JR Porters ballot for Strike

I could write a long and very depressing book about the various and numerous ways the portering service at the John Radcliffe Hospital has gone downhill since I started out there as a porter in the late 1980's; the background articles below will give you an overview. The malaise experienced by the porters is mirrored in the civilian services too; nursing, medicine, paramedics etc. Just a few days ago a situation emerged which is the inevitable result of this degeneration and anybody in the know who did not predict this disaster is a fool, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-crisis-2015.html. Since my own very suspicious dismissal from the Hospital Portering Service, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/one-year-on.html, things have got even worse. I am in regular contact with a JR porter who supplies me with news and information from the inside that I wouldn't otherwise be able to know... never mind who... therefore it was no surprise to me when this was published by the local branch of our trade union UNISON, see: http://www.ouh.org.uk/index.php/constituencies/oxford-radcliffe-trust/133-survey-shows-carillion-staff-in-ouh-are-underpaid-bullied-and-exploited. In fact this is exactly what I myself experienced; however the situation has considerably deteriorated since January 2012. (In fact, seeing as now I have a civilian job, food on the table, a roof over my head and all the other essentials of life... how much do I really regret being sacked from the hospital?) Despite UNISON's admirable attempt to improve things with their "Respect" campaign, my contact tells me the abuse of staff as described in the above article still goes on. Just a month ago he informed me that everyone was bracing themselves for some huge bombshell and last week it detonated. I need to explain some background: the JR porters' employment circumstances are very complicated. A company called Carillion plc runs the Facilities departments via a PFI- private finance initiative deal. However the contracted staff are National Health Service employees who are "seconded" to Carillion. A large proportion of the Facilities crew, over a quarter, are not actually employees though, neither of the NHS Trust nor the outsourcer; they are just agency placements who have no contractual rights to the job they do. Despite the constant reassurances that they are just going through a "trial period" and that they'll be offered a proper job if they make a good impression, some agency staff have been at the hospital for over two years in that limbo state; working there, but not really a part of the team.

Now Carillion want to introduce further changes to a service already depleted, demoralized and weakened by upheaval. Firstly they want to axe six senior porter posts, that's the principle supervisory grade; these they aim to replace with two directly-employed Carillion "customer service managers". Secondly they want to end the rotary shift system in which porters take it in turns to provide the different sessions of the twenty-four-seven patient service at the hospital. This would be replaced by a fixed roster of permanent regular shifts; so one porter would work permanent earlies, another permanent lates and another permanent nights, with separate weekend staff etc. This would seriously reduce pay levels; seeing as weekends, nights and unsocial hours are paid at an enhanced rate or with a bonus. It would also reduce a lot of the enjoyment of the work through losing the interest, excitement, professionalism and variety of rotary shiftwork. My contact suspects that Carillion will not offer any nightshifts to the existing staff at all and will instead employ their own night porters directly, therefore not paying them the NHS directed enhanced rates of pay. UNISON have asked Carillion to withdraw their proposal and Carillion have refused. There have been further meetings and UNISON have emphasized how the Carillion proposal will be a detriment to patient care, which it certainly will. Carillion are still digging their heels in, but they have postponed the introduction of the new system. The mood of the porters is rebellious and there will be a strike ballot unless Carillion scraps it completely. Obviously I'm not a porter any more, nor am I a UNISON member; I have no say at all in what happens, but you can guess how I would vote in the ballot if I could. Industrial action in a hospital is a very serious matter. If the trains go on strike a commuter might end up late at the office, but if the healthcare professions go on strike people might die. However how many people have died due to government policy towards the NHS? Scroll down and see the background links for an answer. The government have been allowed to get away with their nefarious plots partly due to NHS workers' reluctance to take industrial action; because we all know the consequences for our patients if we do. This is the dilemma we face, and the government have not hesitated to exploit it. However, I would say that we're now in a situation in which it far more harmful to the patients, on a long-term basis, not to strike than it is to strike. So I say to my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Porters, do it! Down tools! I'll be on the picket line with you, even though I'm not longer one of you.

See here for background: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/nhs-sign-hacking.html.

And: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-social-club-today.html.

And: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/hospital-at-christmas.html.

And: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/hospital-porters-and-nhs-strike.html.

