Underwear Shopping - Pay - Jobs - Ethics
- Bond - IP - Ethical Fashion

Change the world one pair of pants at a time, buying them from a democratic welfare state like the UK.

It's possible to buy all the parts, including raw microfibre, made in the UK, but there isn't a cheap range of welfare state pants in the shops. This site might help. It's easier to buy pants from countries that are cheaper for lack of a welfare state, but that doesn't reduce poverty.

Shopping, jobs, poverty bonds & ethical fashion are links to separate pages. The shopping page lists some sites where you can buy pants made in a democratic welfare state; the jobs page lists some ideas for reducing UK poverty apart from the welfare state, and the bonds page shows accounts of previous companies that sold poverty bonds and got a tone of favours and subsidies from ministries and journalists and development experts who are so ignorant that they don't know how to reduce poverty

This page is just to say that there's no intention to publish fibs, or bad references, nor passing-off, nor trademark infringement. If you think you've spotted some of those, just get in touch. Then it notes why the keywords "Santander" and "ac.uk" might have caused someone to try to stop this site being published

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The aim by Nonleather Distribution Ltd is to write a site saying that social insurance reduces poverty.

• no fibs
  
• no bad references
  If you googled the company in the mid 20-teens, the impression was of a lot of very employable people - too many - trying to help sell stuff rather than make it or post it. A lot of them could have earned more money doing other things; they were volunteering or on "paid internship" or expenses or mediocre pay. Some like the accounant, Jay Dias, look as though they put a lot of money into the company rather than taking it out as did a private funder in north america. There are odd links here to ex Pants contractors or volunteers or interns, just because it seems rude not to give them a free link, but they might prefer not. The free link is just to promote whatever they are doing now, and I can alter it or remove it as they like.
  
  As for the people who funded the jobs, that's a bit different because they might fund something similar with taxpayers' money or corporate donations in future, but I am happy to correct or correspond or add interesting bits to the links.
  
• no passing-off
  There's no loss to anyone from passing-off. More the other way-around; there is a loss to this web site by being associated with Guardian and Ethical Consumer articles, a County Court judgment, actions by trading standards officers, and mis-use of UK taxpayers' money via Social Enterprise UK and Department for International Development and public PR offices, and mis-use of corporate sponsorship and charitable grants. It follows that the name "pants to poverty" is only any use to contrast with something different, or describe the past. There's no intention to discourage the cotton farmers in India who live in clans and do without pesticide - https://ethicalshop.org/suppliers/chetna-organics/ stocks some of their stuff. If there is anyone in the UK willing to spin and knit the stuff, better still.
  
• no registered trade mark infringement
  the words are no longer registered, and the logo is registered by a wound-up company which comes to the same thing.

.ac.uk .ac.uk ac.uk ac.uk Santander SOAS sponsored internship schemes

About the rudest thing you can do to someone with a web site is to contact their web host and say that it is so dodgy that it should be taken-down to avoid the cost of defending.

If you do it to a public information site, that's another bad thing.
If you do it on public money, for example because you work for SOAS who were set-up with donations for the public good, who are awarded research funding at taxpayer expense that non-universities would not get, and who are fed customers on taxpayer-funded student grants like Chevening Sholorships, that is another reason to be ashamed.
If you are ashamed, obviously you will not state who you are or why your are doing it or any emotive relationship with people who criticise your use of their money.

1. "Due to the heavy abuses conducted on our free hosting we have enabled automatic content filtering for all free accounts. Your page contains these forbidden words: Santander and thus our automatic system is making the redirect and is blocking your website. Please make sure you remove them to fix the error. Unfortunately we cannot disclose the full list of forbidden words due to security reasons. Thank you for your understanding."
   - Attractsoft gbmh via freehosting.eu
   
2. "Due to the heavy abuses conducted on our free hosting we have enabled automatic content filtering for all free accounts. Your page contains these forbidden words: .ac.uk/ (4 times) and thus our automatic system is making the redirect and is blocking your website."
   - Attractsoft gbmh via freehosting.eu again
   
3. "Hi there, Thank you for contacting. It appears your website was incorrectly detected as abuse by our anti fraud systems. We have reactivated your account, apologies for the inconvenience. You may continue to use your free hosting account now. Best regards"
   - Byethost - after switching free web servers

When a web site is taken down three times by two different web hosts, it's tempting to think that they've had cease-&-desist emails, more or less automated, from someone with something to be ashamed of, spending other peoples' money on lawyers. For example the higher education college, SOAS, runs an internship scheme for ex-students, sponsored by Santander to do whatever a sponsor hopes an internship would do. Here is a guess. Provide brief work experience above the minimum wage for people who have been out of the job market because of study or for some reason need help getting into it. Typically ten weeks to a recent graduate of a first degree after leaving school, aged 20-odd.

SOAS' internship scheme is recorded as paying for internship by someone with a second degree and plenty of previous work experience to work at Pants to Poverty, where her CV says she worked a long time on developing transparancy in the accounts of organisations like that, although you can't tell whether only 10 weeks was sponsored by Santander: there is no attempt at transparency so odd facts crop-up and look odd and suggestive without detailed figures available. She's quoted as a "natural capital valuation expert", it says.

If I worked for SOAS or Santander, I would find that embarassing because each sponsored internship denies the sponsorship money to someone else, so I would make public

1. whether an unusual amount per month was paid
2. whether other payments were made to help Pants to Poverty
3. why the internship lasted so long
4. why to someone with plenty of previous work experience was sponsored rather than someone in need of an internship
   
   If I worked for SOAS I'd be embarassed more generally
5. for the Indian students who see a scheme to gloss-over the lack of a welfare state there
6. for UK students who see a scheme to crowd-out UK manufacturing with its higher costs that are partly to fund a welfare state with unfair competition. For example Josiery which closed for lack of interest, while the similar company Armstrong Mills in India got free publicity funded by UK taxpayers.
   Their current statement is
   
   "The internships that we arrange centrally at SOAS and/or sponsor are either microplacements, which are 2 week placements paid at London Living Wage, or longer-term Santander Internship funded ones and we haven't liaised with ethical fashion brands in that postcode for these. Please note that our systems only allow us to go back as far as the Academic Year 2014-15."

If I worked for SOAS or University of the Arts who's grant proposal to the Higher Education Funding Council was nothing to do with education, or knowledge transfer partnerships to help UK business. It was a scheme to promote Chinese imports by putting UK designers and manufacturers in front of Chinese manufacturers - introducing them and flying them over, according to the Higher Education Funding Council:

A search of our records has found that no information is held which refers specifically to:

"What safeguards prevent money intended to promote export of design skills being used in fact to promote out-sourcing of production from the UK and democratic countries, to autocratic countries and China".

The lead organisaions are quoted as

• University of the Arts London (the lead partner) = Centre for Creative Business = London Business School
• School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
• Kings College London

These organisations are "known to each other" ; "share a world view".

One report states: "The £5m award was allocated by Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling through the Higher Education Innovation Fund." Another minister who shared the world view appeared from press releases to be Mr Purnell, now a director of the BBC which is to be allocated office space in Stratford as part of a similar deal, who made a speech at a University of the Arts building in support. This is a man who's first job after college was to be a researcher for Tony Blair, so he does not have first-hand experience of trouble getting a job, even after college.

Pantstopoverty.org.uk promotes social insurance as the best way to reduce poverty, in contrast to Pantsopoverty.com

This needs editing - it probably repeats the usual points

Pantstopoverty.com discouraged (via a page on the Ethical Fashion Forum web site and by crowding-out of media coverage) buying goods from countries like the UK with social insurance systems. It promoted the buying of goods from badly-run countries as a way of reducing poverty, and extracted tents of thousands of pounds from UK taxpayers to do so and to put UK taxpayers out of work. It did not advocate pressure on badly-run countries to change, such as tariff systems. The names of highly-paid ministers, civil servants, and even academics who authorised this are still not known, nor are there any signs of apology or second thoughts. There are scraps of information like a department at University of the Arts' London College of Fashion being called "centre for sustainable fashion" and helping a party-line group called "all party group for ethics and sustainability in fashion" in the house of lords. There are various inter-departmental schemes in the late 2000s that are public such as Delphe to promote a certain kind of development studies course at higher education institutions round the world. There are corporate sponsors who might be embrarassed too, after doling-out money to put their customers out of work. There are lots of people who might feel the need to send a cease and desist notice so it's good that hardly any of them have done so.

Just get in touch with Nonleather Distribution via brittaniabuckle at yahoo co uk and sort something out. And if you are wondering why the rather strange email address, there was a belt factory that started in Britannia House or Britannia Street - just a short walk away from the Pants to Poverty office in North West London. It had to close in the late 2000s, like a lot of clothing and footwear companies about that time, leaving the email spare for odd things like this.

Also, if you can help complete the story with some missing info, just get in touch.

I don't know if the phrases "santander" and "ac.uk" are used to divert attention. Maybe they are used tactically. Or the simplest option could be true: someone from the soas.ac.uk working with Santander to fund internships wants to make this look better.

If so, I discover that it's an odd kind of internship called a "managing consultant" internship by someone who has done a lot of work before according to her linkedin CV, "building consensus among academics", as interns do. She poses as a delegate for the Ethical Fashion Forum website quotes, and gives a bad reference to the college at SOAS that organised her paid internship: " 'I feel like I learnt more yesterday about the ethical fashion industry than the whole of last year' said Gabrielle Powell, natural capital valuation expert." but she doesn't say if she learnt cynical things or useful things, nor whether Santander sponsorship of interns trying to get jobs was used for a different purpose. It doesn't say why a scheme for 3 month paid internships applied to her 13 months as an experienced person lobbying for globaization. This is her CV:

Pants to Poverty
Managing Consultant [with a press release from School of Oriental and African Studies]
Company Name
Pants to Poverty
Dates Employed
Sep 2013 – Nov 2014
Employment Duration
1 yr 3 mos
Location
London
Managing consultant for Pi Foundation, a registered foundation supporting the work of Pants to Poverty.

• Project management and technical work on a 3D accounting project and strategic management for start-up business
• Working with a team to build a model for three dimensional impact measurement and sustainability reporting and a launch it through an integrated technology platform
• Focus on establishing social indicators and developing the methodology around the attribution and incorporation of social values within an integrated balance sheet and profit and loss statement
• Coordinating industry coalitions, academics, consultants and corporates in building consensus and awareness around the tool
• Project management, coordination, strategy and financial planning for the consultancy business as well as business development, marketing and planning to bring the product and platform to market
• Budgeting, operations and social valuation in the proof of concept pilot

The model was shortlisted for the Global Leaders in Sustainable Apparel Award in Copenhagen in April 2014.
.