Fixing vote for Maggie
QUESTION Was the 1958 vote rigged to select Margaret Thatcher as Conservative candidate for Finchley?
This is an extraordinary scoop in Charles Moore’s brilliant biography Margaret Thatcher: Not For Turning.
in the final vote to select the Conservative parliamentary candidate for the Finchley seat in North London in 1958, history tells us that Margaret Thatcher narrowly won by 46 votes to 43.
This resulted in the famous headline Tories Choose Beauty and the news report: ‘The woman Tories reckon their most beautiful member has been chosen as candidate for Finchley.’
According to Jonathan Aitken: ‘A small but vocal group of association members relentlessly opposed the idea of a woman MP and tried to deny Margaret Thatcher the nomination.’
it appears they might have won had the Conservative Association chairman Cecil ‘Bertie’ Blatch not switched two votes to ensure her nomination, changing the course of history.
During the 2013 publicity tour for the biography, Moore revealed at Ludlow Assembly Rooms the goings-on behind the scenes when Mrs Thatcher put herself forward for selection as Finchley’s Conservative candidate.
her main rival was Thomas Langton, a holder of the Military Cross, who was described by one Conservative Association member as a ‘one-legged brigadier’.
On the day after Lady Thatcher died, Moore received an email from haden Blatch, who confided that his father had told him: ‘she didn’t actually win.
‘The man did, but i thought: “he’s got a silver spoon in his mouth. he’ll get another seat.” [he didn’t]
‘so i “lost” two of his votes and gave them to her.’
if this is true, Mrs Thatcher unknowingly started her political career as a result of a fraud.
Moore also revealed that the decision by her old university, Oxford, not to award her an honorary degree had deeply upset her. This is why she gave all her private papers to Cambridge, from where Moore obtained most of the material for his biography.
Jonathan Fitch, Clun, Shropshire.
QUESTION Why do some stainless steel spoons become dark with age?
sTAiNLess steel contains at least 11 per cent chromium and more than 50 per cent iron.
Chromium is tarnish-resistant due to a passive layer of oxide, just nanometres thick, which prevents further oxidation.
however, darkening can be caused by further oxidation forming metal oxides of chrome and iron. Chromium oxide is dark green and carbon, which is found in all steels, is black.
electropolishing in a phosphoric acid solution produces a shine, but leaves a chrome-rich surface.
Abrasive cleaning causes scratches and removes the passive film, brightening in the short term, but worsening the appearance over a longer period.
The environment also has an effect on the appearance of stainless steel. Water causes tarnish and salt is corrosive to many metals.
Dishwashers are particularly prone to causing darkening of cutlery because of the heat, chemicals and chloride in the water softener salt contaminating the rinse water.
Contact with other metals can cause a battery effect whereby stainless steel becomes the anode and corrosion occurs.
Not all stainless steels are equal. Generally, the higher proportion of expensive ingredients used, the more tarnish-resistant is the product. The usual type, known as Austenitic, after a Victorian metallurgist, contains nickel: 18/8 grade has 18 per cent chromium and 8 per cent nickel.
special alloys, where there is less than 50 per cent iron, are more corrosionresistant. They are used in dental crowns.
To prevent your stainless steel cutlery from tarnishing, avoid using abrasive cleaners and chloride chemicals such as bleach. instead, clean with diluted vinegar or gentle proprietary cleaners.
Phil Alexander, Farnborough, Hants.
QUESTION What is the origin of the office jargon ‘pushing the envelope’?
This has nothing to do with moving office stationery!
The term refers to theoretical limits of safety derived by calculation. it is used widely in engineering, especially in the development of aircraft.
engineers calculate the theoretical combinations of operating parameters, such as the angle of wings to the airflow versus the speed of the aircraft.
This results in two curves showing the minimum and maximum safe conditions. When both curves are shown on a graph, they enclose an area called the envelope of safe operating conditions.
Theoretically, operating the craft with any combination of parameters within the envelope should be safe.
Test pilots are said to push the envelope by finding how far beyond those theoretical limits they can fly the aircraft. The phrase has come to mean challenging existing assumptions.
it became widely used after it appeared in Tom Wolfe’s 1979 award-winning nonfiction book The Right stuff about the Mercury seven astronauts and test pilots of rocket-propelled aircraft, notably Chuck Yeager.
‘Yeager had been the first rocket pilot to go through this particular hole in the supersonic envelope, and it was during the flight in the X-1A in which he set a speed record of Mach 2.42,’ wrote Wolfe.
‘One of the phrases that kept running through the conversation was pushing the outside of the envelope.’
in corporate jargon, this term suggests a performance that exceeds expectations, rather than performing to their limits.
Tony Cater, Grays, Essex.
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