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We took the portrait of Mavis & Ray Nye to the Houses of Parliament to mark the anniversary of her passing. It was a memorable day
Yesterday marked exactly 12 months since we lost our beloved Mavis Nye to mesothelioma. Mavis was a legend in the world of asbestos, surviving an incredible 14 years after she was diagnosed in 2009. Her fundraising, campaigning, and support for other sufferers of asbestos-related disease were an inspiration to all.
To mark the date, our Alpha Tracker director Robin organised an event at the Houses of Parliament, hosted by Julia Buckley MP and with most of the asbestos industry represented. Robin is a Trustee of the Mavis Nye Foundation, the charity founded by Mavis & Ray to inspire and support other sufferers of mesothelioma and to raise funds for research.
It was a lovely occasion. Moving, inspiring, and important, raising the levels of awareness with MPs and demanding action. The whole event was linked back to the wonderful oil painting of Mavis & Ray which was the brainchild of European Asbestos Forum President Yvonne Waterman and commissioned by UKNAR founder Andrew Paten. The portrait only arrived a few days before the event thanks to the efforts of Harry Vonk from the Asbestos Museum (where it has been on display for the last 12 months).
Mavis wanted her portrait to be in the Houses of Parliament so that MPs would ask who she was, understand her story, and then take action to stop people from being exposed to asbestos fibres in the future. In particular, she was determined to see changes in policy and legislation so that asbestos was removed entirely from schools and hospitals. She was also a great supporter of the notion of a UK National Asbestos Register.
Here are some of the photos from the day and a video of the event itself in a room just off Westminster Hall.
Ray couldn't join the event in person as he is not well enough to travel, but it was videoed to enable him to watch it back at home.
Mavis & Ray were walked through the Palace of Westminster
Craig reading some very moving words sent in by Ray
Julia Buckley MP sharing her thoughts about the next steps
Representatives of the UK asbestos industry and charities
Three emails just arrived one after the other - and each put a smile on our faces and a spring in our step! Feedback #1... "We smashed our audit! Thank you so much for your help" from a new customer where we have been providing Alpha Five support and mentoring to help them to develop an Intranet quality & audit system Feedback #2... "hi Tom. It looks fantastic! Very well done" from a client reviewing the latest changes to a web data analysis system we have written using Alpha Anywhere , SQL Server and JavaScript Feedback #3... " The launch of Alpha Tracker here is going really well ... thank you so much" from an asbestos consultancy feeling the benefits of their Alpha Tracker asbestos software installation. We really appreciate it when customers take the time to send us feedback like this - it makes the hard work seem worthwhile!
The news has been full of a new cyber-security threat that has been causing havoc since the start of the month. Log4j , as it is known, is one of the worst server vulnerabilities to ever have been discovered. In fact, some experts say it is the worst. There's a really good summary of the threat here, on Wired.com: https://www.wired.com/story/log4j-log4shell/ The Log4j vulnerability gives hackers the opportunity to do virtually anything on a compromised server - from running bitcoin mining software (causing your server to run at full speed, essentially disabling all of your server running on it) to exposing user names and passwords, or even installing dreaded ransomware. The UK has been particularly hit with attacks, as this graphic shows: The UK and North America are amongst the areas seeing most hacking attempts At Start Software, we take security really seriously and we have already checked the servers which run asbestos software Alpha Tracker , leg...
Our 24x7 Support Desk had a busy November answering 664 calls. It was the usual mixture of questions, queries, suggestions and problems - all good fun! Busy month on the Support Desk! Overall, we maintained our good performance from the month before with 19 out of 20 queries being resolved within the timescales set by our clients.
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