A&E Crisis 2015

The Accident and Emergency departments in hospitals across the whole country have descended into a cataclysm of endemic failure to "meet their targets". The system that has been in place for several decades now is that the performance of National Health Service organizations has been judged mathematically. A complicated network of statistics has been introduced and this has caused all kinds of problems, as Adam Curtis explains in his brilliant documentary, The Trap, see: http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/145347/The_Trap_Fuck_You_Buddy_BBC/. Therefore the A and E departments of NHS hospitals are set quantitative limits on how they treat their patients. For example, every patient has to be seen by a doctor or nurse within four hours of their admission to the department. If the department fails to achieve this then it is listed as a black mark on the management's records. In the terminology of the hospital this is known as "breaching". I recall several times at weekends when the very stressed-out sister would complain that a senior hospital manager had phoned up asking: "How are things today? I hope we haven't had any breaches so far..." I can sympathize with that manager though because he was frightened that if the department suffered too many breaches then he would get into trouble and may even be relieved of his position. It's been revealed in the news that during last winter the entire system collapsed. 7.4% of patients breached, this is way below the redline limit of 5%. In Northern Ireland it was particularly bad; the breach level was almost 20%. This news page allows you to check the proficiency of your own local trust: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25055444. My old hospital, the John Radcliffe in Oxford, is at 87.1%, this puts it in the lower half of the league table and certainly way outside the small Premiership of trusts who succeeded in achieving their targets, less than a quarter overall.

The Department of Health will deal with this crisis and all the negative publicity surrounding it in the usual way; they'll kick out the people they hold accountable, the senior managerial grades, and replace them with eager young newcomers. Then they can tell the general public that they've taken action to solve the problem... Only they haven't. Do they really think the staff at hospitals fall short in this way because they're incompetent or lazy? The truth is that successive governments, no matter what ruling party is elected, have squeezed the NHS to death between a huge increase in workload together with a reduction in staffing levels. I saw this myself. Many times on busy afternoons, ambulances were queued up in the entrance bay and I had to relay gas cylinders to them so that they wouldn't run out. I would regularly be tackled by nurses urgently saying: "Ben, could you move this patient right now please, he's about to breach!" Some hospitals called major incidents to try and avert the crisis; but of course this cannot be done on a routine basis. The thing is, the rules forbid hospitals calling in extra staff at any other time, which is insane. The nurses and doctors... not to leave out the porters as well naturally... are doing everything humanly possible, but they're serving in a system that is being deliberately degraded so that it is ripe for full spectrum privatization. This destruction is virtually complete, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/allyson-pollock-at-tedx.html. Unfortunately it is now too late to "save the NHS!" To bring back effective free public health care in Britain we will need to introduce a completely new system from brand new foundations. Of course this will not be possible until the vultures who destroyed the previous service are exposed and brought to justice. I'm well aware that the question over public healthcare is moot without taking into account more fundamental issues that conventional NHS campaigners will not address, such as Big Pharma and cancer cures etc, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/nutrition-no-defence-against-cancer.html, however this doesn't mean that the future of the conventional medical system or its privatized replacement is a non-issue.

Big Porter is watching You

Something has happened at my hospital that I predicted long ago when I was there. I have found out from a contact currently serving in the John Radcliffe porters... never mind who... that CCTV has been installed in the portering departmental facilities. Two have been placed in the department's office in order to protect sensitive paperwork, like disciplinary records and sickness forms etc, from being accessed by unauthorized persons... obviously the safes and locked filing cabinets the portering office used to use are obsolete technology and in this day and age we need to leave all documents lying around in the open. The porters at my hospital no longer have a lodge in the traditional sense; areas designated for portering use are just alcoves with a few chairs or a corner with portable partitions if we're lucky. However when I was there and we did have a lodge, I said that one day we'd be monitored by management via CCTV while in it. CCTV was originally introduced into the hospital for security purposes, as were electronic door locks. However, and I predicted this as well, those door locks are today used by management to monitor the location of the security guards exactly like in a local hotel I've referred to, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/big-brother-rules-go-out-window.html. And so we now see CCTV being adapted from the purpose it is supposed to be for into something else entirely. This is why, when it comes to Big Brother, we have to deal with capabilities, not professed intents. I said this over the school fingerprinting issue, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/all-people-to-be-microchipped-within.html. It could be that we porters will once again be given a proper lodge, a room with a rest area, kitchen, lockers etc; but when we are you can bet it will have that little brown dome fitted to the ceiling. 

