UK Journalists paid by government to promote Chinese goods out of UK taxes

A government programme paid over £550 each in subsidised trips to sixty journalists & buyers every six months to report on shoes and clothes made overseas for London Fashion Week. MPs with shoe factories in their constituencies - Peter Bone in Wellingborough and Patricia Hewitt in Leicester East - did not write a single letter to protest..

Peter Bone MP is an accountant and MP for Wellingborough. His constituency has more shoe factories in it than anywhere else in the UK, but when the Sanders and Sanders factory was running-up to closure last year he showed no sign of knowing that the department for Business Innovation and Skills was subsidising the competition by sending buyers and journalists to report on glossy shows of Chinese shoes such as Terra Plana at London Fashion Week. If he did know that his constituents were paying taxes towards putting themselves out of work, he certainly didn't write a letter about it to the UK Trade and Investment, a ministerial agency which funds this joint scheme with London Development Agency. The department's only correspondence with him or the now-closed factory was a series of email tip-offs about export opportunities, such as overseas trade shows. They sent fifteen over about four years.Patricia Hewitt MP is MP for Leicester West, another shoemaking area with an unemployment rate of 13.8% . Equity Shoes was a major local employer until closure in January 2009, with a recent payroll of 200 and a 100 at closure. Like Sanders, it was a tenacious company - Sanders was a family trust and Equity was a staff co-op, so neither closed lightly. Patricia Hewitt had every reason to know about the scheme to put her constituents out of work because she had to sign for it: she was secretary of state for trade and industry (now the department for Business Innovation and Skills) between 2001 and 2005. She could have picked-up the phone during any of those years and asked

"why are we subsidising the competition?".

It is not revealed what she said in the office when she was minister, but a recent freedom of information act request that she did not write a single letter on the subject of Equity Shoes to the department between 2005 and the end of January 2010, even after being tipped-off in November that the question was going being asked.

"We have completed a search of our electronic information management systems and we do not have any record of UK Trade & Investment having received letters from the MPs for Leicester or Rushden on the subject of UK shoe manufacturers. "

Published freedom of information requests & replies on Whatdotheyknow.com describe a scheme that UK Trade and Investment call the International Buyers Programme, funded over roughly four years and still in place.

"since September 2005, UK Trade & Investment have paid British Fashion Council £215,555. This funding is for the international buyers programme for London Fashion week. The aim of the programme is to bring the most significant and influential buyers and press to London Fashion week each season."

London Development Agency quotes "£120k more than budgeted for 2008/9 was spent on LFW support as funding was allocated to support the International Guest Programme to cover reduced funding from UKTI", but it still got "UKTI support during 2008/09" of £33,000. Some of the money may be counted twice as British Fashion Council is also sponsored by the Mayfair Hotel and British Airways "The official airline of London Fashion Week", which are both likely to have catered for these expenses-paid trips: ""The LFW International Guest Programme, supported jointly by LDA and UKTI, saw 60 key, targeted international press and buyers assisted in their visits to LFW, through flight subsidies and accommodation. These visitors are given welcome packs and are accompanied through their stay as they visit the exhibition, catwalk shows and showrooms. Feedback on media coverage generated and orders placed is collected after their visits."

Did the money achieve anything good?

There are attempts to quote outputs on the projects report to the London Development Agency, but the list omits manufacturers. The only figures broken down in any detail are figures of media coverage, reported by an agency paid for by British Fashion Council. And there are anecdotal quotes. It's not often that Vogue is quoted on Indymedia but we may even add to the list of outputs by repeating this quote:

""The Season London Shone" wrote US Vogue's Sarah Mower. "Who'd have thought that London would shine at its brightest during a crisis. London's Designers squared up to the fall with an exceptional out-flowing of creativity and polish ... that made Fall 2009 this city's most dazzling performance for years."

...ends. Sources:
"Record Figures for London Fashion Week"
 http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/news_details.aspx?ID=86

"AGREEMENT FOR FUNDING RELATING TO CREATIVE
SECTOR SUPPORT - DESIGNER FASHION Parties: LDA / BFC
Ref: 23300 QUARTERLY REPORT 2008/9: Q3&4 [biannual update]"
 http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/london_fashion_week_biannual_upd#comment-7716

"Consultation re closed UK shoe factories" information request and reply on Whatdotheyknow.com:
 http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/consultation_re_closed_uk_shoe_f_2#comment-8530

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester_West

Pictures of Equity Shoes buildings post closure:
 http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=40786
software too.

