Last Night of the JR Social Club

When I started out a Hospital Porter back in 198... whatever, part of my orientation was the John Radcliffe Sports and Social Club. Nowadays when you ask somebody on the wards about the Social Club most of them will say: “What’s that?” When I started out all the big five hospitals in Oxfordshire had social clubs, today none of them do except the JR... Well it did; you see: tonight was the last night of the Social Club. Tomorrow, it closes for good. And this is the end of an era and it’s extremely symbolic because the JRSSC was the last hospital social club anywhere in the NHS, anywhere in the country.

Why is that? What's changed? I think it’s because of the breakdown of community spirit and camaraderie in NHS hospitals. More work is being done by fewer people for less money. Everybody is so miserable and stressed out that there’s no time to play and have fun anymore. You just do your job and get the hell out. Just put in your time and then go home and collapse. I can’t remember when it all went wrong; not the day, not the month, not even the year. There’s no one single event that destroyed the soul of the hospital; it just crept up on us, but by bit, over the years. It came along so slowly we didn’t even notice it. But I look back now and I think: “How on Earth did it come to this? Why did we let it happen?” I took these photos for the same reason that I took photos of the Headington Subway, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/rip-subway.html, because they’re an important and exclusive historical record of something precious that is now lost; something so fundamental, but so subtle, that it’s hard even to name it. But everybody knows what it is and can feel it. For that reason I’ve captured as many images of that place as I can; even the toilets are worth preserving!

Technically I’m barred from the JRSSC and have been since my dismissal from the hospital, but I thought: “Fuck it! I’ll be damned if I’ll miss the last night of the Social Club!” We had a fun but poignant evening. It was good to see my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Porters again. The stock was almost all gone and by closing time all but one of the beer pumps had been draped by bar towels. The bar staff were serving “half pints” of over a litre in coke glasses, but who cares; what are they going to do about it? Close the place down?

Misandry in The Big Issue

Along with Nexus and Dot Connector I also read one other magazine, The Big Issue. It’s an interesting and lively magazine with a noble mission; it also supports homeless people in a very positive way. However in the most recent edition there’s a segment specially written for Mothers’ Day, which is tomorrow, that annoyed me. It’s a comedy piece about how hard life is for women and mothers and how so much of their ordeal is caused by men. I’ve written into the magazine and this is my letter. I'll let you know if it gets published or I get a reply:

Dear Sir,

I chuckled to myself as read the article entitled How to be a Modern Mother in The Big Issue of March 12th to 18th. I did appreciate the misandrist humour, even though I am a part of that lower half of humanity, ie: male. I think my amusement was tempered with a terrible sense of regret that such wit is tainted with the perennial double-standard: that it’s socially acceptable for women to make jokes about men, but not vice versa. I know what your rebuttal will be: “But women have had to put up with being second-class citizens for hundreds of years!” But isn’t that all the more reason to break the chain now? How long will it be before the penny finally drops that you can’t fight injustice by cancelling it out with another injustice? All you get is a double-dose of injustice that hurts everybody! So when Fathers Day comes can we have a few jokes about women drivers and women doing DIY etc? If your female readers get offended then give them the same advice that women give us: “Come on, girls! It’s just a bit of light-hearted fun. Can’t you take a joke?”

Yours Sincerely,

Ben Emlyn-Jones

Insider Posers

Since the rise of the Internet many people have fought the New World Order by trying to seek out insiders who are actually involved in secret government operations and interviewing them. These interviews they usually film or record and they are then put up online for people to watch or listen to. The objective is to reveal the machinations of the Illuminati to public scrutiny and neutralize the secrecy that is vital to their successful accomplishment. The best known of these researchers are probably Kerry Cassidy and Bill Ryan of Project Camelot; see the Links column on the main HPANWO site. These researchers usually ask for witnesses to come forward and speak out. Many people have answered this call, but how many of them are really what they say they are?

