Heath's early appointments were as a whip in the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. He rose to be Chief Whip and Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury from 1955 to 1959. Harold Macmillan appointed him Minister of Labour, a Cabinet post, in 1959.
In 1960 Macmillan gave Heath responsibility for negotiating the UK's first attempt to join the European Economic Community (as the European Union was then called). After extensive negotiations, the British entry was vetoed by the French President, Charles de Gaulle.
From 1965 to 1970 Heath was Leader of the Opposition when the Labour Party were in power. Then he was elected Prime Minister in the General Election of 1970.
During his premiership the UK government passed through parliament some quite radical changes.
Since Anglo-Saxon times, the currency of England (and so later the UK) was based on the pound sterling, at a rate of 240 pence to £1. On 15 February 1971, known as Decimal Day, the United Kingdom and Ireland decimalised their currencies.
This change had many consequences, but it was eventually accepted by most people. It was an expensive change. Not only was the whole of the currency in circulation changed, but many mechanical gadgets also had to be changed. Every cash register in the country, every commercial machine which took coins, every public notices of monetary charges, and so on.
The other change, which happened at roughly the same time, was metrication of the old imperial system of weights and measures. This idea dated to before Heath, and was continued after him by the next Labour government. It was never fully completed. Speed limits are still in miles per hour, and measurements of length are still in traditional yards, feet and inches, with metric as an alternative. Once again, the changes were hugely expensive. It meant an almost complete retooling in the machine tool industry.
It was mainly done because joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 obliged the United Kingdom to take into its law all EEC directives. These included the use of a prescribed SI-based set of units for many purposes within five years. However, metric measures are not much used in everyday life in the UK.
Heath took the United Kingdom into Europe with the European Communities Act 1972 in October.
Once de Gaulle had left office, Heath was determined to get the UK into the (then) European Economic Community. The EEC economy had also slowed down and British membership was seen as a way to revitalise it. After a 12-hour talk between Heath and French President Georges Pompidou Britain's third application succeeded.
Heath failed to control the power of the unions. Two miners' strikes damaged the economy. The 1974 strike caused much of the country's industry to work a three-day week to conserve energy. That was enough for the electorate to put the government out of office. The loss of the 1974 general election ended Heath's career at the top. The Conservative Party replaced him with Margaret Thatcher.
Heath never married. He had been expected to marry childhood friend Kay Raven, who reportedly tired of waiting and married an RAF officer whom she met on holiday in 1950. In a four-sentence paragraph of his memoirs, Heath claimed that he had been too busy establishing a career after the war and had "perhaps ... taken too much for granted". In a 1998 TV interview with Michael Cockerell, Heath admitted that he had kept her photograph in his flat for many years afterwards.
His interest in music kept him on friendly terms with a number of female musicians including Moura Lympany. Lympany had thought Heath would marry her, but when asked about the most intimate thing he had done, replied, "He put his arm around my shoulder." Bernard Levin wrote at the time in "The Observer", forgetting two other prime ministers who were bachelors with no known romantic interests, that the UK had to wait until the emergence of the permissive society for a prime minister who was a virgin. In later life, according to his official biographer Philip Ziegler, Heath was "apt to relapse into morose silence or completely ignore the woman next to him and talk across her to the nearest man".
John Campbell, who published a biography of Heath in 1993, devoted four pages to a discussion of the evidence concerning Heath's sexuality. Whilst acknowledging that Heath was often assumed by the public to be gay, not least because it is "nowadays ... whispered of any bachelor" he found "no positive evidence" that this was so "except for the faintest unsubstantiated rumour". Campbell concluded that the most significant aspect of Heath's sexuality was his complete repression of it.
One Magic Christmas
One Magic Christmas is a 1985 Christmas movie released by Walt Disney Pictures, starring Harry Dean Stanton and Mary Steenburgen. The other cast is Gany Basaraba, Elisabeth Harnois, Arthur Hill, Wayne Robson, Elias Koteas, Michelle Meyrink, Sarah Polley.
The genre of this movie is family, drama, fantasy movie. The director is Phillip Borsos.
Kidney failure
Kidney failure (also called renal failure) is a term used to describe when a person's kidneys stop working properly, or fail. Kidney failure can be divided into two categories: chronic renal failure, and acute renal failure.
Chronic renal failure develops slowly, and there are not many noticeable symptoms at first.
Chronic renal failure can be a sign of other diseases, like IgA nephritis, glomerulonephritis, chronic pyelonephritis, and urinary retention.
Chronic renal failure will eventually develop into end-stage renal failure if it is left untreated. End-stage renal failure can only be treated with dialysis or a kidney transplant.
Acute renal failure develops in a short time, and symptoms are more noticeable. Symptoms include:
The cause of acute renal failure needs to be found quickly. Dialysis is often needed to prevent permanent damage to the body while the cause is being found.
It is possible to have acute renal failure on top of chronic renal failure. This is called "acute-on-chronic renal failure."
Foxtrot (disambiguation)
Foxtrot has several meanings.
Raoult's law
Raoult's law states that the vapour pressure of a binary solution containing a non-volatile solute is directly related to the mole fraction of solvent (i.e. volatile) in the solution.
Also, it states that the vapour pressure of each component in a binary solution containing volatile components is directly related to its respective mole fraction in the solution.
Relative going-down of vapour pressure is equal to mole fraction of non volatile and non-electrolytic solute. This is known as Raoult's law.
P-P(INITIAL)/P(INITIAL)=n(SOLUTE)/n(SOLVENT)
Overdose
An Overdose is when someone takes too much of a certain drug. This may be done voluntarily (as an attempt of suicide) or involuntarily. The drug may be a drug taken to treat some medical condition, or it may be a drug taken for recreation. Overdoses are considered to be poisoning, usually. They may lead to death, depending on the drug used.
If someone is thought to have had an overdose it is important to get them to a doctor, or hospital. It can be very hard to see what kind of drug was taken. Therefore, it can be hard for the doctor to find an antidote to give. For this reason, a packet (even if it is empty) of the drug should be taken.
Kargil War