The NHS to be Privatized

Is there a name for a news story that is in the news when it shouldn't be? Perhaps "un-news" or "anti-news". I'm talking about a journalistic truism, for example: "Official government sources say that there's a strong likelihood that the Prime Minister will attend Parliament some time this month." There's such a story in the news today, it's about the privatization of the National Health Service: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/will-lib-dems-halt-hunts-backdoor-nhs-privatisation. The reason I think this shouldn't be news is that everybody knows the Government are privatizing the NHS, they've been doing it for almost forty years! Plans for NHS privatization were probably hatched soon after the NHS' introduction in 1947 and small reforms in that direction were made from the start. I was an NHS serviceman for twenty-three years and so know very well that it was happening because I saw it from the inside, but even to the general public it must have been obvious. I think this subject illustrates something important about our relationship to our governments.

We in the UK are very lucky; few countries have a publicly-funded free healthcare system available to all. Most nations have a system of health insurance like Medicare in the United States. Under these systems you insure your health like you do anything else, for instance your house or your car. This means that the insurer will have to assess you for risk in order to calculate your premiums, as he would with the example of a car or house. If you are generally fit and well and have had few illnesses then your premiums will be low, but if you develop a long term health problem, like asthma, diabetes or arthritis, your premiums will go up. If these illnesses endure for a long period of time or worsen then the insurance company may well decide that you present too much of a risk and cancel your contract; your body essentially becomes a write-off. For this reason in nations where free public healthcare institutions exist, the citizens are always very fond of them and would never willingly give them up. But at the same time most people have the naive concept that if their government did choose to dismantle their free healthcare system they'd come on the TV news and announce it openly; this is not how governments work at all. What they do when they want to introduce an unpopular policy is use several tricks that have been identified. In the case of the British NHS privatization they have used gradualism. David Icke calls this "the Stepping Stones Approach" or "Totalitarian Tip-Toe". Another popular analogy is the "Frog in a Saucepan": If you throw a frog into a pan of boiling water it will jump straight out again so quickly that it will not suffer harm; but if you throw a frog into a pan of cold water and very slowly turn up the heat it will swim around quite happily while it cooks! This scam has also been used to introduce the European Union. NHS privatization began in the 1960's when charges were introduced for dentists; this was done under a Labour government, the first of Harold Wilson's. This is another important myth to bust: Democracy is a con! See here for background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/who-did-you-vote-for.html. NHS privatization is considered the brainchild of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government of the 1980's, but that's false; when Labour retook Downing Street in 1997 they didn't only continue the policies of the previous government, the same policies they'd spent the last eighteen years lambasting, they accelerated them! In fact Tony Blair went into areas of private finance that Thatcher would never have dared to tread.

What happened was that during the 1980's the NHS was financially starved by budget cuts; then in the late 80's, when I joined Hospital Portering, hospitals were allowed to leave local Health Authority control and become "independent" trusts. At the same time hospital ancillary services, including my own, were contracted out to private companies. This was a disaster and was eventually reversed, but not before enormous damage had been done to the quality of the service and long term standards of practice; you could say that the policy did its job! This was followed by PFI- the Private Finance Initiative; this meant that all building and renovation work done in the NHS, and indeed on all Government premises, would be carried out by contractors under a credit agreement. At my hospital, the John Radcliffe, the company Carillion plc was brought in to build the West Wing, a six hundred million pound extension which included over three hundred beds for the district's neurology, plastics, ear, nose and throat services, and the Oxford Eye Hospital. Basically everything which had been housed at the old Radcliffe Infirmary site, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/radcliffe-infirmary-site-in-oxford_7.html. The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust is paying Carillion plc back the money it cost to do this work; but the loan is for thirty-three years and will cost far more in terms of interest. I remember people saying at the time: "Can't they see this will bankrupt the Trust!" Yes! But perhaps it's meant to! And this is my prediction for the future: The various NHS trusts will default on the loans and the contractors will repossess their constructions, exactly like a mortgage-lender would for a private house. I can see GP's being made to charge patients for visits, clinic appointment fees next, then "bed-rent" for inpatients... and we will look back at what has taken place over the last few decades and say: "How on Earth did this happen!? We never agreed to this!" But we did. We agreed through our apathy, our naivete and inability to rumble the Government's ruse.

I'm writing this article from one level of knowledge when I know there is a far higher one. Many more issues are involved. I'm well aware that the privatization of the NHS is only a subsidiary concern when we take into account the domination of the Pharmaceutical industry. Whether we have an NHS or not, the healthcare system is merely a marketplace for Big Pharma and I'm very concerned about that, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/reginald-gill-cancer-therapist-in.html. But I think it is still important to understand if only as an example of how the Frog in a Saucepan, Totalitarian Tip-Toe, whatever you choose to call it, works. It's a lesson we need to learn because the Government will try to use this trick to dupe us again. As James Madison, the fourth President of the United States once said over two hundred and fifty years ago: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Jimmy Savile in Hospital Satanic Underworld

