4 ideas

These started as 4 ideas for fashion, prompted abroad by the Rana Plaza disaster, and at home in the UK by government-backed projects that hinder the rag trade rather than helping it. Such as a European Regional Development grant being spent boosting Chinese fashion factories via London Fashion Week, or a conventional wisdom about "ethical" fashion that began in September 2005 when a PR company started funding it, according to Googles' record of searchers for "ethical fashion ". The PR company is also employed by a couple of UK government departments.

So this is a blog criticising the conventional wisdom of how things are done, but the reason is just a set of suggestions.

In the UK, Greater London Authority and Department for Business' UK Trade and Investment subsidise a trade show called London Fashion Week.
♦ London Fashion Week to select stallholders who are suggested by UK factories, or who can provide a reference from a UK factory; stallholders to state what factories they use.

In Brussels, the Europaen Commission sets low tariffs around a tradign bloc of countries.

♦ Conditional tariffs that are higher for countries that don't meet a set of criteria and lower for countries that do. A sliding scale based on measurable facts. The criteria would be around
- democracy - the democracy index for example
- social insurance and a welfare state; if goods are more expensive because their producers pay taxes towards a welfare state such as hospital provision or pensions, then those goods ought to come-into the European Union cheaper.
- human rights, or legal rights.
These three scales are hard to measure, but a good score one one tends to go with a good score on another.

♦ Bangladeshi government does not promote any kind of national insurance scheme - even for people working in formal jobs. So it should introduce one and move towards a subsidised scheme that also pays for people without formal jobs. Mohammed Yunis is Bangladesh is keen to set something up.

More to follow - this began as 4 ideas and has grown to about 5 or 6