new deal is actually not so bad.

I was one of the first people on the new deal system, in hackney where it was trialled experimentally. Before new deal came along, I was always having to pretend to be looking for jobs, pretending to be scanning the job-boards twice a week etc.

Let me explain a bit further - when you get put on new deal, you get offered 5 (I think) options -

i) environmental work
ii) start yer own biz
iii) voluntary work
iv) work trial
v) education

sounds better already? course, the benefit staff are supposed to explain all these options to you, they did to me, but it's easy to see how if they're lazy or don't like you, they might just 'forget' to tell you about some of these options. You really gotta push for what you want to do.

Let's take these options one by one:

i) environmental - you go and find some sort of environmentally-friendly stuff you wanna do, i.e. park ranger, forestry warden, organic gardening etc that you want to do, the job centre should have a list, some don't, if they do have a list, most of the jobs will be dubious, but one or two might be cool, if green stuff is your thing, best thing is go out to your local community green thingy and ask them to create a job for you, and then you can take this to the new deal people, and say 'look I found a job!' and then you get paid for doing cool stuff and hanging out with cool people for a whole year and actually genuinely doing stuff to help the environment :)

ii) start yer own biz - this is handy for finding out about capitalism, warning, lots of rather tedious meetings where they try to explain to you why your ingenious scheme for selling petrol bombs at riots won't work out. Still, for those of you that are flirting with trying to earn a honest living, you can spend a year this way, learning just how much the system sucks even for minor capitalists - best thing for getting these biz vibes outta your system. Try not to take it too seriously, and you'll be fine. you may even be able to scam some start-up funding - handy for buying video cameras and other tools of rebellion. (yes I did this option for several months) warning - actually getting your hands on start-up money requires meetings and paperwork and a serious attempt at making something resembling a 'serious' buisiness plan, whatever that is.

iii) voluntary / community work - i think i have this a little confused with the environmental option, but its much the same stuff anyway, agin the job centre should have a big list of community work vacancies for dance, multimedia, care work etc etc etc, many sucky, some brilliant. Again, your best option is to roll your own job with whatever cool community collective you hang out with. Job providers in this area have to be 'approved' possibly even by 'act of parliament' but it is actually very very easy to get approval, many hackney and brixton anarchist collectives got themselves registered as 'approved' for taking people on for voluntary new deal. (don't ask me how) again you get paid for doing cool stuff and hanging out with cool people and doing really helpful community work.

iv) work trial - avoid this like the plague - this is the one where you do 'proper' work i.e. mind numbing planet fucking work for big corps, at less than what agency temps get paid for, and the company is paid for allowing you to work at their place. This is the one that they will try to push you on, and it's the one that everyone who doesnt take their own initative and carve themselves a place on one of the other options gets pushed onto.

v) education - whoop de do, this is the real stuff - basically, go down your local college, pick out the most expensive course they have that you always wanted to do but could never afford and just go for it :) filming? multimedia? dance? go for it! this option is not available if you aleady have a degree/ university education, so if you have a degree already, keep quiet about it when you start signing on. Also you will have to make up some story about how this course will help you find work in the future, so say something about how this course will help you to take your music punk band into the prime time, or you want to work in the film industry or you want to learn dance choreography and work in the theatre industry. Also there is some sort of minimum hours requirement, so be creative, apparently homework counts too, so if you've picked something you really enjoy, which dang it you should be doing, then all these extra hours you are putting in will count towards the minimum required for them to let themselves pay for you to do this course. I spent a year doing a very expensive language course on this option, which I loved, it was only one day a week, but cos of all the practice required, i was able to get it past the 'eqivalant to 3 days a week' threshold at the time. (i think this threshold also applies to the other options)

well to finish this long guide, i had a very nice job advisor who explained a lot of these little tricks to me, so just passing on this knowlege to you. new deal can really fuck you over unless you size your chances and stand up for what you really want, but you need to know the rules very well too - be prepared to spend hours and hours trying to work out how to achieve your aims under the system.

love and rages

new deal self-educator

in which case yer fucked, cause they don't mention start your own business or community work, refuse to pay for any education schemes and just shove you onto work trial or environment.

 http://www.autonomous.org.uk/ec/