posted on Mar, 10 2011 @ 02:20 PM
There was also the Advisor Discretionary Fund available initially for New Deal clients, but laterly for any client who was deemed long term unemployed
i.e 6 months+. essentially each client could access up to £300 pounds each to assist them to purchase things that would improve theri chances of
finding employment. As this was discretionary lots of strange things were requested and many accepted. Mainly though it was used for interview
clothing.
Any company/corporation could apply to be part of the system as long as they were willing to accept an invoice and the Government would settle up with
them usually within 30 days. Now for interview clothing we were always reminded that there were preferred providers and by far the largest of these
was Arcadia Group. Owned by Sir Phillip Green and we all know that most of the money made from this group is paid into an offshore account in order to
avoid paying massive amounts of Corporation Tax. So effectively the Tax Payers money was being used to purchase clothing for the unemployed and this
money was being paid into an offshore account. Ironic really isn't it?