Data: Deaths by week, Week 1 2023 compared to pre-COVID-19 years (ODF)

Here’s how the first week of the year compares to pre-COVID average:

Original data released half an hour ago:

he December undercount was last mentioned here 7 days ago. It still has not been corrected, so I’ve E-mailed the relevant department of ONS:

Dear Sarah Caul,

I have been tracking ONS data very closely for about a year and I wrote over 100 blog posts about it. Thanks for the relatively (compared to other countries) rapid data disclosure on deaths per week. Corporate media does not need to lie about the data if it can relay false narratives and spin. That’s why people should not rely on the media; check the data. I go by the data. My Ph.D. was in Medical Biophysics, focusing on statistics.

Political intervention is always a threat. You proudly disclose you’re not subjected to political influence. This is great news.

I rely a lot on (and appreciate) the data you release every Tuesday morning at around 10AM. Hence, the integrity of the data is important to me. Editorialising it and repeating government communication strategies (debunked online) distracts from the core data. So I try to stay away from the textual stuff.

In your last update before Christmas you said clearly (in very large fonts) that there was an undercount, which was presented and contained in the datasheet. I took screenshots of that. 3 updates later, however, this number (undercount) has not been amended/corrected. Can you explain, clarify, rectify this? I wish to know what happened in the start of December when there was an undercount.

Kind regards,

If I receive a reply, I will share the gist of it or the whole thing. Depends on sensibilities. If they do not reply, I will ask again. These people are paid by us to inform us.

AM by no means a germophobe. I never was. Chronic and irrational fear of germs, viruses etc. overlooks the point that microorganisms are everywhere, all the time. But over the past few years it’s undeniable that many people overwhelmed hospitals, as COVID-19 had spread, causing massive fatigue in the NHS. Many GPs and nurses resigned. Many others don’t want to go “in there”. Back in 2020 I had an appointment prospectively scheduled by the NHS, but it took them almost 3 months to actually contact me and ask about a date. I had already forgotten about that by then. There was nothing worth going to anymore. In some contexts, such as cancer screeninings, such delays can be lethal/fatal. To be clear, my appointment was for something very minor, predating the worst of COVID-19. I even gave up on it, seeing that other people needed access to physicians a lot more than I needed it.

The mayhem of COVID-19 never ended. A huge number of Brits died last year. In spite of vaccines? Because of them? Lack of funding for the NHS? Lasting effects of COVID recovery? The government does not even bother investigating. It doesn’t wish to know or doesn’t want us to know.

ONS is still publishing figures about deaths, even if data is missing (according to ONS itself!). The “official” figures in https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ are a laughing stock. They’re barely even worth citing anymore as they’re incomplete by design. They became like an instrument of government and media propaganda.

Learning for oneself how safe it is to mingle with people, knowing that the health system is mostly unavailable or barely available, just makes sense. Some people aren’t given a choice because as part of their job — their livelihood — they must interact with people. Masks are increasingly being mocked or frowned upon. Distancing isn’t always possible (in some jobs and activities).

2023 is here and the lock-downs soon turn 3. For some of us, limited social contact (physical, in-person) is still a reality, a fact of life. Let’s wait and see what ONS publishes later today (about 3 hours from now). Are excess deaths still going through the roof? Are more deaths “gone missing”?

Video download link | md5sum 93ed07dde58f9f18674c2d75a0c2a72c
Management That Dislikes Geeks
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has devolved into a kakistocracy that lies to staff and gaslights technical workers. This is how companies perish.

TODAY’S COVERAGE of Sirius focused on how the company was treating valuable geeks, whom the company should thank and be grateful to even have. It can barely hire any more; those who come leave very quickly.

A deficit of technical knowledge has long doomed the company. A deficit of technical staff is even worse. Treating them like “crap” only makes things worse, leading to dissent, protest, and resignations. The video above covers the latest meme and article. Tomorrow we’ll talk about unions.

