Rose Cottage Humour

A video has appeared on TikTok from the user @Jalals which appears to depict a hospital prank. Some might say it's in very poor taste and even possibly dangerous. It consists of two scenes. In the first a porter wheels a bed into a lift in which a patient's visitor or relative is standing. The porter then says: "I forgot my pass. Could you mind this for two secs?" "Watch him?" asks the visitor. "Just for two seconds; I'll be back." replies the porter. The visitor asks: "Who is this? Are they dead? What the fuck!?... Jesus!" The lift door slides shut. On the bed is a human body on a bare mattress with a sheet draped over them. We actually never transport deceased patients like that. We wrap them up in a sheet like a mummy and use a special vehicle in which they are concealed called a "box". A cosmetic mattress and pillow is placed on top of it so that it looks like a stretcher. Also we use the service lifts to move between levels to "Rose Cottage", what we call the mortuary, never those in the public areas. But suspend your disbelief if you will. The shrouded "corpse" comes back to life and sits up on the bed like a Romeroesque zombie. The man screams in terror and flees from the lift in a panic. In the second scene, the bed with the body is left alone in a main street; again this would never happen in real life, in fact it would be gross malpractice. A young man and women walk down some nearby stairs and stare at the vehicle with curiosity. The body reanimates again and they bolt back up the stairs. The man stumbles and falls down the stairs and has to climb them again. Source: https://www.tiktok.com/@jalals/video/7079709096772914433. This is almost certainly staged. It would be reckless and possibly illegal to do this for real. Shocking and scaring people that badly could warrant a charge of assault. The victims might suffer mental or physical injury. People have died of heart attacks in such situations. The perpetrators would certainly be dismissed. The acting is very good though; the people look genuinely scared and the man in the second scene probably has some experience as a stuntman because his tumble on the stairs looks authentic. Is it possible somebody in a hospital might pull a prank like that for real? I know a few who might. As I've said before, we HP's and hospital civilians do develop a rather extreme sense of humour. This is not because we're sadistic people; it is just a psychological defence mechanism. Without it we would lose our minds; for example see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2020/05/sick-hospital-video.html. This kind of thing is predictably one of the jokes in the TV series Porters, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2018/11/porters-first-series.html.

"Get off your Backside and Become a HP?"

 

Jeremy Kyle, the man once described as a "human bear baiter", justly I think, has been talking about hospital portering on his Talk TV show. (Thanks to a friend who made me aware of this.) He was interviewing Isabel Oakeshott, one of the rare journalists who openly supports Reform UK. They rant with frustration at the double standards in terms of how the government financially supports refugees with enthusiasm at the expense of the native population. That's true and I share their sentiments, but they don't stop there. They then segue to a common notion which is a dangerous train of thought. Kyle argues, and Isabel agrees, that instead of importing foreigners to do service jobs, why not get the British unemployed to do them. I also support this idea and think it's a good one, with one vital condition: these should be proper jobs with a contract and wage. Jeremy and his guest think otherwise. They promote the obscenity of "workfare", an increasingly accepted policy in many countries in which people without work and living off unemployment benefits should be forced into unpaid labour as a proviso for receiving those benefits. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzrdmCzgvTs. (He brings up HPing about three minutes in.)

