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.
Monday 14 October 2024
Friday 4 October 2024
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.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/03/hp-on-ebay.html.
Wednesday 2 October 2024
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.
Tuesday 17 September 2024
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.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-class-are-you.html.
Friday 16 August 2024
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.
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.
Friday 9 August 2024
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.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-work-by-cabal.html.
Wednesday 31 July 2024
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.
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.
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