My wife Rianne never appreciated these insulting analogies (calling NOC staff “monkeys” and treating them accordingly)

5 Little Monkeys Swinging In The Tree

Summary: As per Rianne’s departure message about Sirius ‘Open Source’ (tuxmachines.org post), the abuse endured since 2019 did a lot of damage and false accusations were the last straw; the role was created by people who called folks who would occupy it “monkeys”; that’s how some would view the staff

THE staff will always remember what happened. The staff does not forget bullying. Witch-hunts are also impossible to forget. While Rianne strongly suspects that Matthew Garrett ‘doxxed’ her to her employer as part of his efforts to silence me, the more plausible explanation is that Sirius management was looking for excuses to quell technical dissent and moral defense. I’ve been arguing against many of the company’s decisions for a long time (internally).

I wasn’t alone though; other staff also felt unhappy and some found the courage to speak about it, not just to peers but also to management. We’ve already shown a bunch letters after videos on grievances and there might be a letter-ripping video after explaining and showing the chain of events.

Adding insult to injury, in Rianne’s case her love of animals and regular donations to animal charities were sort of weaponised, hence the image below:

The company relied on truly ‘flimsy’ ‘evidence’. The management said, without any evidence, that I had uttered something “defamatory”; it took two weeks to actually show something and what they then showed was some side IRC channel (that nobody reads) stating perfectly factual information about my experiences, without naming people or the company. It was a chat between just two people and didn’t reveal anybody’s identity. It was factual and necessary; it was moral to object to bad ideas. Blind obedience and unquestionable docility should not be seen as a merit.

Based on a two-person chat, however, the company started breaching protocols and making up processes, as we shall show at a later date. The procedures set forth were disregarded and extreme measures taken for no good reason, so we resigned. It was done with immediate effect, as per the law; and “you are unlikely, in most circumstances, to need to continue the process,” say the rules. So we’re free to speak about what happened. We shall soon talk about labour union aspects as well. It’s something I’ve spoken about with friends for almost 4 years already.

In a company where some technical workers are compared to “monkeys” and there are about as many “managers” as non-managers, something has truly gone wrong. We had a moral duty or felt an urgent need to explain what had gone wrong. We now have a wiki that maintains several sections, including: memes, videos, report, key facts in a nutshell…

We’ve published about 45 videos with good titles (explaining in short the issues at hand), cases of clients (without naming them), openwashing, clown-washing etc.

As a reminder, we talk about a company that despite opposition from its own technical staff basically outsourced almost everything (Sirius also used to host for clients, on its very own premises). It used to self-host even the VoIP and file storage, but now, with no actual office, Sirius is just some account in another company’s server.

As we’ve said before, the company stands no chance of surviving. It’s deep in debt and it doesn’t know what it’s doing. Even its own clients began accusing it of “incompetence” (direct quote). When I joined the company in 2011 the staff had extensive media contacts in the wiki (for outreach, promotion, advocacy). It deteriorated over time as management was dismissing people without informing staff what actually happened (not safe to rely on hearsay and misinformation). Then, in Freenode, there was already an outlet for staff to discuss issues. Tackling a tradition of secrecy (dishonest management, but not quiet management), the IRC channel about the company insisted that “management wasn’t always right”, hence the need for a space in which bosses could be scrutinised. Now we do this in Techrights. The “monkeys” speak out.

Further to the rants from the other day, consider the Aviva letter claiming to have ‘lost’ traces of a pension, along with my reply:

> Thank you for sending in this LOA, We have searched our files with the
> information you have provided and can?t find anything, if you have any
> other information we can search again, we will just need you to resend
> it with the LOA.
>
> The details we need to search our systems to find out customer are
> policy numbers, full name, date of birth, current address or old
> addresses that may not have been changed on our systems, national
> insurance numbers, scheme number or scheme address
>
>
> *Kind regards*
> Aviva Customer Team

Hi,

I paid into my pension scheme at Aviva from around 2011 until about 2016. I gave you my DOB and NI number and you say you cannot find my account. How is that possible? Did you lose my money?

