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From today’s Derry News:

A Derry pub landlord has placed a bounty on the head of a mysterious graffiti artist who daubed the inside of his bar.

Les Doherty of the Bound for Boston says he will pay £100 to anyone who provides him with information to unmask the secret scribe who calls himself ‘Da Moda’.

Da Moda’s signature eyes motif has been appearing on walls and shutters across the city for around a year.

However, Mr Doherty said he was incensed when Da Moda took a marker to a wall in the men’s toilets of the Bound for Boston.

“He crossed a line when he crossed the line onto my premises,” he said.

“That’s why I’ve decided to put a bounty on his head. I don’t want to see him prosecuted, but I would like to see him cautioned by the police. Maybe they would encourage him to clean up some of his so called art.”

Mr Doherty has already begun to build a profile of the publicity shy painter.

“Since the graffiti is in the Bound for Boston’s male toilet this excludes females from the suspect list straight away.

“As he drinks in the Bound for Boston he is most likely aged 18 to 26, and from the standard of his work he may be a failed art student.”

If Mr Doherty’s plea for information falls onto deaf ears he is prepared to trawl the Bound for Boston’s CCTV footage to unmask the reclusive vandal.

“Da Moda has also vandalised my window, but maybe he should be renamed Da Eejit, after all only an airhead would air brush under CCTV cameras.”

If you have information that could lead to the capture of ‘Da Moda’ contact Les Doherty at the Bound for Boston on 02871 271315.

A lot of people would be glad to see him clean up his art. As you can see from the picture above it really looks shit. And it’s everywhere around town. Considering the guy’s been doing the same scribble for about a year you’d think he would at least improve a bit.

Make sure you keep Friday the 6th February free, folks.

Motor Sounds Records and The Beatnik Soul Club got together to bring you Scott H. Biram! He’ll be playing in Masons Bar in Derry, doors open 10pm and admission is £8. Support is by Northern Ireland’s own kings of punk blues The Bonnevilles.

They also play Belfast’s The Menagerie on the 5th, I haven’t seen any other dates for Ireland.

For the uninitiated, here’s Scott playing at last year’s Deep Blues Festival:

And The Bonnevilles at Belfast’s Open House Festival 08:

The Bogside Artists contacted me earlier and left a comment to let me know that the Derry News had to print an apology for the article about JK Rowling’s lawyers threatening legal action over a book the Bogside Artists have published. I never got around reading Monday’s News, but I still had a copy of the paper. Here’s their apology:

Last Monday’s front and third page article, ‘Harry Potter and the Bogside Artists’ suggested that author JK Rowling’s lawyers had complained to the Bogside Artists about a book called ‘Travels with Li Po’.

We accept that this is not true.

We have been asked to point out by Ms Rowling’s lawyers that William Kelly of the Bogside Artists had alleged in a letter that this book had been plagiarised by Ms Rowling in her Harry Potter novels.

Ms Rowling’s literary agency wrote to Mr Kelly refuting his claims and warning him that alleging that Ms Rowling had copied his work was defamatory and potentially actionable, and that he should desist from making such allegations.

Ms Rowling’s lawyers say that no complaint has been made about his book and Ms Rowling has never read Mr Kelly’s work, let alone plagiarised it.

In addition we accept that no-one on behalf of Ms Rowling has claimed that the term ‘philosopher’s stone’ is owned by Warner Bros.

We apologise for publishing false allegations and for not contacting Ms Rowling beforehand so that we might inform us of the true position.

We are happy to set the record straight.

Now William’s email to me (with his permission):

Thanks from The Bogside Artists for publishing the Derry News article. It is all true in so far as what we said were reasonable assumptions from the text of the letter sent to us by partner and solicitor to Rowling’s agent Christopher Little. However, just lately the Derry News was arm-wrestled to the ground by Rowling’s lawyers Schillings (London based) to apologise for apparent ‘errors’ which of course are in the article you have blogged. Get this; the ‘errors’ are as follows:

(1) We were not contacted by “Rowling’s lawyers” but by Little’s lawyer. Little is Rowling’s agent. Duh! A shoves B who shoves C. How wrong were we to assume A was shoving C!

(2) Warner Bros does not, they claim, have copyright on the phrase “the philosopher’s stone” although the letter to William was worded in such a way to clearly give that impression and such an interpretation would be immediately construed by anyone who read it and was indeed so construed by a lawyer who read it.

(3) Rowling has denied ever having heard of William Kelly or his book Travels with Li Po and her lawyers and associates are clearly acting on that assertion

This, to anybody with a shred of common sense, makes splitting hairs sound like tree felling. The real question to ask is “Who the hell do these people think they are?”

For us, there is a book written by one of our group called Travels with Li Po. It is there to be bought and read by anyone. It was written in 1990. This is the first chance we have had to publish it. Read it. Draw your own conclusions as you are entitled to do.

There you have it. The reason I am writing to you is that you may well be approached by Rowling’s legal hounds to remove the
offensive blog. That is entirely up to you. You ..and we.. deserve better. Our view of the matter is summed up in a blog we have set up for the book that you can find here:

http://www.bogsideartists.com/lipo/index.htm.

And a press release you will find here:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200812/1229861765.html

When I read the original article in the paper I took William Kelly’s ‘allegation’ as being tongue in cheek and had a good chuckle.

Rowling and Co have been threatening/suing people for years now (and some rightly so). But she frequently seems to forget that her Harry Potter books are heavily influenced by well known stories and books, some published many years before HP by authors such as Tolkien, CS Lewis and many others. Her success must have gone to her head and she seems to think that she’s got some kind of a monopoly on fantasy.