Wittgenstein on "that Dress"

Two weeks ago a young bride from the Western Isles of Scotland put a photograph of her wedding dress on social media and it caused a viral sensation. The photo was not very good quality and together with the dress' intricate lace embroidery it created an inadvertent optical illusion. Some people saw it as a white dress with gold lace, others as a blue dress with black lace. The lady who wore it at her wedding was inundated with messages asking her exactly what colour the dress really was. However, as always, it takes the common sense of a hospital porter to solve this mystery, or it would if he were still alive. Ludwig Wittgenstein was professor of philosophy at Cambridge University and an expert on language, logic, comprehension and perception; he was also a pharmacy porter at Guys Hospital in London. What would that great hospital porter... an occasional amateur part-time philosopher... have made of "that Dress"? He might have thought that it was just the "aspect switching" of perception. He used the famous drawing of the "rabbit-duck" by Joseph Jastrow as an analogy, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31662317.

Do you see a rabbit or a duck?

This drawing has this perception ambiguity deliberately built in. What you see will depend on your comprehension of the image and you can even choose between the two simply by thinking about it. There are many other examples of this, like the spinning ballerina animation. However, with the dress it's different. People report that they cannot choose what colour they see the dress by changing their minds, so it's not an aspect that they can voluntarily switch. It's more likely that the dress photo has happened to have just the right features that it causes different displays in the brains of different people. In this way it's revealed a kind of colour-blindness that is not pathological and is naturally universal to all humans. We know that animals like dogs and cats see colours differently to ourselves all the time; it seems within a species there is also some variation. One thing's for sure, there is a lot of variation in the success of fashion design and that the company that created this now famous dress, Roman Originals, is going to enjoy a huge boost in sales, rather like the lucky lady who produced the "sexist comet shirt", see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/sexist-comet-shirt.html. Nevertheless the insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein are a good starting point for considering this conundrum... if fact the insights of any hospital porter are good for considering any conundrum!

Jimmy Savile- the NHS knew

The inquiry into the crimes of the celebrity and former hospital porter Jimmy Savile continues, and it's been revealed that his offences in various hospitals where he served were considerable. Sixty-three people have come forward to accuse him at Stoke Mandeville Hospital alone, one of the fourteen in which he served. He sexually assaulted patients, staff and visitors; over half were under sixteen including a young girl he raped in her bed on a ward, and a fourteen year old boy he groped in the X-ray department. The youngest was just five years old at the time. He particularly targeted the world famous spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville because so many of the patients were immobilized. He also sexually harassed nurses, but despite this he was given accommodation in the nurses' home. Complaints were filed against Savile as long ago as 1968 yet absolutely nothing was done about it and he continued to serve as a porter until 1992, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31637937. The most shocking revelation was the testimony of "Jane", a victim of his at the Leeds General Infirmary. It's clear from her report that Savile had a number of collaborators among the staff. In fact other porters used to deliver children to a room in the basement where he carried out his attacks. Nurses laughed at her when she told them when what had happened and warned her not to be "silly", see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28031538. Several people have described Savile's actions in the NHS an "open secret"; this mirrors the situation at the BBC perfectly, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/esther-in-new-year-honours.html. The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (I must be careful how I say that!) blames Savile's celebrity allure; and it's true that the cult of fame can run deep in people's hearts. However there must be more to it than that. I know that the NHS is loaded with corruption. I myself witnessed a lot of this during my own service and I'll describe some of this in fuller detail in future posts, but suffice to say for now that the NHS suffered from endemic "groupthink". A climate of inferred collaboration can break out almost anywhere. The chilling results of the Milgram experiment are very revealing. This famous psychological test involved putting people in a situation in which they were fooled into thinking that they were torturing somebody else to death with repeated electric shocks. The experiment revealed that so long as an authority figure ordered them to do so, most subjects were willing to comply, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk. Everybody is so shocked about what happened with Savile; they gasp and say: "How could this have happened!?" Well, this is how. This is how institutional collusion takes place and it happens naturally, easily and instinctively without a word being spoken between anybody. Hopefully this will shut up those who bleat on about how there was "no conspiracy!" and that it was just an "extraordinary oversight!" and how Savile was "extremely lucky to get away with what he did!" Most psychologists believe that groupthink is an inevitable and unavoidable part of human nature; perhaps, but I'm not certain. Those in power do seem to go to an awful lot of effort to promote groupthink and its associated mindsets; if it were "just human nature, mate!" why would they need to? See: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/thats-just-human-nature-man.html. Not all of the subjects in the Milgram experiment were willing to carry out their supposed deadly duty, sixty-five percent did. That is a majority, but not an overwhelming one. So we can only hope that the thirty-five percent who cannot be ordered to aid and abet atrocities grow in number.

