I’m 20 minutes late for a Sunday morning, the busiest day of the job. Making hurried apologies I wait around until a new mentor shows up. Her name is Maryam and she’s from Nigeria. She’s been on an agency contract full time for six years. She looks down at our printed rooms sheet and groans. “Almost all Departures”, she says wryly.
Her pace is
less frenetic than Adhira’s but she’s just as systematic and thorough. And,
bonus, she turns on the radio in every room, Kiss FM or Choice, and Loud, and
suddenly the lonely rooms get livelier and we work with a bit of rhythm to our
step. I listen to her singing along as I scrub.
One of our
rooms is actually like an apartment. It has a living room with a child’s bed in
it, a long corridor, two bathrooms, and the master bedroom. There are stacks of
boxes of croissants and pastries, bottles of juice and Harrods shopping bags.
The dressing table is piled high with freshly bought cosmetics and make up. A room like this can cost £500 per night.
No, it's nothing like this....
Nipping
downstairs to the locker room, I realise why so much of the linen is marked or
lacking altogether. There’s one guy on the laundry chute. One guy dealing with
what a former Linen Porter told me is about four tons of laundry hurtling down
a single metal chute from five floors into a massive pile every day. He wears a
dust mask.
There used
to be two porters on the job, but now there’s just one. The guy struggling with
it all is from Romania. His eyes are spritely behind his white mask. He must be
about 21. We smile and say hi to each other.
When there
was the big panic about Ebola, Unions expressed alarm about the potential for
contagion should a guest be infected (it could go for any illness – you’re
cleaning peoples’ toilets and changing peoples’ beds, regularly turning over
sweaty sheets). The Linen Porters handle the whole hotel's dirty linen.
“Did you
know what someone doing our exact same jobs, and working for the same hotels, in
New York City, gets paid per hour?” I say to him, leaning against the lift
frame.
“No”, he
breathes, wiping his brow.
“£16 per
hour”.
“Really?” he
says, his eyes surprised behind the mask.
“Yep. And do
you know how?”
“How?”
“They’re
organised. They’re in a union”.
He gives me
a look somewhere between incredulous and envious.
I’m about to
go further when the lift door opens behind me and I stop. I smile at the
supervisor and get in, turning back and giving Radu (as I later find out he is
called) a little wave.
The supervisor
is blonde, in her mid-forties and from Lithuania. Her facial expressions range
from grim to stressed to sick of it all. She’ll enter rooms in a sweep, barely
knocking, and catching you off guard (I guess that’s the idea) glaring at
surfaces, running her fingers along skirting and telling you, never asking you,
what to do and why you're not up to scratch.
I smile at
her uneasily.
Another
floor up and Adhira gets in and greets her (Elena, her name is Elena). Elena
sighs and starts giving out about one of the girls who didn't show up today.
“She didn't come. She said she could not come because she had
not money”.
“Someone couldn't afford the travel to get here?” I ask.
“Yes, she said her travel card run out, she has no money for travel
until she get paid”.
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. No sympathy. Just
annoyance.
I'm keeping my head down for now because I want to organise.
I look at the floor. On £6.50 an hour, it's totally understandable that you
won't be able to afford the basics of life because the cost of living in this city
is unaffordable on £6.50 an hour. Life on minimum age is not lived, it is
struggled through.
The Living Wage is called that for a reason. It’s by no means
the answer but it offers some breathing space, and at £9.15 per hour for us
here, it would represent an almost 30% pay rise. The lift doors open. We march
out stridently on our separate ways.
Back in a room with Maryam, I’m dusting and she’s putting on
fresh bedding.
“Maryam, isn’t this job really knackering for the tiny money
we get?” I say. She lets out a whistle.
“It’s so hard, sometimes I think to myself, I just cannot go
on, I want to find a new job”.
I stop cleaning and look at her back, as she stuffs a pillow
into a pillow case.
“Has anyone here ever talked about, a union?”
She stops stock still.
ReplyDeleteI wish you every success in your organising. This is backbreaking and, I suspect, often heartbreaking work, deserving of the shortest hours and the highest pay. I am recommending this blog to everyone I know.