The practical and ethical problems I have with this proposal are so numerous and vast that I hardly know where to start. Firstly it is beyond insulting to say that the primary cause of unemployment is laziness and if only people "got off their backsides!" to quote Jeremy, the millions on the dole would soon be off it. If this were the case then levels of unemployment would not be directly proportional to the economy. People don't suddenly just become lazy when we get a recession. The government are also effectively saying: "We can't afford to give you a proper job, so can we just pretend we're giving you a job and not pay you? Then it would look as if you were working; that's what matters." We must also refer to previous pilot schemes for such policy that failed. In one, a group of twenty long-term unemployed people were given the chance to live the Jeremy Kyle Dream, unpaid jobs cleaning the streets in a city. However the city's sanitation services had to make twenty of its properly employed staff redundant to create vacancies for the unpaid crews. As a result of workfare being adopted on a grand scale, unemployment skyrocketed as more and more working people were replaced by these civic slaves; and that's not too strong a word to use. In fact an entire sector of this "precariat" has metastasized in societies with workfare. It is unfair, abusive and only makes unemployment worse... unless the government want us all to be slaves for some reason?... What is interesting about this interview is that in the middle of his passionate monologue he mentions HPing as an example of such a profession. Is this a compliment or a slur? Is Jezza saying HP's are such essential workers that our services have to be provided for as a priority, no matter what; or is he listing HPing as one of those menial, invisible, below stairs activities that are so background and unobtrusive that everybody just assumed that they just happen automatically and therefore don't matter, and so can be done by parachuting street urchins into the role and making them do it without a wage? I'm not sure, but knowing Kyle I doubt if he is thinking respectful thoughts as he speaks like this. I do find it interesting that HPing was the first and instinctive occupation that popped into his head as an example. Why? Does he read the HPWA?
See here for background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-trial-of-jeremy-kyle.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2015/02/cameron-pushes-workfare.html.

Blogging Costs Jobs- Review

 

It is now thirteen years since Trystan Swale wrote his article about me entitled Blogging Costs Jobs. A screenshot can be seen in the illustration above and here is the text. The original is long gone. Trystan has a habit of jumping from platform to platform, deleting everything he leaves behind afterwards:

Blogging Costs Jobs
Until very recently Ben Emlyn-Jones was a hospital porter. Then he got sacked from his job; seemingly for some of the content he has posted to his blog and on YouTube. It is a tale that is a lesson to bloggers, podcasters and vidcasters in general. And at a time when securing new employment can be very tough it makes my skin itch.
I know Ben through my attendance at various Skeptics in the Pub events and paranormal conferences. I don't think he'd mind me saying that he believes the New World Order conspiracy; his blog Hospital Porters Against the New World Order makes that abundantly clear. I don't agree with a lot of what Ben writes, but when we see each other we are able to discuss our different world views without getting abusive, running off and throwing tantrums.
The full version of Ben's side of the story is here, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/01/thirteen-years-on.html. In brief, it seems Ben was sacked after a complaint was received from a member of the public, alleging he was behaving in an unprofessional way on the internet. The material used against Ben at his disciplinary hearing included three vidcasts he had pieced together for his YouTube channel. As these are freely available on YouTube, I've embedded them below. Watch at least twenty seconds of each and you'll get the idea.
Trytan Swale is a contemporary folklorist and a former paranormal/fortean investigator. This blog is a collection of his thoughts on the dead, the damned, critical thinking and things that probably do not exist.

The tone of novelty in this piece goes to show how recent cancel culture is. Fortunately it seems to be weakening today, but it has done untold damage in its brief rise to power. Some people actually described me as a canary in a coal mine. Oddly enough my experience came at the same time as others were suffering professionally for their conspiratorial beliefs; most notably Kevin Annett, Miles Johnston and Gary Heseltine; see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2023/06/hpanwo-show-514-podcast-gary-heseltine.html and: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2022/10/programme-181-podcast-kevin-annett.html and: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2023/06/hpanwo-show-510-podcast-bases-ufo.html. I wrote a response to Trystan that with retrospect sounds weak and too reconciliatory. I've added new links to avoid confusion:

Trystan Swale's Article Blogging Costs Jobs
As regular HPANWO-readers will know, I'm different from many of my fellow conspiracy and paranormal researchers in that that I often attend skeptic events. With the rise of conspiratorial awareness and interest in the supernatural, the skeptic movement has similarly burgeoned and organized itself as a reaction, and has become an antithesis of our own world; with conferences, groups, websites, internet forums writers, researchers and speakers all with a surprisingly similar structure, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/10/qed-conference-2024.html. I've come to know a few of the people involved in this community, like Jack of Kent. One person who keeps dropping in at all of these conferences and events is Trystan Swale.