All the best to luck to you guys! Not that you’ll need it, the lawyers should fall flat on their faces with this one.

Looks like JK Rowling has got too much time on her hands again. I haven’t found anything online about this yet, so I’ll copy the whole article from today’s Derry News.

The Bogside Artists have received correspondence from JK Rowling’s lawyers threatening legal action over a book they have published which, it is claimed, bears an uncanny resemblance to Harry Potter.

The book, ‘Travels with Li Po’ by Will Kelly, has been published by The Bogside Artists and is available to buy from their website.

Like Harry Potter, the main character Eoin Muldoon is an orphan who is bullied at school and who is looking for the philosopher’s stone.

However, Mr Kelly’s book was penned in 1990, whilst JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was published in 1996.

Tom Kelly, of The Bogside Artists, explained: “The book has been available on-line for six months now so we were quite shocked to receive this letter from JK Rowling’s legal team stating they were monitoring us and threatening us with possible legal action.

“Since Will’s book was written a number of years before Harry Potter maybe it should be us threatening them with legal action and not the other way around.”

The correspondence also stated that the term ‘philosopher’s stone’ was owned by Warner Brothers.

Tom Kelly said Travels with Li Po was written by his brother Will as a follow on to his short story ‘Ace of Hearts’, which won a UK wide writing competition held by UTV in 1989.

“Travels with Li Po was submitted to a variety of publishers across the UK after it was written, including Amnesty International. Will is a respected artist and author whose work often centres around the theme of abandonment.

“Although it’s set in a fictional world this book was born out of the sense of disenfranchisement experienced in the Bogside during the troubles.”

The Bogside Artists said they are refusing to withdraw the book from sale. Mr Kelly added: “The People’s Gallery is now completed and we have decided it’s time to publish this book. We have published it for one reason, that it deserves to be.”

Ridiculous!

*** Update: The Derry News were forced to apologise. Read the apology and what the Bogside Artists have to say about it.

I launched Skype on my mobile phone yesterday for the first time in a while and to my surprise my non-Skype contacts started to show up, before it would only let me call other Skype users. And in the Options menu is now an entry to check my SkypeOut credit balance.

I quickly found out that it is only to call landlines/mobiles outside the UK, but that’s pretty much all I use Skype for anyway. I hadn’t heard about 3 allowing their subscribers to make interntational calls through Skype until now. A quick search brought up an article on The Register saying that it started on 1 October:

UK operator 3 is to allow Skype users to make international calls with their SkypeOut minutes, bypassing the operator completely, while the VoIP pioneer’s desktop client continues its slow progress towards version 4 with a new beta release.

Punters equipped with a Skypephone, or compatible handset such as an N95 or C902 on 3, are already able to call up other Skype users for free. But from today they’ll also be able to make international calls using the Skype network with the rate being deduced from their SkypeOut minutes.

The customer will be able to choose if a call should be handled by Skype or the traditional 3 network, and will pay appropriate rates. Chief Executive at 3 Kevin Russell said: “Although 3 customers enjoy the best value international calling tariffs in the UK, we know that people are apprehensive about using their mobiles to call internationally, especially as international minutes aren’t typically included in mobile calling bundles.”

Last weekend we had the City of Song Festival here in Derry and Jonny Black from the Belfast band LaFaro was in town for several performances. He stayed with a friend in the Glen area where, unfortunately, some scumbag joyriders stole his car on Friday night. The car was later found burnt out. If that wasn’t bad enough he had the band’s gear in the car. Over  £6000 worth of gear, including some vintage stuff.

A bunch of musicians quickly got together and organised a benefits gig in the Nerve Centre to raise some money so LaFaro can buy new equipment. Kudos to the Nerve Centre for making the venue available for free.

The line-up so far is quite impressive:

Main Stage
LaFaro
Here Comes The Landed Gentry
And So I Watch You From Afar
Shiro
Skruff
Future Chaser
Panama Kings (DJ Set)
Fighting With Wire

Acoustic Stage
Paul Casey
Junior Johnson
Ard Ri
Our Krypton Son
Jonny Black

Looks like it’s gonna be one of the biggest gigs of the year in Derry. All for only £10 and a good cause. If you can’t make it but still want to contribute to the LaFaro fund, then head on over to Bruised Fruit Promotions where you can make a donation.

Wordpress 2.5 was released yesterday. I’m just after upgrading and everything went smoothly as far as I can tell. Let me know if you see anything strange.

It looks like Seagate, one of the largest employers here in the North West, are going to tell over 900 workers at their Limavady plant this afternoon that the company is pulling out.

This would be a major blow for the area. So far there is only the news about an announcement online, but nothing concrete. Other sources are the Derry Journal and UTV.

The Derry News newspaper reported this morning that they learnt that Seagate has built an exact replica factory in Thailand where labour costs are significantly cheaper, and that there had been speculations about the future of the company over here.

I wonder what this will mean for the Derry plant. Didn’t they reduce their workers’ hours over the summer?

—

Update: According to a friend of mine it’s normal that Seagate cut back the hours for a week in the summer. And apparently there’s talk about announcing an investment in the Derry plant.

Update 2: It’s been confirmed, Seagate Limavady is closing.

Dan from Beatnik Soul confirmed last night that the fucking amazing King Khan & BBQ Show (MySpace) is coming to town. They’ll be playing in Masons on 1st February 08. Support will be provided by 2 excellent Dublin bands – The Things and The Mighty Stef. This is one show not to be missed.

And for the uninitiated, here’s the masters of trashy rock & roll in action:

Spread the word!