The sheer numbers of people who run out of the crowd with stories of being secret operatives from deep inside the Illuminati, or whatever other form the secret world government manifests in their world; or witnesses to the above, is staggering. There are hundreds of individuals currently available to watch. The best known of these are probably Dan Burrish, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhK3Os_eE4g , Phil Schneider, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ei7xakHWo0 and “Colonel X”, see: http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/27055/Kevin_Smith_Show__20th_July_2009__Colonel_X___1of2/ . The problem with this kind of testimony is that it is almost always purely circumstantial or eye-witness-based; very rarely can these people produce any direct evidence. This is not a criticism of them, as the Skeptics tend to make it; this is merely an inevitable factual nature of the act of speaking out about something at these levels of secrecy. The Illuminati are not so stupid as to leave direct evidence lying around for anybody to pick up. They don’t keep documents about psychotronic implants stacked up in out-trays; they would never store parts of a UFO in filing cabinets; they don’t let the waiters at the Bilderberger Group conferences bring cameras with them to work. Even people initiated into a very high level of operations would be carefully screened during their duties to make sure they had no more knowledge than was strictly necessary for their function and they would certainly be stopped from taking any evidence home from work at the end of the day! This means that these witnesses can only usually be judged by how honest they appear to be, how credible does their story sound? And unfortunately there are plenty of people out there who are both attention-seekers, desperate for fifteen minutes of fame, and are also perfectly capable of throwing together a half-decent yarn. This has created a major signal-to-noise ratio problem; rather like the one I’ve already spoken about to do with alien videos, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/fake-alien-videos.html

So what do we do about this? How do we sort the wheat from the chaff? Well I think the best way is to assess exactly what the motives of the interviewee seem to be. This has led me to identify a particular type of witness... or professed witness... that I call the “Insider Poser”. These are people whose prime objective for speaking out seems to be less to disseminate truth as to make themselves look good! Here is a rough profile:

Firstly: The witness will preach the “Military Religion” (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/07/our-brave-boys.html). They will claim to be in the Armed Forces or ex-Armed Forces and will constantly refer to that fact at every opportunity; they will regale the host with anecdotes thereof to the point of obsession.
Secondly: a desperate and morbid fixation on Doom and Gloom-mongering. The witness will have a very cynical and pessimistic attitude towards the future and will argue that virtually all hope is lost and the New World Order is inevitably going to triumph. They will pour dismissive scorn on anybody who disagrees, describing them as naive and in denial; unable to face the harsh truth. The implication of this is that the witness is superior because they can face the harsh truth and have far more experience of life and worldly-wisdom. Another source of their superiority is that because they’re a “super-soldier/mercenary/gangster” or related breed of hard-man, they will survive the “apocalypse to come” when their inferiors, i.e.: most other people, will not.
Thirdly: the witness will display an obsession with Social Darwinism. They will continuously express their opinion that it's a "Dog-eat-dog world, Man!" "Survival of the fittest!" "Law of the jungle!" They will claim that humans are biologically hardwired to be violent, exploitative and hurtful to each other. Again the implication is that they are at the top of the food chain in this social jungle. With their super-soldier “Hey, man! I’ve been there!”, seen-it-all-and-done-it-all worldly-wisdom, they are superior and will survive; while the inferior people, like the person interviewing them and the people watching the video, will not. They will also sneer derisively at anybody with any moral and ethical instincts; again describing such people as naive and drugged up with woolly idealism. They might even be sympathetic to the Illuminati themselves and see the New World Order as natural.

By far the best example I’ve found of the above is “Charles”, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfyfYQRHc6I . As soon as I realized that I look like “Charles” from behind I decided to make some comedy films lampooning him. These two videos have become almost as popular as the original interview and I’ve been delighted that most of the viewers understand the joke, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/01/charles.html and: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/charles-doing-washing-up.html . As far as I’m concerned “Charles” is a complete mountebank and Bill Ryan should have known better than to give this arrogant Cockney blagger a platform. Even though I find it hard to take any of them seriously, generally speaking I can never prove that any individual I think of as an Insider Poser is definitely lying; it’s possible that they might be real insiders telling the truth (I certainly don't include Schneider, Dean or "Colonel X" as Insider Posers). However when they are very obviously using their access to the public to aggrandize and glorify themselves, while patronizing their host and viewers, then alarm bells should be ringing for all of us.

Kony 2012 and Ugandan Oil

(Thanks to Frank Willis and the YouTube user “The Jungle Surfer” for bringing this to my attention.)

There have been times when I’ve made predictions that have come true. This is not because I’m psychic, but because I have a basic understanding of geopolitics. I made a prediction several years ago that the conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands would kick off again, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2010/03/falklands-war-ii.html My evidence?: That a new oilfield had been found there. The other day I was watching some YouTube videos about the hunt for the alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqIDv16Cgw. This has recently been made into a feature-length documentary Kony 2012. See: http://www.kony2012.com/

Joseph Kony was officially indicted back in 2005 and has been a wanted man way back since 1987! Why now suddenly has all this effort been put in to finding him and bringing him to justice? Could the recently expended Ugandan oil industry be a reason? See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtCoH3RqBWo It seems that trouble always kicks off wherever somebody strikes oil. Along with the Falklands example there’s Darfur too.