I first met Trystan in 2010 at the Weird 10 Conference in Warminster. He is an internet radio host and had a stall for his old Righteous Indignation podcast. This appears to be now defunct and Trystan is between shows at the moment. Rather like a mirror of myself, Trystan the skeptic often delves in to the "wacky" world of the "Woo-osphere". Although I've not yet seen him yet at Probe or AV, he does attend the Fortean, "demi-monde"-type conferences like Weird and ASSAP. I always take time out to chat with him and we get on well despite our ideological differences... then again if I disliked everybody who disagreed with me I'd be a pretty lonely person! Also throughout history we've often seen many examples of relationships that appear to be bonded not in spite of, but because of differing opinions. A classic example is Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. I always remember that there was a boy at my school who was involved in a die-hard Marxist group called the Workers' Socialist League and he spent most of his time hanging out with the leader of the school's Young Conservative club (Well, he was the Young Conservative club to be honest; nobody else ever joined!) When I saw that Trystan has written an article about my recent expulsion from the Hospital Portering Service I was worried for a moment that I was about to get a skepti-bashing, but actually he has let me off quite lightly. He's avoided judgmental statements and treated the incident as a misfortune. He also believes as strongly as I do in free speech; believe me I'd kick up like hell if I heard that a skeptic was about to lose their job for their beliefs, which is why I supported Simon Singh in his legal case. Trystan makes an attempt to see both sides of the story, being sympathetic my own cause, yet putting himself in the shoes of the Management, as he sees it. I suppose I have to accept that in a way my own literary and cinematic style backfired on me. My lack of tact and inhibition, along with my disdain for political correctness, has always meant that I am vulnerable to actions like these. However this was not an oversight on my part, but a deliberate policy; I've always admired satirical comedy. Some of my favourite sit-coms were the serials starring the character Alf Garnett, played by Warren Mitchell. These programmes have been totally disowned by their producer, the BBC, yet I think they're a brilliant indictment on racism and general social ignorance, and I must admit that Alf did inspire my character Butt U Doonuthin in the Microchip a Muslim Day video. I've always treated my viewers as intelligent intellectuals capable of more than just one-dimensional literal thinking, and the mostly positive feedback I've received from them seems to vindicate that. However the problem with satire is that it can always be misinterpreted, either by accident or deliberately: in other words, an attack by false misinterpretation, feigned naivete, "twisting things". This did actually go through my head when I first published Microchip in September 2010. I wondered to myself, What if somebody gets the wrong idea? Have I made it clear through the dialogue, style and costume etc that this is a satire? I hope this won't make people at work think I'm a racist... and so on. A couple of weeks went past and I got lots of positive comments, and no more rude ones than I normally get from the troll element. Also, I knew that within a fortnight or so all my viewers at work would probably have seen it, including many of my bosses, so if there was anything they regarded as a bit dodgy they'd probably have had a quiet word with me and asked me nicely to remove it, or at least make changes to it. My bosses and I generally got on well and if they had any criticism of me it was usually carried out in an informal and cooperative manner. I think if that had happened I'd have probably agreed to their request, either by producing it again in a toned-down remake or putting up a disclaimer of some kind. However after a week or two more I relaxed in the knowledge that my fears were unfounded. Everybody who saw the video understood that the satire was as plain and blatant as I tried to make it.