I wanted to check all names are anonymised? Also, I would recommend keeping personal details to a minimum for the moment (e.g. not naming specific countries), as well as hotel details (e.g. not using specific numbers). Just as an extra precaution.
Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThey said in their first blog post that names are anonymised.
ReplyDeleteBloody good luck to you!
They said in their first blog post that names are anonymised.
ReplyDeleteBloody good luck to you!
I was pointed towards your blog after hearing the experience of a friend of mine, who worked as a hotel cleaner. She could not achieve the required room rate, and when her first payslip arrived she discovered that she had been paid for fewer hours than she had worked. So she didn't even receive the minimum wage, but on her payslip it looked as though she had. When she asked a supervisor about it, they confirmed that they were not paying her for all her hours, but were instead effectively paying her per room. This is illegal, but they did not seem to think they would be held to account for it. Although she chose not to take action, the advice I received for anyone in a similar position was to record your hours, if possible by (secretly) photographing the clock or signing-in book at the hotel. This then gives you a chance to take legal action to recover lost earnings, and I know that there are solicitors who would take on such a case pro bono. I don't know if that's useful to anyone reading this blog, but I hope that it may be.
ReplyDeleteAll the best!!!!. Thanks for sharing your hard working experience!!!!.
ReplyDeleteI've thought about a Highfield reunion with MOST of the people. Is it gonna happen? Probably NOT!!!!
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/LSli17bsonk?si=83qUiZ_xBeYE6HK3
DeleteHey! That was my joke!
But yes, perfectionism can drive you mad!
DeleteAll it shows is that you have no life!
DeleteParticularly Aryan Perfectionism!
DeleteIn the 1850s, the term 'Aryan' was adopted as a racial category by the aristocratic French writer Arthur de Gobineau, who, through the later works of his followers such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, influenced the Nazi racial ideology.[12] Under Nazi rule (1933–1945), the term officially applied to most inhabitants of Germany excluding Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mostly Slovaks, Czechs, Poles or Russians).[13][14] Those classified as 'non-Aryans,' especially Jews,[15] were discriminated against before suffering the systematic mass killing known as the Holocaust[13] or the Porajmos. The atrocities committed in the name of Aryanist supremacist ideologies have led academics to generally avoid using 'Aryan' as a stand-alone ethnolinguistic term, which has been replaced in most cases by 'Indo-Iranian', although the Indic branch is still known as 'Indo-Aryan'.[16]
Deletehttps://youtu.be/tg35U3CcCpE?si=wtIXu52p6yDC0tsg
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyDyOtCqusU
DeleteNow this is a Réunion!
DeleteBut where's Miss Warrilow!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_-1QW3EWZw
DeleteA number of large country houses dominated the area, including Highfield House, Highfield Cottage, Uplands (formerly "The Rosaries" or "The Rosary"), Heather Deane, Oak Mount, Ivy Bank and Highfield Lodge (not to be confused with the lodge to Highfield House). These houses are all shown on an 1897 Ordnance Survey map. Some of these buildings, including Ivy Bank and Oak Mount, still stand, albeit in somewhat altered surroundings. Highfield House and Uplands have both been demolished.[1]
ReplyDeleteHighfield House had a number of naval connections in the 19th century, being owned by Vice-Admiral Foote, Rear-Admiral Morier and then William Ogden. In 1861, Uplands was listed in the Post Office Directory as "The Rosaries". It was occupied by Revd Thomas McCalmont, a Church of England cleric whose family originated from Ireland. In 1877, Alfred (Thomas' third son) became Mayor of Southampton at the age of 26. Alfred died a year later, and after a further two years, his elder brother Frederick also died, aged 34. Two stained glass windows in Highfield Church commemorate the clergyman and his sons.[1]
ReplyDeleteI'm more of a St Helen's person myself!
Deletehttps://artuk.org/discover/artworks/view-of-st-helens-swansea-231072
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5PZ114EbEI
DeleteYeah, it's a little theatrical, but you get the idea!
Deletehttps://www.stdoms.ac.uk/why-st-dominics/catholic-life/catholic-life/
DeleteYeah, St Helen's still comes out on top!
