Bringing back New Deal!

Well that's pretty much what the government have said.   For those not in the UK or who are and aren't aware of the full story I shall give a breif overview of New Deal as it existed in the late 90's & early 00's.

New Deal was originally for 18 - 25 year olds who were out of work.  It would be an 'gateway' period which pretty much involved intesive jobsearch to escape the damn thing, CV writing courses, interview technique courses and such, followed by six month work program and finally followed by another intensive job hunting phase.  The program was extended to include the over 25's and I think towards the end over 60's before they retired.   If it exists currently it is only in the 18 - 25 year old range.   For being on New Deal the amount of money you'd get slightly increased although you couldn't 'opt-out' of New Deal... so why they added that sweetener I don't know.

Now it sounds like a good thing right?  In principal it sounds good.  After all to get a New Dealer in to your business you had to have a vacancy for them to try out for at the end of it and a lot of kids do need help with job interviews and getting their CV in order so excellent.

It's also worth considering what wasn't public reported: for each New Dealer you find a place for that's £2000 tax free.  The procedures for making sure a vacancy were real were very well documented and avaliable for viewing.

I encountered one scammer of the system.  They were not in reciept of any state benefits.  They'd set up a string of charities and businesses with themselves and partner (in crime) as directors and a sap as secretary.  Then hoovered up as much National Lottery grant money as possible before staffing the place with New Dealers who she delighted in abusing.  The one site I found was staffed by 6 New Dealers who were rotated out every 5 1/2 months; in the final month there was always a problem (they were suddenly racist, lackadaisical, insolent, basically whatever was required to get rid of them) now keep in mind a 'problem' and being removed from site means your in serious danger of loosing your benefit for a while... this is not a good place to be.

But lets break out the math shall we? See how big this scam was.
6 heads
2000 per head
6 months

That's £72,000 every 6 months.  £144,000 per year (2 cycles of New Dealers).  As stated the person was running several other sites, 4 of them active at the time I appeared, I see no reason to doubt they weren't staffed in a similar manner or with similar numbers so lets factor that in.  Per year these two people (three if you count the sap) managed to slurp £576,000 (Five hundred and seventy six thousand pounds) out of the government and I've no idea how much Lottery money they were able to grab.  But then as now it was the poor bastard getting £62 a week who was the evil in society and should be made to suffer.

So all these current plans to "make the scoungers work" that are being bandied about I do, in theory support.  But I'm also fully aware that the person running that scam was never arrested, never punished and is as far as I know still out there scamming away.  So once Mk2 New Deal starts up you can bet your bottom dollar that they or people like them will be back, in force and taking every penny they can from the government.

It gets more interesting when you consider this:  The MP's proposing this specifically mention "council jobs" and "sweeping streets" and "clearing graffiti", something local county councils already employ people to do and flicking around the internet they are reasonably well paid for it and heavily unionized.  I don't see that ending well do you?