MANY OF YOU HAVE ASKED WHY WE COULD NOT ACCEPT THE SO-CALLED COUNCIL OFFER TO REFURBISH THE MURALS. First of all, it was not a council offer. There was no unanimity behind it and would never have been had not Sinn Fein cajoled the Unionists into voting with them. The SDLP were opposed to it to a man. It was a Sinn Fein engineered piece of con-artistry worthy of Lucifer himself. In signing up to this abominably Faustian agreement we, The Bogside Artists, were to be helplessly power-gripped into declaring the following... (1) We forfeit all rights to any reputation or achievements we have made in the past and agree to the assessement and value put upon us and our work by Sinn Fein. We delegate all rights and control of our work to Sinn Fein. (2) We hereby forfeit all legal copyright to our work to Sinn Fein. (3) We hereby agree to the monetary value put on our work by Sinn Fein and its cultural value to the city of Derry. We ignore the fact that Sinn Fein have been making millions out of our work for years and offered not a single, solitary penny, in council or out of it, towards the upkeep or maintenance of the murals. On the contrary, have worked daily to denigrate our work to visitors and tourists and stop all funding towards maintaining the murals they are happy to exploit. (4) We hereby hand over to Sinn Fein all rights to decisions as to HOW we are to paint our murals and WHAT the content of those murals are to be. (5) We hereby give to Sinn Fein all control over WHEN we are to paint and for HOW LONG we are to paint. (6) We hereby submit to Sinn Fein control of HOW we are to be paid and WHEN, and moreover IF we are to paid in obedience to whether they deem our finished work acceptable and whether they are happy with our weekly receipts for costs, materials etc within the stipend allotted to us. We tender to them the right to tell us to repaint what they are not happy with at no extra cost to them. (7) We abandon all rights to establish a professional fee for our work as artists and any other artist in the world is entitled to do, and submit to a weekly stipend set by them. (8) We accept that the sum of $25,000 is adequate and reasonable for us three to refurbish ,all twelve murals, many of them famous around the world, which we estimate will take the best part of a year. (9) We accept without question that this sum is capped which means we can request no more money for further renovations should weather etc prolong the time-scale Sinn Fein has allotted to us. (9) We accept that this is a reasonable stipend for such a large-scale enterprise and we accept that this sum is commensurate with our achievement and international reputations as The Bogside Artists. Namely £2,000 for three men to refurbish a single mural of huge proportions over a period of three weeks that we stipulated irrespective of weather conditions and including the cost of all materials. This would work out at roughly a weekly wage of £100 a week for each of us including transport with no allowance for clothing or foot ware or damage to same. We should humbly accept that road sweeps get paid more because they provide more value for money (Monaghan/Cooper/ OConnor) because road sweeps, as with Sinn Fein, show more commitment to the people, (Cllr. McGinley) a fact that none of us who subscribe to the propaganda can doubt. (10) We forfeit our right to the use of cherry pickers and accept Sinn Feins decision to insist we use the scaffolding they have designated to us, even if we are well into our fifties and one of us is of retirement age. Again, we honour this decision as value for money on behalf of the rate payers of Derry. Insurance costs etc, devolve to us. Council are not liable to any injury incurred by any of us in the performance of our work. (11) We forfeit any right to expect council to provide daily sustenance while we work and acknowledge this as part of the remit on behalf of council to seek value for money at all levels especially when it comes to shelling out fifty grand for every pub they own in the city in honour of the City of Culture gig and providing top-notch cherry pickers to that end. (12) We hereby, by signing this contract purporting to be from council but actually authored and engineered by the gang known as Sinn Fein, willingly destroy ourselves as a respected group, dishonour ourselves FOREVER acclaimed artists in charge of our own work and destinies, shame our parents, teachers, friends, supporters, relatives and families, forfeit all moral and legal rights to our own creations which have been a boon to this city over the years, denigrate ourselves irreversibly as creators with an international reputation and as human beings who have enough morals to put conscience and integrity before money and the pursuit of it; and hereby willingly, and of sound mind, hand over to Sinn Fein all we have achieved, are achieving, or are ever going to achieve... including legal copyright to the products of our own labours. Because accepting this offer is essentially the death of our copyright. That ladies and gentlemen is what we were expected us to sign up to; and indeed they figured we were stupid enough to do so. What do these idiots take us for? The most mentally challenged inmate of our local asylum would not have been so bereft of common sense as to sign up to such a barefaced piece of Machiavellian chicanery. An unconscionable insult to anybody with a shred of intelligence or sense of self-worth! What artist worth his salt would have bothered to even finish reading it? As for forms, contracts and the like, which for some reason or other we are to respect, would you believe?... because they are forms, contracts etc, overseen by legally sanctioned bona fide men of honour (lawyers) and all that twaddle... any twelve year-old can download a program from the net that will enable him to knock up any number of forms in minutes and insert therein any demands he likes from a persons insurance number, his religion, income, and even his blood group. Any twelve year-old would however have more sense of decency than to inflict on another human being a document of such transparent guile and downright malevolence. And if you think we are making all this up HERE IS A LINK to the actual crippling letter of offer itself in all its crippling black glory, that one business consultant we know, who has had vast experience of dealing with councils and governments and artists rights around the world, described as the most appalling contract of its kind I have ever read. bogsideartists/shinnerstitchup.pdf
Posted on: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 23:45:43 +0000
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