The Worst TV Documentary Ever!

Watch Equinox- The Secrets of the Psychics here: https://priory-of-sion.com/biblios/links/secrets_of_the_psychics.html.

I think that this TV programme: Equinox- The Secrets of the Psychics, is probably the worst TV documentary I have ever seen. It is a feature-length special produced by the long-running science series on Channel 4 Equinox; which is similar in style to the BBC’s Horizon (Of which I’ve written a lot about, EG: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/more-horizon-doomsday-mongering.html) Equinox have actually brought out a few pretty good programmes over the years. This one for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vghjGwvmrqE What possessed them to produce The Secrets of the Psychics!? Not only produce it as part of their regular weekly one-hour repertoire, but as a feature-length special! I think my comment in the box (“benthejrporter”) says it all: “Thanks for uploading this. It was extremely educational to watch and I'd recommend it to everybody. It's not often I get to examine such a monumental piece of unprofessional, one-sided crap as this programme! Equinox used to make some brilliant documentaries; shame I have this one very black mark to give them.”

This programme is not only completely and shamelessly one-sided in its narrative; in the fictionalized scenes of psychical research experiments it portrays the scientists conducting the laboratory tests as elderly buffoons whose eyes goggle in astonishment at the antics of Eusapia Palladino and the others; with the notable exception of Harry Houdini, who is far more heroic in character (See here for more details about Houdini: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/05/houdini-code.html). In truth the actual papers relating to those experiments could tell a very different story; I recommend the book Randi’s Prize by Robert McLuhan for more details: http://www.skeptiko.com/randi-prize-exposed-in-new-book/ . What bothers me most about all this is that I get the sense that the programme’s producers are not even aware of their mistake. It’s as if they have never even considered that there’s another side to the story to tell!

Bust Spooky College!

This is an interesting video; it’s an outtake from Richard Dawkins’ Skeptical polemic TV documentary, The Enemies of Reason, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xswt8B8-UTM (The broadcast cut of Enemies of Reason can be watched here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7218293233140975017# ). Derren Brown is a famous face in the media and on stage because he has become a very successful illusionist and hypnotist. Some of his work is important from a HPANWO-esque perspective because of his revelations about neuro-linguistic programming, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kycWYd5iOn0&feature=sh_e_top&list=SL . However his other forte is less well-known: that of a Skeptic. He has made a few Skeptic programmes too, like Seance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCfYwVVPMcg .

In the extended interview with Dawkins, from which the scene in Enemies of Reason comes from, we see Brown talking about training colleges for psychics (Part 1 from 8.31). The best known of these is the Arthur Findlay “Spooky” College in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, see: http://www.arthurfindlaycollege.org/ . According to Derren Brown there are no such things as real psychics and they’re all fake. Spiritualism only began in the 19th Century and was soon found to be a con; Spiritualists are actually just stage psychics like Brown who fool their audience into thinking that they’re really psychic by using the same conjuring tricks that he does. But there’s one very obvious course this area of research could take that neither Dawkins nor Brown suggests: Why not infiltrate the Arthur Findlay College? Get in there with a hidden camera and expose it to public ridicule! It shouldn’t be hard, after all Watchdog does it to dodgy plumbers and crooked insurance salesmen all the time. They should get a reporter to go undercover as a student at the college pretending to have burgeoning psychic powers and want to learn how to use them. Then, at some point the tutor will lock the door and shut the curtains and say in a low voice: “Listen! Don’t tell anybody about this, but all this is bullshit OK? There’s no such thing as psychic powers and you’re all kidding yourselves... now follow me.” Then he pulls a book off a shelf, presses a hidden button and a piece of wood paneling slides back revealing a secret passageway. He leads the students down a dusty flight of stairs to a secret cellar where they all learn how to do Cold Reading and exploit the Barnum Effect etc. The Skeppers are always scoffing at conspiracy theories, well this is their conspiracy theory! Let’s see if it stands up to the evidence!

I’m sure you’ve worked out that what I've written above is a parody. I don’t believe that all psychics are fake at all. We’ve only ever had a single whistle-blower, M Lamar Keene, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/08/psychic-mafia-by-m-lamar-keene.html when really, in a conspiracy which would have to be as top-heavy as the Skeptics claim, we ought to have them popping out of the woodwork everywhere; see here for more details: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/04/paranormality-by-prof-richard-wiseman.html