Trystan has guessed correctly that my film David Icke's New Book is a parody of the cover of one of that author's previous titles, I am Me- I am Free. Also, as I explained, it is not indecent really and if it were YouTube would have removed it. It is there to make a serious point and, as I say, I like to do this in my own way and have no concern for potential oversensitive viewers who take things too literally. Actually if we pursue this line of analysis then almost anything could be seen as offensive when presented in that way. The Big Issue recently published an article about how some Americans are complaining about British children's TV shows, they are supposed to be indoctrinating their youth with subversive radical liberal themes. Teletubbies is said to contain anarcho-syndicalist undertones because Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-laa and Po live in a state of communal economic and social equilibrium inspired by the conclusion of Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto. Noddy and Big Ears are clearly a homosexual couple because they live in the same house and every time they meet Mr Plod there are hints in the dialogue that they would like a civil partnership. To apply that to HPANWO TV: My Che Gue-Veitch films insult both the Scots and French people because I talk with a fake Scottish accent and wear a beret. Also Charles doing the Washing-Up is male chauvinistic and is encoded with extreme anti-feminist propaganda, because it attacks housewives. You see where this mindset could lead? If I comply with it I will spend my whole life tip-toeing around with my shoulders hunched and my arms pressed to my sides, vetting every move I make and word I say just in case one of the billions of people who use the internet decides to complain about it. I will never do that!
 
Trystan tried to see it from the management's point of view, and I think in my report linked above I made an attempt to relate their case to the reader too; you'll notice that I quote them several times when they explained their position to me at the hearing. Actually in the above cases the only reason I didn't cooperate with them was not so much the accusation itself, but the suspicious way that it suddenly arose and the violence with which management reacted against me. I explain in my report, that is not how they normally operate and it's a huge coincidence that this complaint arose at that moment in time and in the form that it did. If I had hurled racial abuse at somebody while on duty then I would have been suspended on the spot in that fashion, and would have richly deserved it. All accusations of gross misconduct are acted upon in that way; so, as I said in my report, I have ask myself if my suspension had another motive. Being instantly suspended in that way was effectively a declaration of war, as was the most serious and hurtful allegation made against me, and also the most outrageous and grotesque, which Trystan does not address in his article. The accusation that I bullied another member of staff. The idea that I would ever do such a thing strikes right at the heart of my persona and self-esteem... and perhaps it's meant to. It becomes yet more curious when you understand that the "complaint" against me must have been fast-tracked. The Trust receives far more complaints and adverse incident reports than you might think; in fact a figure quoted to me by my union was 30,000 a month. That's a thousand a day! I can well believe it because I've received training in Health and Safety. I was a manual-handling officer and trainer for many years and I've had to submit quite a few of these reports myself. I found that the average processing time is about two to three months and this seems to be acceptable. Priority is given to cases of severe clinical hazards that pose severe danger to the wellbeing of patients and personnel. However this complaint against me was dealt with in eight days, maybe sooner because there was a weekend and one day of my leave in between. So my situation was regarded as being of the highest possible importance to Management and it was processed and acted on immediately.

The other night I called a friend in the Truth Movement to tell them what had happened, somebody who used to present an online TV show. They had already found out about my dismissal, but said very forthrightly that they thought there was nothing suspicious about it; they dismissed my concerns and thought that I'd made a mistake. I was dismayed at their attitude, but I didn't get angry with them. I have to accept that not everybody is going to believe me. I can sympathize in a way, especially if one is not familiar with hospitals and how they work. And it is true that I have no direct evidence at all, only overwhelming circumstantial evidence. I still think I did the right thing. I was put on the spot and had to make a decision on what my line of defence would be and I choose that one. I could have ignored all the suspicious coincidences and breaches of normal practice and fought the case on management's turf, but I chose not to. Whatever the rights and wrongs, it's over now, for better or worse.

Soon afterwards I regretted this article, cringing at its overfriendly and beseeching tone. This is not least because a few months later Trystan was to turn against me very suddenly in a completely unprovoked attack, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2014/12/trystan-swale-on-ben-emlyn-jones.html. I am recording the experience here for posterity. Maybe a reader can learn from both my successes and mistakes.

