"If A Man Were Walking Down Broadway Wearing This Product, Would People Notice?"

My favourite You-Tube treasure-trove at the moment is a collection of recordings of the American TV programme "What's My Line " from the 1950s. Some feature people who are simply celebrities, others feature 'ordinary' people in unusual occupations.

This edition of "What;s My Line" was made 50 years ago last week and is reviewed here. (yes, nowadays 50-year-old TV gets in-depth reviews on the net!)

The guest here is a conventional looking chap who makes apparel for some very special people....

After watching this what I wanted to know was how he started off doing this in 1934?

So I found him in Wikipedia
Russell Colley began in 1934 making a pressurused suit for a pilot on his wife's sewing machine. He got due recognition for his work when the Mercury astronauts flew in his suits.

In the programme someone calls Colley 'a manly man' - however he had an artistic streak; according to Wikipedia he originally wanted to design women's clothing and also painted water colours and made jewellery....

Colley had a 'good innings', dying in 1996, aged about 96.

Save Planning Alerts!

Planning Alerts has been a really useful website, I'm really disappointed to have received the following email tonight:

As some of you may already have spotted in the news, Planning Alerts has
been effected by legal action by the Royal Mail:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7700621.stm

We are left with the choice of paying the Royal Mail up to £4,000 a
year for access to the postcode database and eitjavascript:void(0)her running a much less
accurate and useful service or shutting PlanningAlerts down altogether.
If are concerned about this, please consider doing the following:

-- Write to your MP --

Tom Watson MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling on
the Royal Mail to allow non-profit organisations to use the postcode
database for free. Please write to your MP asking them to sign this
Early Day Motion (number EDM 2000) and protest at the actions of The
Royal Mail.

You can write to your MP here: http://marples.writetothem.com/

-- Sign the petition --

Nearly 1,200 people have so far signed a petition on the Prime
Minister's website, please add your name:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nfppostcodes/

-- Blog / write to your local paper--

Please consider writing a blog post in support of PlanningAlerts or
writing to your local paper.

Yours,

The PlanningAlerts.com team

Town Council By-Election Result

I've just come back from the count for the Whitehouse Ward Town Council by-election in Rayleigh. The result was:

Conservatives : 488 - 69 percent
Lib Dems (Corey Vost) 166 - 23 percent
BNP 57 - 8 percent

There was a 22 percent turnout.

So, a clear win for the Conservatives - and we offered our congratulations to Mr Ward (now Councillor Ward!).

Not a good result for the BNP.

But rather encouragingly, a better result for us than in the last District Council election here last year, which was:

Conservatives 641 - 56 percent
English Democrats 312 - 27 percent
Lib Dems 184 - 16 percent

(the last Town Council election was contested on the same day as the District election by 3 Conservatives and 1 Labour, the Tories winning with 809, 770, 744 and Labour getting 264)

I'm Glad We Don't Need This In Essex

I see the Weather Channel gives mosquito forecasts in the US....

Airstrip One And The 1966 World Cup

Another thread at alternatehistory.com explores a timeline in which George Orwell's 1984 actually happens - or at least , Big Brother and Ingsoc rule England , but as a North Korean type hermit state. Everyone is brainwashed into believing that the rest of the world comprises Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia.

The creator of this thread suggests that the point of departure for this timeline would be Mosley sticking with the Labour Party in the 1930s; the allies still win WW2, but things go downhill from there onwards :

30th July 1966 - "And here comes Hurst. Some people are on the pitch. They think it's all over!"

England clinched the FIFA World Cup after a valiant 2-1 victory over Uruguay at Parc des Princes in Paris. Duncan Edwards made the pass to Hurst that sealed the game for the English.

As the last minute goal went into the back of the net, sealing an unexpected victory for England, thousands of French supporters charged the stewards and ran on to the pitch, swamping the England team.

Later that evening the England players and staff, sought political asylum at the American embassy in Paris, while in London the BBC broadcast news reports of a Uruguay victory, and presented "evidence" of collusion with terrorist groups within the England team.

Freddie Mercury As Lib Dem Prime Minister ?

It's here at www.alternatehistory.com

In response to the overbearing social conservatism of Thatcher, Queen becomes far more political. Freddie never enters the underground scene (bathhouses, frequent unprotected sex, etc.), so he never gets HIV. In 1982, the album "Hot Space" is shelved in place of a very political album about the Falklands War.

Freddie Mercury is seen as a "spokesman of a generation". He publicly endorses the Liberals in the '83 election, leading to a resurgence in Lib popularity, despite an overwhelming Conservative victory. In 1984, the song "I Want to Break Free" is released, but rather than being a love/breakup song as in OTL, it is a left-wing anthem about oppressive conservatism controlling people's lives. At Live Aid, widely considered Queen's best performance, Mercury announces that Queen will be taking a hiatus after the band's next album is released so that he can run for parliament from the Hammersmith constituency (he resided in West Kensington at the time, within the Hammersmith constituency). In the 1987 election, Mercury wins. He is seated and quickly rises in the (admittedly small) ranks of the Liberal party. He helps to negotiate the merger with the SDP, with the rallying cry "A United Left for a United Britain". Mercury becomes vital for the Lib Dems, reaching out to young people (under 40) to run and vote in the next elections.

In 1992, a seemingly Labour lead was trounced by late-deciding young voters, who responded to criticism of Labour in The Sun and to left-wing attacks on Major's economy, especially the recession. The election resulted in a Hung Parliament ...

Just how well did we really do in Hammersmith in 1987?

What I Did On My Vacation From Blogging

In case anyone has been wondering, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth, I merely stopped blogging because I was immersed in the County Council Elections in Rayleigh North.

To cut a long story short, I finished a cheerful second out of six candidates, closing the gap on the Conservative incumbent to about 6 percent:

Stephen Charles Castle The Conservative Party Candidate 2095
Chris Black Liberal Democrats 1739
John Hayter English Democrats 718
Tony Smith Say No To European Union 416
Lisa Byrne British National Party 278
David Dennis Bodimeade The Labour Party Candidate 226

I represent one-quarter of Rayleigh North on the District Council, and was ahead by a landslide there. So if I want to win in four year time, I know what I need to do.

The Conservatives didn't have any fun in the campaign, and were too frit to even put their candidate's home address on any of his campaign material (he lives more than 20 minutes away, on Canvey Island. And they had to, ahem, twist the truth quite a bit in their last leaflet.

Meanwhile the Lib Dems advance across Essex, making 4 gains and becoming the second party in the County with 12 seats.

Iran

It's not the voting that creates a democracy, it's the counting....

Reshuffle Rumours

Some things don't change.....

Daffodils and Strings