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This blog is by a vegan shoe company called Veganline.com that sells vegan shoes boots & belts

Correction: there was a debate "supported by..."

http://www.britishfashioncouncil.com/news/197/Tax-Breaks-for-Eco-Fashion-Businesses "This call for action follows this week’s RE: Fashion Summit and the recent British Fashion Council’s Estethica debate [^] on the promotion of ethical fashion and consumer engagement.  The campaign, supported by Monsoon, Vivienne Westwood, Edun, George at ASDA, From Somewhere and London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, calls on all parties to recognise that to effect change, sustainability and ethical fashion also needs to make commercial sense."

So European regional development money is not investing in my future or my region, as the label on Centre for Sustainable Development says, but on a press release by taxpayer-funded people asking for them to be exempt from tax. Along with their other sponsors, of course, who make things in other parts of the world.

"RE: Fashion Summit", is just the usual suspects under another name. This is Ethical Fashion Forum's web site: "Launched the RE:Fashion Awards- the official awards for ethical fashion, creating a platform for best practice across the supply chain. Held the RE:Fashion summit bringing together industry leaders and initiated the RE:Fashion manifesto, setting out sustainability parameters and targets for the UK industry." The link is to a google for "RE:Fashion manifesto", which finds two references, both on the Ethical Fashion Forum web site.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"] Centre for Sustainable Fashion is paid for by the European Regional Development Fund 2007-13[/caption]

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This blog is by a vegan shoe company called Veganline.com that sells vegan shoes boots & belts

Socially aware fashion degree uses the "s" word for vagueness about human rights

Syllabuses for these Ethical Fashion courses tend to be written by the state-backed Centre for Sustainable Fashion which says "Ethical" in the same way that some prople say "Hullo" to open a conversation, begging the question of which ethic, immediately followed by "Sustainable", which sounds less vague next to "Ethical". Basically they want big business to be a bit greener and for everyone but big business folk to be paid starvation wages. For that bit of propaganda they get paid by us via Higher Education Funding Council and sometimes Department for International Development.

First socially aware fashion degree launches | Ms Wanda'shttp://www.mswandas.co.uk/2013/03/12/first-socially-aware-fashion-degree-launches/Fashion students in the UK will now get sustainability and ethics embedded in their studies thanks to Buckinghamshire New University.

Fair access to subsidies

PlanB4fashion wants fair access to subsidies. London Fashion Week offered subsidised stallls for 3 shows starting February 2008 to Ethical Fashion Forum, who's first archived web page of October 2007 shows connections with other exibitors. EFF were also keen to turn-down members who might be troublesome.

London Fashion Week is funded by the Greater London Assembly (London Development Agency in 2007-8) out of European Regional Development Grant. In other countries like Portugal it is used to help local manufacturers co-operate, train and export.

UK government spends the money in a different way. Centre back at London Fashion Week is Gallahad Clark selling his "arguably more democratic" shoes made in China and centre forward is probably Elizabeth Laskar of Ethical Fashion Forum turning-down awkward members. The money is syphoned-off to promote Chinese factories rather than develop any region of Europe.

Redundancies and food poverty encouraged by fashion pundits

Last night on telly was a programme about food poverty in the UK and the difficulty of many people in the UK to afford meals from our run-down welfare benefits in a run-down manufacturing economy, broken down by unfair exchange rates, neglect, and lack of respect for the extra costs involved in making something in the fairer working conditions of the UK.

It would be easy to estimate the number of jobs lost in Leicester directly as a result of people like Ethical Fashion Forum and London Fashion Week and Estethica - often job lossses that they have engineered on money paid to them by Greater London Authority, Defra, or Department for Business, out of taxes paid for those who are being put out of work. One of the worst offenders Orsulanda de Castro is speaking at the moment to I am typing this rather than listen!

I just saw a slight glimpse of the world that I recognise overlapping with Ethical Fashion Forum's world when a guest speaker about closed-loop polyesters needing a larger investment than UK textiles mills could afford; about the way production management has usually been removed from college corriculums in favour of design or "fashion"; prioduction people are scarce at large company head offices. There was a great quote "production people are the brokers of fair relationships" in industry.

plan B 4 fashion manifesto

4-point manifesto from the blog at https://facebook.com/planB4fashion .
Points 1 & 2 are about fashion production in the UK.
Points 3 & 4 are about reducing poverty in the far east - for example Bangladesh.

1.
UK government can help UK factories compete, by releasing tax data to say what factories exist.

Data could be made-up into trade directory by anyone who wanted to do the work as happens already with simlar data. Some companies would find ways of covering their costs and cross-selling other services. If not, perhaps a small grant of a volunteer effort could get good directories written.