See here for background: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/jimmy-saviles-hospital-crimes.html.

And: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/jimmy-savile-in-hospital-satanic.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/jimmy-savile-correction.html.

NHS Sign-Hacking

The overworked, underpaid and traumatized staff of the National Health Service have been venting their anguish in an unusual, amusing and highly creative way; they've been altering hospital signs. The regulation white-on-blue direction signs are one of the icons of British NHS hospitals. They are placarded on walls or hung from the ceilings telling us where endoscopy, outpatients, the chapel or urology wards etc etc are. However, when nobody is looking, presumably during the night, these signs are being altered into satirical slogans and statements of political agitation: Exhausted Nurses, Punchable effigy of Jeremy Hunt (the government's health secretary) and Amputation ward- behind bins. Others are simply witty, like at Whittington Hospital the Emergency Department entrance has a "never should have attempted DIY" area, which is very accurate for anybody who knows ED; as is the "drunks and smelly people" waiting room, see: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2015/01/12/nhs-signs-post/. In my view, this kind of shenanigans is as an effective an act of rebellion as joining UNISON or standing on a picket line. Probably more so in fact, as I myself became very disillusioned with the trade union movement during the years that I was a porter. Our union activists were generally bitter and insecure people who hated managers, at the same time that they envied them. Deep down they longed to be in management themselves; most of them ended up there in fact. Along with them were also many progressive middle class leftists whose only mission was to persuade me of how naturally evil I am because I'm a white heterosexual male. The modern trade union movement is completely out to lunch. The I-Ching, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, has a chapter entitled Revolution. It states that genuine rebellion that can produce real change in the world must be founded on an inner truth; one must not move forward with excessive haste nor accept compromising injustice. This sign-hacking is a good example of a form of sedition that takes heed of that. It uses dignified humour to assert and empower. If I were still in the service I'd do some of it myself... in fact I could sneak in tonight!

Shiftwork Health Risks

Bad news for hospital porters on shiftwork I'm afraid, and indeed anybody else too who works unusual hours, especially late at night or through the night. The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has carried out a study which indicates that shiftwork causes many different kinds of health problems. It atrophies the brain; long-term shiftworkers have the average brain cell load of somebody six years their senior. Levels of obesity, heart disease and breast cancer are also much higher among shiftworkers, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29879521. The problem is that Humans are not naturally meant to be nocturnal; we have a body clock known as a circadian rhythm that uses the hormone melatonin to regulate our sleep patterns. It comes from the pineal gland in our brains, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/fluoride-and-pineal.html. Along with health problems shiftwork can also cause accidents because of the decrease in mental proficiency during the night. The disasters Exxon Valdez, Bhopal and Chernobyl all happened late at night. I certainly noticed this effect on myself when I was on night shift. It didn't matter how well I slept during the day, come two or three AM I had to struggle to keep my eyes open. This was because my pineal gland was pumping out large amounts of melatonin telling me I should be in bed. I used to do a seven-day week of nights once every four weeks, so this was a considerable burden. The fact is though that none of us worked nights because we chose to, we did it because we had to. The hospital can never close because people need its services twenty-four-seven. I don't know if there's a solution to this, maybe melatonin suppression or safe non-addictive stimulants perhaps. Until then, those who choose to serve do so knowing the risks; end of. I ask that you bear that in mind if you're in hospital at night and the staff are busy working hard around your ward.

See here for a related article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/sleep-deprivation.html.