And a more personalised one too:

This is an automated email from Aviva Customer Services – please do not reply as this mailbox is not monitored.

Dear Dr R Schestowitz

Thank you for contacting Aviva. Please find attached the information you asked for.

If we have sent you a form to complete, please ensure you print and complete the form and post it back to us. For security reasons we are unable to accept forms by email or fax.

If you need any further information and you are calling from United Kingdom then please contact us on 0800 953 1777 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday not including bank holidays.

If calling from other countries please contact us on +0044 2037 611130.

Please do not reply to this email address, it is not monitored for incoming messages and your query may not be dealt with. Please email enquiries@aviva.co.uk instead?. For security reasons please only include your policy number when you email us.

Yours sincerely

Aviva Customer Services | PO Box 520, Norwich, NR1 3WG
Telephone: 0800 953 1777 | E-mail: enquiries@aviva.co.uk

?Any details you submit will not be secure whilst being submitted

Here’s the PDF (nothing sensitive in there):

Be wary of pension providers. They’re mostly good at taking money.

Video download link | md5sum 517c825e6b2b4ff488a8c7557ed7b5ce
Management Always Right
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has a seemingly very common problem; managers cannot be held accountable and even when shown that they failed at something, instead of apologising or taking actions against themselves they resort to accusing/blaming the reporter

TWELVE years ago the management at Sirius was a lot better. I was there. I saw it. Managers were typically technical people (like programmers and sysadmins). Things have changed though.

In recent years managers were just self-styled ‘managers’ or “professional managers” with experience in babysitting (literally).

As noted here a few hours ago, bringing a concrete example to the table, managers had made bad technical decisions and then refused to admit that. The evidence does not matter! It’s all about one’s pride. It’s about protecting brands^*.

Moreover, in that same example, it should be clear that staff wasn’t properly informed or trained; then, a falsified timeline was constructed for post hoc-type cover-up.

This example is about a year old, so in relative terms it is recent. If you work in a company that behaves in this way, consider leaving. Things won’t improve as this sort of attitude repels geeks.
_______
^* At Sirius, Google and AWS/Amazon were stubbornly defended no matter what (also Slack and Clownflare to a lesser degree). Readers of Techrights would likely be going one step ahead, correctly guessing some companies (not Sirius!) or even universities/governments (public sector, accountable to their citizens) which made a move to Microsoft would be ‘religiously’ defending bad decisions/choices (bribes often play a role, as Microsoft whistleblowers have repeatedly demonstrated in the recent past).

And whenever things fail, as always happens (Microsoft products are even defective by design), Microsoft just pushes them more Microsoft as the supposed solution. More sales! The culprits who brought Microsoft to the business/government want to “prove” it’ll work; so they pay Microsoft some more, albeit not at a personal expense. It’s a vicious cycle. Everyone loses, except Microsoft. And if only everything ran on Microsoft, they insist, things would be ‘optimal’ (until the next ransomware attack).

As an associate put it (to paraphrase), the problem is always that there wasn’t sufficient faith in Microsoft and that is always solved by buying TheNextVersion(tm) and MORE of it. For decades the cycle has been the same, namely it’d work if only they could achieve 100% Microsoft integration. Once that happens, the target goal posts move, and it would work if only they could purchase TheNextVersion, and if that happens before they run out of money, then the goals posts move again. At that point it becomes, it’d work if only they had the right Microsoft training. Then by that time, the $TheNextVersion has become $ThePreviousVersion and that part of the cycle starts again. And yet they still blame outright collapses on “Linux people” and your average worker agrees to believe that excuse. The problem is not new, it as it goes back to the 1990s. But for a recent example look at Aaron Swartz’s blog post about Conde Nast and why he had no choice but to walk out the door and not look back.