{"id":473,"date":"2015-02-25T00:20:09","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T08:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/painting\/?p=473"},"modified":"2016-06-08T07:50:18","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T15:50:18","slug":"1989-cartoons-and-illustration-enterprise-allowance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/painting\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"1989: Cartoons and Illustration: Enterprise Allowance and Charley Patton"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"circular\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1988 after leaving my part-time post at the Hornsey Library to ‘paint’ I signed on to Maggie’s ‘Enterprise Allowance’ scheme which was basically a ruse by the Tories to get people like me off the dole as ‘self-employed’. I created some ‘sale-able’ (at least I thought so) illustrations and toured around Cosmopolitan, Radio Times and various major publishers having lots of jolly chats and coffee and getting no work whatsoever but everybody was terribly nice.<\/p>\n

Standing in the Cosmopolitan offices with all the women in power dressing shoulders in 1989 I realised that things had gone badly wrong….that I was wearing paint-spattered dungarees didn’t help. I think the woman who interviewed me thought I may have learning difficulties…I couldn’t speak that was for sure I felt like a minnow in a tank of sharks.<\/p>\n

I gave up soon afterwards\u00c2\u00a0and started reading John Fahey’s book on Charley Patton instead which to be frank has been far more use to me:-)<\/p>\n

\"Fahey_Patton\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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