Deletehttps://architecture.arthistoryresearch.net/architects/collins-herbert
DeleteHerbert Collins was born in Hornsey, Middlesex, [now London], England on 2 February 1885. His father, William Jefferies Collins (1856-1939), was a speculative builder, and like him, Herbert Collins initially worked in the building trade after leaving school.
So basically, his dad owned a building company!!
DeleteProbate records confirm his address to have remained as The Wilderness, West End, Southampton and that he died, aged 83 years, on 16 May 1939. His death was registered in the 2nd quarter of 1939 in the Winchester registration district, Hampshire. Probate was originally granted on 11 October 1939 jointly to two of his sons: William Brannan Collins, a company director and to Herbert Collins, a chartered architect. His effects totalled £530, 841-14s-10d. However, a further grant of probate was registered on 10 March 1942 to an Ebenezer Cunningham, a professor of mathematics and the effects now totalled £411,852-19s-1d.
DeleteAll well and good but Mr Beecroft would still have them no trouble!!
DeleteIn the United Kingdom, brutalism was featured in the design of utilitarian, low-cost social housing influenced by socialist principles and soon spread to other regions around the world, while being echoed by similar styles like in Eastern Europe.[16][6][7][17] Brutalist designs became most commonly used in the design of institutional buildings, such as provincial legislatures, public works projects, universities, libraries, courts, and city halls. The popularity of the movement began to decline in the late 1970s, with some associating the style with urban decay and totalitarianism.[7] Brutalism's popularity in socialist and communist nations owed to traditional styles being associated with the bourgeoisie, whereas concrete emphasized equality.[18]
DeleteBrutalism as an architectural philosophy was often associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially by Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style. Indeed, their work sought to emphasize functionality and to connect architecture with what they viewed as the realities of modern life.[30] Among their early contributions were "streets in the sky" in which traffic and pedestrian circulation were rigorously separated, another theme popular in the 1960s.[37] This style had a strong position in the architecture of European communist countries from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, USSR, Yugoslavia).[38] In Czechoslovakia, Brutalism was presented as an attempt to create a "national" but also "modern socialist" architectural style. Such prefabricated socialist era buildings are called panelaky.
DeleteIn Vietnam, brutalist architecture is particularly popular among old public buildings and has been associated with the bao cấp era (lit: subsidizing), the period during which the country followed Soviet-type economic planning. Many Soviet architects, most notably Garol Isakovich, were sent to Vietnam during that time to help train new architects and played an influential role in shaping the country's architectural styles for decades.[55] Isakovich himself also designed some of the most notable brutalist buildings in Vietnam, including the Vietnam-Soviet Friendship Palace of Culture and Labour (1985).[56] In his later years, Isakovich, who was awarded the Hero of Labor by the Vietnamese government in 1976, is said to have deviated from the brutalist style and adopted Vietnamese traditional styles in his design, which has been referred to by some Vietnamese architects as Chủ nghĩa hiện đại địa phương (lit: local modernism) and hậu hiện đại (postmodernism).[55] In the former South Vietnam, notable buildings that are said to carry brutalist elements include the Independence Palace (1966)[57] designed by Ngô Viết Thụ, the first Asian architect to become an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.[58][59] However, whether South Vietnamese architecture prior to 1975 was brutalism or not remains a matter of dispute, with some architects argued it was actually modernism.[60] In recent years, public sentiments in Vietnam towards brutalist architecture has shifted negatively, but the style is said to have made a comeback recently.[61]
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/t-magazine/poland-brutalism-architecture.html
DeleteThe Modern French word bourgeois (/ˈbʊərʒwɑː/ ⓘ BOORZH-wah or /bʊərˈʒwɑː/ ⓘ boorzh-WAH, French: [buʁʒwa] ⓘ) derived from the Old French borgeis or borjois ('town dweller'), which derived from bourg ('market town'), from the Old Frankish burg ('town'); in other European languages, the etymologic derivations include the Middle English burgeis, the Middle Dutch burgher, the German Bürger, the Modern English burgess, the Spanish burgués, the Portuguese burguês, and the Polish burżuazja, which occasionally is synonymous with the intelligentsia.[8]
DeleteHitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk.[26] Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews."[26] Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course".[26] Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."[27] Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, whom he referred to as "cowardly shits".[28]
DeletePhilosophically, as a materialist creature, the bourgeois man was stereotyped as irreligious; thus, to establish an existential distinction between the supernatural faith of the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal religion; in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s, the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:
DeleteChristianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.[30]
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/georgians/power-and-politics/
DeleteMembers of the ruling elite were interconnected by marriages which maintained or increased their great landed estates. They met regularly at town or country mansions – such as Apsley House, Audley End, Chiswick House, Kenwood and Wrest Park – or at fashionable resorts like Bath. These grandees, usually members of the Whig Party, exercised enormous influence through their connections and patronage.