HP's Cooperative

 

Back in the late 2000's I had this radical and very unrealistic ambition, as I often do. I had just read Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson, see: https://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/node/344. The book is about a man who works for a lousy public sector contractor and sets up a workers' cooperative to bid for the contract. A workers' cooperative is an organization in which everybody who works for it is also an equal shareholder. I thought it would be great to set up a workers' cooperative for the John Radcliffe Hospital porters. This is related to my idea for a guild, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/10/hospital-porters-guild.html. I must say I very much identified with the character in the story called "X". Like him I am curious and intellectual, yet I am working class. I cannot fit into academia, yet I am not content to sit around in a pub all day talking about football like most of my friends. X and I are both quite isolated people. (At some point I'll have to write a detailed review of Antarctica.) My inspired dream was, of course, doomed to failure, but I have no regrets for trying. I wrote an open letter at the time to all my EP&DB&SP's and I reproduce it below, slightly edited and improved, for the sake of history and nostalgia.
 
Ben Emlyn-Jones
Level 1 Porter
Level 1 Main Hospital
John Radcliffe Hospital
 
22/9/07
 
Dear Brother or Sister Porter,
 
I'm writing to you because you've expressed to me a desire to know more about the JRHPC- the John Radcliffe Hospital Porters' Company (We can think of a better name later!) I've decided to set up the JRHPC because of the possibility in the future that the Trust management might try to sell our service out to a private contractor. Anyone who was portering at the JR during the Mediclean era will probably agree that that would be a tragedy, both for ourselves and our patients. We simply cannot let this happen. This is not on the cards at the present time because of our current employment with the NHS-Carillion Partnership; we are talking long-term possibilities here, but I think it's wise to prepare now, so that we can act quickly if the danger arises.
 
The JRHPC is a provisional organization, not a trading business, but if it needs to become a trading business it can do so immediately as long as all the organization and planning work is done. We need to think and talk to each other about what the JRHPC will be like. We need to make a business plan, sort out any administration structures and find out what our rights and obligations would be as an independent healthcare provider to the modern NHS. We need to find and enrol people with the knowledge to help us. Maybe in a while we should hold a meeting, but in the meantime we can talk to each other informally face-to-face. You can also email each other or use the forum on my website. There are many obstacles to overcome and no guarantees of success, but hopefully it will never be necessary to even face those obstacles.
 
One of the first and biggest choices we'll need to make is whether we want to be part of the JRHPC as an employee or a shareholder. It's too soon to say which will make us better off financially, but there's no doubt that the more of us are shareholders, the more democratic and self-empowered the business will be. If we all end up as equal shareholders then it will become a workers' cooperative. This would be the ideal situation in my opinion because I've researched workers' cooperatives (see my website) and can understand how much better they are than conventional businesses, in which there are only a handful of shareholders and everyone else just takes a wage without owning a stake in the company, being just a cog in the machine. People in worker's cooperatives are healthier, happier and more productive and efficient. For them work is a creative experience, not just a necessary chore that must be done to survive. If we end up winning the contract and make a success of it then the idea might catch on in other hospitals and even beyond! What we're doing here may one day change the world!
 
As I said above, there's no rush to do this. We can take our time and get it right. The JRHPC is a provisional organization for a hypothetical situation and nobody will have to fork out a penny at the present time. But everyone is welcome to join and if anyone who doesn't receive this letter wants to, let me know. The JRHPC membership is not just aimed at porters, but also the civilians in the office, on dispatch, reception or the Help Desk. They are part of the team too.
 
The first step is simply to start thinking about it, talking about it and building a model in your minds. Remember, nobody knows how to do our job better than ourselves. We can achieve this. Whether we will is not known, but if we don't try then the outcome is certain.
 
Porters forever!
 
