a scene from the 1996 Sony Pictures film Matilda, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2020/05/pride-intelligence-guts.html. I'd like to address another scene. It's a daring thing Roald Dahl did, as well as those who adapted his book. Child abuse is not a laughing matter, and Miss Trunchbull is typical of Dahl's adult villains, very irreverently portrayed and completely over the top. Yet again we see the tables turned against the bully by the reaction of the would-be victim and their friends. This time Trunchbull decides to pick on a sweet and diminutive girl called Amanda Thripp. The reason is, Amanda has her hair in pigtails and Trunchbull doesn't like pigtails. After some verbal humiliation, Trunchbull picks up Amanda by her pigtails and spins her around herself like a throwing hammer; Trunchbull being a former Olympic hammer throw champion. She hurls Amanda into the air with enormous force. The girl is tossed high and long over the school fence; however, in the middle of the trajectory, she gains control of her flight and lands softly in a field of beautiful flowers. She slides through the field, grinning with delight as she picks the flowers on the way. When she comes to a standstill, she stands up, shakes herself and holds up the bunch, waving to her friends who cheer in response. Miss Trunchbull is furious at the outcome. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7CZ4ev7gHc. This is very similar to the cake eating scene with Bruce. The abuser finds her own actions backfire against her by the response of her target and the support of her friends. That is the lesson we hospital porters must learn, and anybody else in a similar situation.

See here for more background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2017/09/drop-dead-fred-film-review.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-future-by-stefan-molyneux.html.