The truth revealed

23 October 2014, 8 pm

Recently my blog has been likened to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.  This is a trifle worrying.  I think maybe it is time to set the record straight, particularly since I have just been writing about the annual Council pantomime.

To clarify:

1. My blog is emphatically not a proposal.  I will not be putting it before Council nor any of the CIPA Committees.
2. It is therefore unlikely to be adopted as official CIPA policy.  Except perhaps the bits about the Biscuit Pixies.  Which are not, on their own, going to undermine the fabric of the Institute.
3. I have never advocated that patent attorneys should sell their children to be eaten by rich barristers.  I think that would be absolutely and completely unacceptable, especially since many barristers are vegetarians these days.  (For the record, however, I do believe that it is socially irresponsible of patent attorneys to have children in the first place.  Psychiatrists are busy enough as it is.  Possibly these children, if they must exist, should be put to work checking for typos in government documents, although the hours would be long and the rewards few, I fear.)
4. Occasionally I exaggerate or satirise things in my blog.  Or make them up completely.  This is another reason (like you needed another) for not taking it seriously. 
5. Also it has no basis and is unsupported by any known authority or indeed by any genuine evidence or research. 
6. I am unfortunately unable to flag up which bits of the blog are made up and which are not, for artistic reasons.
7. Not that many people read it anyway.
8. I am not modest.  Or genteel or in any other way respectable.

Subject to your acceptance of the above caveats, do please read on.  In fact, I strongly recommend that you do, because as of 1 January 2015, only registered followers of my blog will be eligible to attend CIPA meetings and vote in the Institute elections.  I proposed this to myself yesterday and carried it nem con.

And now I will go back to writing the pantomime script.  It is a new story: VeePee and the Biscuit Pixies.  And not a word of it is true.