Ben

"He Loved his Work"

 

This article is partly an update on this one: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/02/beware-catheters.html. In this new article I'd like to explore more the psychology of the catheters and in doing so help you develop more skills for defending yourself from them. I'm particularly reminded of an incident in the early '90's when I was sent on overtime to the MRI- Magnetic Resonance Imager. Among my duties was to clean the scanning rooms after use. I remember that I had to leave my watch and mobile phone etc outside because of the powerful magnetic field in the chamber. It was a bit like cleaning Delivery Suite theatre, but much less visceral. I'll never forget the day when the senior porter, a man I'll call Jameel, approached me with a frown on his face. He said: "Ben, I've had some feedback from the MRI staff, they told me that since you joined the team they have noticed significant improvements." He then turned his back and strutted away. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been worried that I was in trouble; it turned out I was. I suspect if my employers had known who I was and how I was going to work when I sat in an interview for hospital portering in October 1988, they would never have given me a job; not because I wasn't good enough, but because I was too good. If you are in the NHS, portering or civilian, and you do your job very well, I promise you will get one hell of a lot of aggravation, both from management and in your relationship with your colleagues. A few years afterwards I would experience this again in Theatres, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html. As I said in the Catheters article, there are numerous reasons why these people might do what they do, but I did not include motives that are there to see, but are truly baffling. It is not a good business model to punish staff members for being excessively proficient, but the NHS does. It would be bad enough if management did so through a form of unwritten policy, which of course they do; but it also operates tacitly via peer pressure. I truly fail to understand why. I have never felt any such urge when dealing with other people, whether in a professional or social setting. Up until he received this feedback Jameel had been a shy and distant character, happy to let me get on with what I do, enjoying the lightened workload this gave him, but after the feedback he turned into a true catheter. He hung round the MRI scanning suite like a vulture, watching me, poking his head round doors and monitoring every move I made continuously. He and some of the others would burst in almost every half hour and pull me up on something they believed I had done wrong. Like with the previous Theatres example they would demonstrate over and over again the "right way to do it", standing round me with their hands on their hips looking stern. They gave me tours of the chambers the other porters had cleaned, but when I looked I realized that these were not as clean as the ones I had done. Nevertheless, they had been done "right!" while mine had been done "wrong!" Those other chambers had been caressed by the magic hands of mediocrity, so there! It took me a while to realize that my colleagues were trying to persuade me to do my job less well, but they didn't want to say it. This game of silly buggers reached its ultimate nadir when they took photographs of a chamber I had supposedly just done and showed it to me as an example of how I had made numerous mistakes. I soon found out that they had taken those images before I had cleaned, not after; but they all lied to me together. I then told the head porter I did not want any more overtime on the MRI cleaning team. Thank goodness I had never joined them fulltime!

It's amazing to think that such bizarre gaslighting must have involved collusion. At some point Jameel and the other porters must have sat down in a quiet corner and plotted to manipulate and deceive me. The ODO business can be explained as subconscious, an "open secret", so to speak. Maybe even the topping up scam they tried on me in DS could too, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/lets-just-help-each-other-out.html. If ever caught in a corner and forced to explain why they did it, those DS or theatre porters probably couldn't. They would not be able to put their intention into words. The MRI situation involved the fabrication of actual data. Conversations like that are utterly unthinkable, but they must go on. I'm reminded of a scene in Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist where one of the character laments about how their home has been attacked by the local council and workmen have filled the toilet bowls with cement; "People did this! People!", see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2020/10/tree-felled-for-hs2.html. Obviously if I had been somebody else on the team I would never have done such a thing and would have warned the target about what was coming. Was the fact that I felt such pride and dignity in being a HP the very thing that generated this hostility in others? Turning again to 20th century literature: The novel The Fountainhead really struck a chord with me. It is by the Russian-American philosopher and author Ayn Rand. It is less famous than her final epic Atlas Shrugged, but perhaps deserves to be considered her masterpiece. The story follows the lives of two young architects, Howard and Peter. Peter is very conventional and does all the ordinary things in order to be successful, but Howard is a passionate maverick and decides to train under a shunned outsider called Henry Cameron. Cameron is hated by his fellow architects despite the fact that he is a genius. I'll never forget the passage in the book where he is described. The narrator gives a long list of his professional qualities and ends with the words: "...but Henry Cameron made a mistake, he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost." Am I like Henry? Did my brother porters really despise me because I loved my work? Have you, whether HP or civilian, had a similar experience to mine?