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.