DeleteThe Tory Party drew its strength mainly from the rural gentry, rather than the aristocracy. Whigs and Tories vied with each other for control of Parliament, but whichever faction was in the ascendant, only about 200,000 property-owning men (and no women) had the right to vote them in – or out – of power.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/women-in-history/dido-belle/
DeleteDido Elizabeth Belle was the illegitimate daughter of Sir John Lindsay (1737–88), an officer in the Royal Navy, and an African woman named Maria Bell(e). We do not know where or how Maria and Lindsay first met, but during 1760 his ship the HMS Trent, was sailing around the coasts of Senegal and the Caribbean.
In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, where the capitalists exploit the workers, while the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price.
DeleteAbu Dhabi has a diverse and multicultural society.[136] The city's cultural imprint as a small, ethnically homogeneous pearling community was changed with the arrival of other ethnic groups and nationals—first by the Iranians in the early 1900s, and later by various African, Asian, European, and Middle Eastern ethnicities in the 1950s and 1960s. Abu Dhabi has been criticised for perpetuating a class-based society, where migrant workers are in the lower classes, and suffer abuse which "is endemic to the system".[137]
DeleteAbu Dubai has more culture than Dubai but then again some may say Yas Waterworld isn't quite like https://www.atlantis.com/dubai but who knows who the real Victor is!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uiRRFN4Ppc
DeleteThen you have the bunch who have never had a single bad experience!! #Capitalism
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMd2FuCeZc
DeleteYep, this again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPq6xr8U8hk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA
DeleteThe Trolley problem is back!
Assuming you can be asked to see it all the way through!
DeleteOliver Stone, creator of the film Snowden, pointed to the location-based game Pokémon Go as the "latest sign of the emerging phenomenon and demonstration of surveillance capitalism". Stone criticized that the location of its users was used not only for game purposes, but also to retrieve more information about its players. By tracking users' locations, the game collected far more information than just users' names and locations: "it can access the contents of your USB storage, your accounts, photographs, network connections, and phone activities, and can even activate your phone, when it is in standby mode". This data can then be analysed and commodified by companies such as Google (which significantly invested in the game's development) to improve the effectiveness of targeted advertisement.[15][16]
DeleteFirst things first. Why would anyone want to play that game!!!
DeleteWatch out Asier!
Delete"So basically, his dad owned a building company!!"
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects%27_Journal
Someone likes their double edged sword right AJ?
"Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.[30]"
DeleteJordan's marriage to Dior proved short-lived, though, and she announced the couple's separation in January 1964. She claimed that Jordan had become "bourgeois".[17] The couple nevertheless remained married until their divorce in 1967.[18][unreliable source?][permanent dead link]
Between 1922 and 1936, most of the Uplands Estate was built.[1] Designed by Herbert Collins, the estate is now a designated conservation area.[2] The estate comprises 200 houses and flats in Collins' distinctive Georgian style. Collins made use of a stream that runs through Highfield, making it a feature of his open green areas and using it to feed an ornamental pond.[1]
ReplyDeleteSaint George all the way!
