Sunday 17 March 2024

HP Seeks Missing Boy

 
When a young person goes missing it is terrifying and worrying for their parents and everybody else who is close to them. When the disappearance is permanent and has no apparent explanation it is even worse. One of the most disturbing examples of just such an occasion happened in Glasgow on New Year's Day 1966. A teenage boy called Alex Cleghorn was first-footing with his two older brothers, a Scottish New Year tradition involving visiting a stranger's house bearing gifts. The three boys were walking along Govan Road in the east of the city when the two older boys, David and William, suddenly realized Alex was no longer beside them. They looked around, but he was nowhere to be seen. The police investigated, but to this day Alex is listed as a missing person. Members of Alex' family still comment on articles and social media posts about this case. It has divided the family. Some people think Alex was simply drunk and wandered off, but that doesn't explain why he never came back or contacted home. I expect fingers pointed at the brothers, as so often happens in these cases. Six years later on New Year's Day 1972 David and William retraced their steps in the forlorn hope that somehow their little brother might return. This sounds to me rather like the "Missing 411" cases investigated by David Paulides, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/03/portal-caught-on-film.html. However, it is very rare for a person to disappear so suddenly in the presence of witnesses. Source: https://www.tiktok.com/@creepyglasgow_gal/video/7251064614119623963.
 
Luckily, a hospital porter is coming to the rescue. Andy Owens lives in West Yorkshire and his bio states that he "works as a hospital porter", but in fact nobody works as a HP. HPing is not a job; it's a calling, a way of life. It's what we are and what we do; it is not a job, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html. Andy is the author of several books on the supernatural. He describes himself as "an open-minded skeptic" which makes a change from the usual kind. He is writing a new book called The British X-Files in which he describes his plan to get to the truth. See here for his website: https://owensandy.com. I have already contacted Andy and we've exchanged some emails. You might think that success is unlikely, but sometime missing people do come back, often in an equally mysterious way, for example: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2018/02/missing-skier.html. I also went missing for a while myself, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/10/ive-had-missing-time.html. I wish MEP&DBP Andy all the very best of luck in his mission. If anybody can find Alex, a HP can!
See here for more information: 

Tuesday 12 March 2024

A HP's Life without Dignity Statements

 
I know what it is like to live as a hospital porter without dignity statements because I did so for the first few years of my career. I describe two experiences from that period here: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/how-dare-you.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/well-take-it-from-here.html. There were many others. Deep down, maybe I should be grateful for those dark days because without them would there be a HPWA at all? What is it like to endure twenty-three years of that nightmare? I'm glad I never found out. But how do HP's who don't know about the dignity statement cope? What about those who positively reject it, for a recent example see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/02/it-doesnt-work.html? You can just bite your tongue and take it, but is that healthy? The brilliant 2003 comedy film Anger Management has Jack Nicholson, in one of his best performances, playing a psychotherapist. In one scene he tells one of his patients: "There are two kinds of angry people in this world, explosive and implosive. Explosive is the kind of individual you see screaming at the cashier for not taking their coupons. Implosive is the cashier who remains quiet day after day and finally shoots everyone in the store." Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw24BjNsnkw. You'll be relieved to know that I've never witnessed a HP shooting anybody in a hospital, but I have seen them blow their fuses and start shouting at the top of their voice, sometimes throwing objects around in their fury; and I've seen some civilians doing the same. Psychologists use a lot of physical metaphors when referring to emotion, like "bottling up" and "letting it out". What about the perfect stoic who bites his tongue for his entire career? I knew a porter who was six months away from retirement and he transformed into a docile sheep. As a result the rest of his section, and the civilians, used him as a walking punch-bag. We knew it was because he was just biding his time, running the calendar down; longing for that happy day when he walked out of the lodge for the last time. But memories of humiliation can torment; I've felt them. Injustice without recourse is a mental torture, and like all very intense negative emotions, it can lead to depression and post-traumatic stress that can cause physical ailments. I often wonder how much that man really enjoyed his retirement.
 
I know you'll sometimes hear phrases like "rise above it!" and "water off a duck's back!", but how honest is that? I also know many people who forgive their abusers, either from a sense of duty because of a religious belief or as a way to find personal peace. However, there is a shadow to that desire for peace. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out that abusers never forgive their victims, it is only the victim who has to forgive their abuser; and he believed this was fundamentally an expression of powerlessness. For a person without power at the mercy of another who is cruel and sadistic, you have to forgive for your own selfish needs, to avoid the only alternative which is to sit and seethe in ineffectual rage for your entire life. It was a part of what he called "slave morality". Source: https://fdrpodcasts.com/5412/how-to-never-be-bullied. In a hospital, being the type who screams at the cashier is not an option either, it will quickly get you discharged. People like that also have trouble holding down a civvy job. The only option is the dignity statement. It is the most gratifying revenge of all, and the most potent because it includes total impunity. It leads to the most sublime inner peace in a situation fraught with even the worst structural violence. There is no valour in false modesty; I believe I have made a world-changing breakthrough, one that can brighten up the lives or all my brother and sister porters; and anybody else who chooses to try it. If any readers disagree and think they have a better solution, feel free to let me know.

Tuesday 27 February 2024

"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.

Tuesday 20 February 2024

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.

Friday 16 February 2024

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.

Wednesday 14 February 2024

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.

Friday 9 February 2024

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!