picture of people who suffer from ethical fashion

Choice of picture from Ethical Fashion Forum

This is an old picture from a chainstore fashion site, chosen by Ethical Fashion Forum to show the sort of people it hopes to win-over. The picture also shows use of a union jack emblem on something not made in the UK, and people of the work-seeking age who are most likely to loose from a globalised economy with less national insurance or benefits.

People in the UK still get a basic national insurance service, but the government has taken the fund which was meant to exist, pensions are reduculously low and unemploynment benefit depends on being nagged relentlessly to work free or go on a pointless course. Housing Benefits have just been reduced and risk causing homelessness. People use food banks. A lot of paid work is insecure and can be prone to bullying. Services for keeping people out of hospital if they have dementia or such have been cut. Some of the work is in manufacturing but government, sometimes giving grants to people like Ethical Fashion Forum, seems unsure what that is or how to help and can end-up subsidising the competition. As ever, the excuse in the UK is "competitiveness" or just "defecit", while the excuse for importing things at 0% tariff from Rana Plaza where there is probably no national insurance is "development".

---

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

ethical fashion PR invented 2005

ethical fashion PR invented 2005

The meaningless phrase "ethical fashion" was invented in September 2005 in London, and searches peaked with news stories about ethical fashion shows for firms like Terra Plana

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/.../well-fashioned.../detail was another government-sponsored exibition of the usual suspects - Terra Plana for example - which our taxes helped show at

• Crafts Council Gallery: 23 Mar to 4 Jun 2006
• The City Gallery, Leicester: 15 Jul to 26 Aug 2006
• The Design Centre, Barnsley: 7 Sep to 20 Oct 2006
• City Museum & Records Office, Portsmouth: 4 Nov 2006 to 7 Jan 2007
• Bilston Craft Gallery, Wolverhampton: 20 Jan to 3 Mar 2007
• Estethica room at London Fashion Week, various dates starting 2005

http://planb4fashion.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/you-are-invited-to-masterclass-in.html says something about the formatting of an ethical fashion PR press release that's meant not to promote UK manufacturing but sell the competition from China instead. In other words to say it's "ethical" to close UK factories.

One of the techniques used to sell sweatshop products is to say that torture by Nike contractors and their autocratic states is better than torture by henchmen of the East India Company, who cut of the thumbs of rival loom owners. So: you see a speech my a rep from some far-eastern trade union about injustice there and think "at least she still has her thumbs: things are getting better". I think this is an unfair example of progress to pick. I don't know the source for the story, but if the East India Company still existed it would have its own PR office to rebuff claims from rival Nike.

---

PlanB4fashion is a link to this ethical fashion blog on a single long page

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

We pay several times for each badly-run country

We pay several times for each badly-run country.

We benefit once, or I do, because I'm wearing Primark's cheapest jeans.

♦ We pay in having fewer jobs, because there's less rag trade here.

♦ We pay in having fewer taxes for the same reason.

♦ We pay because our politicians send our army to those poor and unstable parts of the world that have no secondary education or welfare state.

♦ We pay in having unstable desperate parts of the world that refugees and economic migrants leave, overcrowding parts of the UK.

♦ We probably pay in the spread of disease - thinking more about African governments which choose not to set-up a health service.

♦ We pay 0.7% of our GDP, out of our taxes, towards the social services bills of badly-run countries like Bangladesh. Pakistani taxpayers pay less than that for their own few state hospitals, and many Pakistani MPs do not even bother to pay Pakistani tax. It's probably the same in Bangladesh or India.

So we have all paid six times for my pair of trousers and politicians' failure to write a proper tariff against goods from badly-run countries. That's before any ultuism towards people in Bangladesh. My jeans are beginning to feel a bit special now!

---

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

The former third world

The former third world

Bangladeshi factory workers share a country with wealthy & sophisticated compatriots. They are like the rich and poor of Edwardian Britain, at a time when National Insurance was introduced here, and they deserve universal access to schools, hospitals, pensions, democracy and human rights there as well. These systems tend to reduce poplulation growth because the next generation do not have to rely on family to look after them in old age. But a welfare state also makes manufactured products a little bit more expensive for the same reason: there are less poor. There are also the costs. That is why the elites in former third world countries want to keep their poor poor. Countries with welfare states continue this system, by out-sourcing their production to the cheapest source. it would be good to help intstead of hindering.

How?

Tariffs against countries with the worst human rights records, like Zimbabwe or China, falling for countries that introduce votes, human rights and universal services, like South Africa or Taiwan. A sliding scale.

The EU already has already used sanctions against some of the worst countries, like Burma, and UK politicians are pushing for more free trade with democracies like India and Mexico. All that's needed is a more subtle sliding scale of tariff.

[first written 9.5.13 on a facebook page as a note to self]

---

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