Better trade directories are a very cheap way of re-balancing the UK economy so that it begins to pay enough taxes and employ enough people. Factories help money circulate around the UK, bringing taxes back into government, and creating jobs in run-down areas. Factories also have to be very lean to pay the costs of paying for a democratic welfare state with a UK living-standard and rents. They don't all have staff for sales or PR or tendering for contracts or submitting entries to competitions. Some don't even have office or reception staff. They need terse orders from well-informed customers who know exactly what the factory makes, the technique used, and maybe the minimum orders for free set-up or free UK delivery.

2.
UK government can change the fashion week that we pay for in taxes (through Greater London Authority and Department for Business' UK Trade and Investment).  It can insist that exhibitors are nominated by UK or European factories & display the names of the factories. This would get better value for UK taxpayers' money: UK taxpayers pay to promote employment amongst other UK taxpayers. UK taxpayers promote a clothing brand and a factory for the same budget that just paid to promote a clothes brand in the past; it's two results for the price of one.

Factory-vetted designers are probably reasonable to work with, from a factory's point of view.
At the moment London Fashion Week pays for extra coaching for designers who aren't businesslike - even some in the past who didn't have a way of making the clothes they put on show! There is an export guarantee system that insures their bad debts from overseas buyers,  who sometimes take advantage by not paying. So, in the worst case, a fashion week and UK Trade and Investment subsidy can promote a designer who is hard to work with, then pay the bad debts when the designer isn't paid, and put rival producers out of work because they're not in the PR business and get overlooked. An example is Equity Shoes of Leicester who were overlooked as ethical footwear producers while Terra Plana, who bought shoes from China, got the PR. Both are now closed.


For a long time there was only anecdotal evidence that London Fashion Week helped taxpayers. Now they have a 50 page "Value of Fashion" report in very small print which seems to show huge returns. We know from the Olympics' effect on London tourism that these reports are partly a sales pitch; they are not impartial. Read closely, the report admits the opposite of what the headline summaries say. Estimates of how money circulates are based on decades-old data about how many shoe factories existed in the UK, including many like Equity Shoes that have now closed. Most of the money circulates amongst people who could get other jobs in PR and fashion journalism. And no estimate is made of the cost of crowding-out UK apparel suppliers from the market.

3.
Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian & Chinese governments can reduce poverty.
The methods that worked in the UK 100 years ago were universal schooling and national insurance. Schooling for girls helped them become more assertive and reduced the rate of child birth. Pensions helped parents plan for old age without having to have as many children as they possibly could.

The first modern national insurance scheme was introduced in Germany, just before its industrial revolution.  It is not too early for Bangladesh to start one now.

The difficulty is how someone in the UK can effect government in Bangladesh, beyond a few factory checks or a fair-trade scheme. This is the next point.


4.
European and US government can change the tariffs that tax trade from countries without democratic welfare states like Bangladesh or China.
This helps people in Bangladesh as well as their cousins in Bolton. There is a consensus.
A formula for tariffs be worked-out over time.

• More democracy earns a lower tariff - there is already a democracy index that could help this one get started.


• More of a welfare state earns a lower tariff.


• More human rights earn a lower tariff. And the reverse could also be true, so a country with more expensive exports because of the cost of a welfare state can still compete on price with China; the worst country no longer sets the market price for garment production.

Western governments are already trying to help eastern ones become more stable and better governed, if only to prevent the tide of misery reaching Europe in the form of wars and refugees. Search "Bangladesh" on gov.uk and find this...

"we are working with Transparency International Bangladesh and other civil society organisations to generate more debate between the government and citizens about progress in improving the providing services like health, education and legal services, and to beat corruption."

Unfortunately, western governments are also paying Bangladesh to keep its poor, with grants, development work and tariff-deals that depend on there being a lot of very poor people in Bangladesh. The rich in Bangladesh do very well out of this system. Their government even has enough free cash to pay for an export subsidy in a country that gets aid from the UK. Factory owners now get some free training for their staff paid by the UK taxpayer. With luck, the firm consistent pressure of conditional tariffs would change their minds and the way they run government. If not, the tariff system would raise some money towards the 0.7% that UK taxpayers pay in aid, to pay for Pakistani healthcare when the Pakistan government only pays 0.8% on health.

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2010/10/12/applications-open-for-lfw

Ethics of Estethica

If anyone really understands the ethics of Esthetica, please send them on a postcard or write them on our facebook page!

Design Calling

Applications for LFW’s most coveted schemes are now open

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop