anyone know which brands of kids' trainers are ethical?

[sibdoms]

just that really. I hear that the usual suspects - cica etc - are actually rubbish. But they need to be proper trainers, not hemp and cardboard espadrilles.

oooh, very interesting, zippi, am off a googling...

and even a bloody piece of bread will have different effects on people according to their metablism, the food they've already eaten, hormones floating round their blood etc etc. no rocket science there.

Pity there aren't any proper clinical trials coming out in favour of homeopathy and saying that it has nothing more than an placebo affect.

Don't get why this bothers people so much.

Even if it is just a placebo effect, so what? If it works, it works! People have had operations without anaesthesia thanks to the placebo effect!

I've been looking at those trials. They weren't done properly. They didn't have a consultation they just eg handed out arnica to pregant women. Yet, as advocates of homeopathy have pointed out, this is not how homeopathy works. You have a consultation and the rememdy (?) is tailored to the individual.

However, if it were to be mass produced and co-opted into the NHS, I suspect it is how it would have to work. Thats what these trials are about, feasibility on a big scale.

That's why it has its quackery image.

Okay, let's take migraines as an example. Let's say that remedies x, y and z are all indicated for migraines occurring at certain times of day with certain triggers. These 3 remedies will each have a set of differentiating symptoms. So, let's say that remedy x is mass-marketed as a migraine cure. If somebody whose symptoms match those of remedy y takes remedy x, they may find relief from the migraines but not from their other symptoms. They may also acquire the symptoms associated with remedy x because they didn't have them in the first place and homoeopathy works by giving you just a little of the problem you already have. Add to this the complication of the remedy "proving itself" if taken regularly, and you have your migraines back, together with a set of new symptoms. A homoeopath can work from this situation to sort of reverse you back through the wrong remedy to where you were, and then treat you from there.
Is this clear at all?
TheThreeFillyjonks - I could put you in touch with an excellent homoeopath, depending on where you live. Mind you, he does have contacts around the country and some further afield.

I'm in Cardiff.

What I'm really worried about is that I am bf and I don't want crap getting into the milk. Is this something that will have been considered?

Is it kind of like vaccination, in that the body's own defences are stimulated? Is "proving" akin to immunity?

Bf no prob. As long as a child is breastfeeding, they are "part of" the mother, and yes your child will get a portion of the remedy, and this is how it should work because the child has the same - can't think of the word! - symptoms, or dormant symptoms, or make-up or constitution or something. I have taken remedies whilst bf. I know for a fact that there is a lovely, lovely female homoeopath in Bristol. I don't know if there is anybody closer but she is well worth travelling for. (I travel from West Wilts to Basingstoke to see mine!). You wouldn't have to go all that often, but the initial consultation is an hour or more. Be prepared for the fact that homoeopathy takes into account mental/emotional symptoms as well as physical and you will need to talk about these. But it is worth it!!!!

TheThreeFillyjonks - I haven't scared you off with my hopelessly bad explanations, have I?

no no no, tooticky. am pondering the matter. I'm confused as to why anyone would see it as unscientific.

Though, scienceteacher...you're not, really, are you, eh? Come on now...

We do seem to understand some effects that involve a single molecule in the body, and the chips in this computer work using "impurities" and are actually many times times more pure than most things we deal with.

Most of us remember Avagadro's constant from school ?
Big number of molecules even in a small amount of stuff,and it is a number.
But homeopaths dilute all of it away.
The "50c" on the bottle means diluting part in 100 50 times.
That means if you took the entire universe, and just for fun a million parallel universes and diluted them this way the odds against there being even one molecule of the stuff there are millions to one against. It's probable that even the most successful rip off merchants have never ever shipped a single molecule of the "wise, empathetic, natural, empowered " substance.
Thus it's not how the BBC et al describe it as "like one grain of salt in the Atlantic", it's none. It's not "like" anything, because it ain't there.

To be fair some rip offs do it by 25C, which is merely like diluting an entire galaxy away.