DeleteGeorge is the patron saint of England. His cross forms the national flag of England, which overlaps with Scotland's St Andrew's flag to establish the Union Jack, which is contained in other national flags, such as those of Australia and New Zealand. By the 14th century, the saint had been declared both the patron saint and the protector of the British royal family.[85]
DeleteIn hagiography, he is immortalised in the legend of Saint George and the Dragon and as one of the most prominent military saints. In Roman Catholicism, he is also venerated as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. His feast day, Saint George's Day, is traditionally celebrated on 23 April. Historically, the countries of England, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Ukraine, Malta, Ethiopia, the regions of Catalonia and Aragon, and the cities of Moscow and Beirut have claimed George as their patron saint, as have several other regions, cities, universities, professions, and organizations. The Church of Saint George in Lod (Lydda), Israel, has a sarcophagus traditionally believed to contain St. George's relics.[6]
DeleteThe Latin Passio Sancti Georgii (6th century) follows the general course of the Greek legend, but Diocletian here becomes Dacian, Emperor of the Persians. His martyrdom was greatly extended to more than twenty separate tortures over the course of seven years. Over the course of his martyrdom, 40,900 pagans were converted to Christianity, including the Empress Alexandra. When George finally died, the wicked Dacian was carried away in a whirlwind of fire. In later Latin versions, the persecutor is the Roman emperor Decius, or a Roman judge named Dacian serving under Diocletian.[28]
DeleteThere was a well-established tradition in the 4th century that the Getae, believed to be Dacians by mainstream scholarship, and the Gothi were the same people, e.g., Orosius: Getae illi qui et nunc Gothi. This identification, now discredited, was supported by Jacob Grimm.[68] In pursuit of his hypothesis, Grimm proposed many kindred features between the Getae and Germanic tribes.[69]
DeleteAs a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589).[4] The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language.
DeleteOnly a few documents in Gothic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources:
DeleteThe largest body of surviving documentation consists of various codices, mostly from the sixth century, copying the Bible translation that was commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila, 311–382), leader of a community of Visigothic Christians in the Roman province of Moesia (modern-day Serbia, Bulgaria/Romania). He commissioned a translation into the Gothic language of the Greek Bible, of which translation roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived. The extant translated texts, produced by several scholars, are collected in the following codices and in one inscription:
Codex Argenteus (Uppsala), including the Speyer fragment: 188 leaves
The best-preserved Gothic manuscript, dating from the sixth century, it was preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern-day Italy. It contains a large portion of the four gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the Codex Argenteus is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek.
A standardized system is used for transliterating Gothic words into the Latin script. The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long /iː/ as ei. The Goths used their equivalents of e and o alone only for long higher vowels, using the digraphs ai and au (much as in French) for the corresponding short or lower vowels. There are two variant spelling systems: a "raw" one that directly transliterates the original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics (macrons and acute accents) to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature.
DeleteIt contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the gospels and the Epistles), from the Old Testament (Nehemiah), and some commentaries known as Skeireins. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists.
DeleteCodex Gissensis (Gießen): One leaf with fragments of Luke 23–24 (apparently a Gothic-Latin diglot) was found in an excavation in Arsinoë in Egypt in 1907 and was destroyed by water damage in 1945, after copies had already been made by researchers.
Codex Carolinus (Wolfenbüttel): Four leaves, fragments of Romans 11–15 (a Gothic-Latin diglot).
Codex Vaticanus Latinus 5750 (Vatican City): Three leaves, pages 57–58, 59–60, and 61–62 of the Skeireins. This is a fragment of Codex Ambrosianus E.
Um, well, there's always the occasional architect who someone isn't trying to take the head off of!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.hga.wales/
DeleteLet's not forget to be all-inclusive!
DeleteThat's the nice way to be!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GwWmSZasdM
ReplyDeletehttps://seaverfranks.com/project/religious-projects/
ReplyDeleteWow, for once the writing is somewhat accurate!
ReplyDeleteAt least these projects are feasible, then you have Dubai ...
ReplyDeleteSee, I'd rather go to a place of culture, like I don't know Bali!
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68839043
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pangeosyacht.com/
ReplyDeleteTo construct the terayacht — the biggest floating structure ever built on the planet — an estimated $8 Billion will be needed, with a timeline of approximately eight years.
ReplyDeleteIf they do go through with it they better offer Dubai Chocolate Ice cream!
ReplyDelete