Reports have emerged that Jimmy Savile engaged in Satanic rituals while serving as a Porter at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. See: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/370439/Jimmy-Savile-was-part-of-satanic-ring. The witness described an ordeal that took place in 1975 and came forward to relate it to a therapist in 1992, many years before the story broke in the mainstream media in 2012. The incident took place in the hospital's basement, which, like that at my hospital the John Radcliffe, is huge and labyrinthine. It consists of service tunnels, underground storerooms, boilers, tanks and other machinery spaces. The witness describes him as "not the leader"; then who was!? The witness was aged just twelve at the time; nevertheless she was brutally beaten and raped by the adults present, including Savile. Reports about Jimmy Savile's abusive nature were not even published until 1998 in the book ...And the Truth Shall Set You Free by David Icke. Despite this, why did it take over 20 years for this story to come to light, after the villain had died without being caught? That's a long story the really needs its own article.

I know what you're going to ask: Have I ever heard about any similar goings on at my hospital? No. If I had I'd have spoken out about it immediately. Hospitals are highly secretive places and all staff are bound by an official code of confidentiality which means we simply do not discuss what goes on within the walls of a hospital with people who are not directly involved. Therefore it is perfectly possible for all kinds of hair-raising and stomach-turning activities to go on in a hospital without anybody outside it ever finding out. To be honest there are things I experienced in my twenty-three year service that I'm not willing to discuss, mostly for my own peace of mind, but which would shock you if I did; but none of them are relevant to stopping the New World Order. For something as serious as this report about Savile I'd break the confidentiality rules without a qualm and have it up on HPANWO the very same day.

This is not the first time stories have broken out about strange goings on in hospitals. In fact I include one of them in my new novel The Obscurati Chronicles, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/obscurati-chronicles-part-10.html. A few years ago the Australian researcher Stephanie Relfe published The Mars Records which, among many other things, suggested that there were secret bases under most major hospitals, see: http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2011/06/the-mars-records-by-stephanie-relfe-bsc-vols-i-and-ii-micheal-relfes-memoirs-of-20-years-at-the-us-s.html. I did check to see if there was any trace of anything like that at the John Radcliffe but couldn't find any. If any of my serving Brother and Sister Porters have heard anything along these lines since my discharge then could they please let me know; in the strictness of confidence.

One Year On

It is one year ago to the day that I was discharged from the Hospital Portering Service.

See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/01/thirteen-years-on.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/ben-emlyn-jones-on-richplanet-tv.html

And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/ben-emlyn-jones-live-at-ldidg.html

And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/ben-civilian.html

I wondered back then what would become of me. Would I survive? Would I lose my home and end up living on the streets? Would I be able to carry on with HPANWO? The answers are no, no and yes respectively. I have a new job, I am still living at the same place as I was and can afford all I need to eat. I can also afford regularly to visit my lovely Ustane in Nottingham. It's true that I have a much smaller income than I did as a Hospital Porter; I couldn't do my usual tour of the conference circuit this year, but I still went to the two Exopolitics conferences, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/disclosure-city-people.html . Also this wonderful caring universe provided several conferences that were cheap and easy to get to, like BUFORA: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bufora-conference-2012.html . Last years BUFORA event was in Northumberland; if it had been there again there would have been no way I could have got to it. Since then I have started HPANWO Radio, which would have been very difficult if I were still a Porter because of doing shift work. I have made many new friends and have done my first live conference lectures. I've been in a very similar situation to Tony Farrell and Kevin Annett, but compare my experience to theirs. Both those men lost their homes, Kevin lost his family... I have no right to complain! I've come through this experience very easily. What will the second year of my post-Portering life bring? Who knows!

It's true that I miss the hospital; I miss the camaraderie of Portering. Whatever happens in the future, my life as a Hospital Porter will always be one of the foundation stones of my experience of this world. But I don't miss Portering or the hospital as much as I feared I would. Just a few short months after my dismissal the hospital's social club closed, which is extremely significant and symbolic of the malaise that currently affects the NHS; see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-social-club-today.html. The word I hear from my Brother and Sister Porters and the civilian staff I've kept in touch with is that this malaise is getting worse. The end result will be the destruction of the NHS entirely, which was always the Government's plan from day one; day one in this case being in the late 1970's. It's taken almost 40 years to demolish one of the country's best-loved institutions, but with gradualism, problem-reaction-solution, along with apathy and demoralization on our parts, anything can be pruned. No, I've got few regrets. Despite the difficulties I face, I'm better off out of it.

Paper Mask Online

A few clips from the 1990 film Paper Mask are available online, eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=329DevoTQps

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wux-JfYe7G0

It's only a matter of time before some fool uploads the entire travesty. I hate this film. I hate, hate... HATE it. I feel a loathing for it that is so passionate it is almost soul-consuming. Words are simply not adequate to express the vicious and obsessive revulsion that courses through my heart at the mere thought that it once sullied a cinema screen. A brief glimpse of just a single still poisons my system with such a toxic disgust that I am almost incapacitated. As regular HPANWO-readers will know, I am a libertarian and I oppose all forms of censorship... but if I didn't oppose it, I would call for all the existing reels, digital copies and videotapes of Paper Mask to be burnt publicly in the centres of all British towns and cities, and the ashes carried by hospital bed to a grinder where they would be pulverized down to the molecular level; and then buried in a concrete vault five hundred feet underground with warning signs on the ground above in twenty languages and a symbolic non-linguistic code to alert future humans, who may not speak any modern languages, not to risk opening the contaminated chamber beneath, and to let it lie there forever, safely isolated from the environment until the half life of burnt plastic, steel and acetate has expired. I'd also round up the entire cast and crew, right down to the boy in the studio who made the tea, and lock them in the deepest dungeon in merry England until they stop knocking on the door for their bread and water. One critic described it as "underrated". Excuse me? I think it's overated and has been so since the viewer at the front of the queue at the premier passed a single penny over the box office counter.

I wrote an article a while ago called Hospital Porters in the Media detailing my search for some fictional media piece which portrayed Hospital Porters in a positive light and failed, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/hospital-porters-in-media.html. Paper Mask is a film hardly anybody has heard of, and I'm glad because obscurity has never been more richly deserved. It follows the story of a "lowly"... (UGH!)... Hospital Porter who steals the identity of a doctor and impersonates him. I'm am so utterly sick and tired of Hospital Porters being portrayed as frustrated doctors and nurses, walking round with their heads bowed and their shoulders slumped in shame and low self-esteem. Do I need to say it again? I am very proud to have been able to call myself a Hospital Porter. If events hadn't taken me in a different direction, I'd have been happy to have served the rest of my life in the Hospital Portering Service.

If you're a Hospital Porter or ex-Hospital Porter and you've been effected by the issues raised in this film then help is available from the HPWA. Just send a private message to "Hagbard Celine" on the HPANWO Forum, see Links column; you will need to register as a member first. Don't lose hope. You are not alone. We're here to help you.

Registering the HPWA

I’ve recently done some more work in the planning of the HPWA, hopefully this will help silence the accusations of fraud that have been leveled at me and it will also mean that the HPWA will be taken more seriously in its activities. However I’ve discovered that not all charities can, or must, register with the Charities Commission. To begin with the income of the charity must be over £5000 per year. Also not all voluntary organizations which are run by gift donations of money can be defined as “charities”. To be defined as such the organization has to meet certain criteria and it means we, as a group, (I saw “we” because I don’t expect to be the only one involved forever) must ask ourselves some questions. The Charity Commission says that an organization can only be a charity if it has aims which are for the benefit of the public, and we have to demonstrate public benefit, see: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Start_up_a_charity/Guidance_on_registering/Demonstrating_public_benefit_index.aspx As you can see there are many linked documents which will mean that it will be necessary to do some research, but really in this case the answer is simple and obvious: Of course the HPWA’s goals are for the benefit of the public. Nobody can possibly question that! The objective of the HPWA is to provide care, counseling and support for Hospital Porters, ex-Hospital Porters and their families. And any society which has a healthy Hospital Portering Service is a healthy society in every other way too; it’s that simple.

So for now I’m not in a place to register the HPWA as a charity under the 2011 Charities Act for England and Wales. It’s possible that we may qualify under the “Excepted” or “Exempt” category, but I’m not sure yet, see: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Start_up_a_charity/Do_I_need_to_register/Excepted_charities_index.aspx More later!

Accusations of Fraud

I’m writing this because somebody has been going round the Net accusing me of fraud. They’re claiming that The HPWA is a fake charity set up deliberately so I can embezzle money to myself, in the same way that the British politician Jeffrey Archer did a few years ago with his fraudulent charity that was supposed to be helping the Iraqi Kurds. He was sent to jail for that, quite rightly! Let me reassure you right now that the HPWA is a genuine charity and its sole intention to raise money to help Hospital Porters and ex-Hospital Porters, and their families, in times of need and support. Everything I do will be legal and above board. You'll see.

My accuser has no evidence at all; they’re just saying it for the hell of it: “I think Ben is setting up a fake charity to make money”. I will not stand for my name being smeared in this way. I’m politely requesting that my accuser, you know who you are, ceases as desists these accusations right now! I’m only going to ask once...

What Now for the HPWA?

If you’re a regular reader of the other HPANWO blogs you’ll know that I’ve been discharged from the Hospital Portering Service, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-i-became-ex-hospital-porter.html and: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/ben-civilian.html . So, you might ask, does this mean it’s all over for the HPWA? Well, in a word, no. There’s no doubt the financial difficulties I’m now facing will mean I‘ll have to change the organization of the HPWA to an extent; I now no longer have the ability to pre-invest. This means that the actual fundraising events I do will be limited to what I can afford from my civilian employment, at least to begin with. But just because I’m no longer a serving Hospital Porter doesn’t mean that I cannot run a charity for Porters and ex-Porters. After all there are many people who are ex-Armed Forces and who are actively involved in Help for Heroes, see: http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/ . The good news is that many of the actual plans I had for the first sponsored events are extremely low budget. Watch this space and I’ll soon give you the details!