Thus Homeopathy can best be summed up by the eminent forensic chemist, Dr. Clint Eastwood
"you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"
Except of course the punk in question has odds of trillions to one against.

By an entertaining coincidence we ask questions on bullets in guns and Russian Roulette before we put people into banks.

you know I also have my doubts about it scientifically DC; but actually I can't get away from the fact that it is used in horses with success

and horses don't have the placebo thing going for them, do they? it's not like they can read the bottle

Most of us remember what? [blank emoticon]

All Avagadro's constant is is the number of atoms in a mole of an element when its in gaseous state!

It happens to be 6.022 141 99 × 10E23 per mole, if anyone is interested.

WFT has that got to do with homepathy?

About there being "nothing there" in homoeopathic remedies - yes, they are extremely diluted but they are also succussed (shaken) which increases their potency.

I feel an mn meet up at the restaurant at the end of the universe coming up again

Fillyjonk, you've confused me. I didn't know elements had moles. Would that be talpa europaea or the sort I have on my arms?

And guess who can't make the italics work...

rofl tt

i know lots of fascinating facts about Talpa europaea (not how I have capitalised the genus)

but i sense that mumsnet is not ready.

sibdoms

have you bought any trainers?

actually, from my oh so limited scientific knowlege, i thought moles were central to the working of homeopathy. don't they burrow down, invoking the whirlwind effect? Not unlike the creation of the universe really.

And now I will stop talking shite and do some freaking work.

If

• company A, in a developing country, employs workers (probably women and children) in sweatshop conditions and pays them X pence a day

• company B, in a developing country, employs workers (probably also women) in better conditions and pays them say 2X pence a day (and quite possibly, as we're in the realm of the avowedly ethical company here, also runs community projects, free schooling for children of workers, that kind of thing) but charges me an extra X pence (or a multiple of X pence given schooling and community projects aren't free and smaller companies have to factor in a higher proportion of their fixed overheads into each sale) more for the product

and I buy my trainers (etc.) from company B, in what way is that not gaining anything because "the only people who will suffer are the poor workers"? Assuming I'm going to buy from either company A or company B then either way one company and set of workers is going to lose out. If we all buy from company A then (hypothetically and crudly) it expands, company B goes under and the workers from company B get jobs at the expanding company A instead. If we all buy from company B then (hypothetically and crudly) it expands, company A goes under and the workers from company A get jobs at the expanding company B instead.

I really don't see how buying from company A rather than company B is "empowering women" or "improving the lives of poor workers". And I don't see that buying from company B rather than company A because I prefer to support company B and its approach (which is, um, boycotting company A for so-called "ethical reasons") is bad. Possibly if I decided not to buy from either company but to knit my own trainers from muesli and recycled carrier bags then that might cause the poor workers to suffer, but then doing that wasn't high on my list of stuff I was planning to do.

But maybe I'm just dim and DominiConnor and speedymama can explain it to me. After all, I don't even see what homeopathy has to do with trainers (Homeopathic trainers: they're really really really small and you can't see them). Maybe we should just get the moles to make the trainers? They like working in the dark and have bad eyesight already...

you're just onto the basic economic theory of consumer sovereignty there, LeahH, that the only vote we truly have in a free market society is to vote for the continued production of products we wish to support

I don't agree with the idea that buying things from sweatshops empowers women either. it perpetuates the idea that we can pay people naff all to do shit jobs.

I agree it's not a great thing to lose your shit job but there is a long game to be played here - if we don't support the continued expansion of ethical companies then profit wins for another generation

having said that I'm going to queue up at Aldi on Thursday morning to buy dd some beach shoes for £1.99

LeahE - Exactly! I so agree with you. Am really trying to put my money where my mouth is these days.

And to go back to the OP, I baought New Balance trainers for me and DS while on holiday in Cumbria last week - their factory shop is on the coast road just south of Maryport. I was dead chuffed, never seen them in a shop before!

Nicely said, LeahE!