3 February 2016, 5.30 pm
OK, so now I am exhausted too. Despite my best intentions and my bestest fierceness, we have only just finished the Council meeting. Initially, people were well behaved and they put their hands up when they wanted to ask questions. After a while they stopped putting their hands up and just asked questions anyway. And then they started talking to one another about their own questions while other people were discussing some other questions. So I had to tell them to BE QUIET and it all got a bit Dad’s Army. I had to be particularly fierce to prevent the level of detail becoming incapacitating. For example, at one point Mr Davies was explaining his Cunning Plan for when the landlord starts to talk about Deelapidayshuns and market rates and such like. He invited everyone to a special IGC-and-Council meeting next month, with lunch, to talk about what CIPA needs from its premises. And instead of saying, yes, we will come to the meeting, thank you for offering lunch, people immediately wanted to know the price we are paying per square foot at 95 Chancery Lane and the price we might have to pay if we moved to place X and how much further our members might have to walk to get to place X when they are used to going to Chancery Lane. There was, indeed, some concern about moving CIPA anywhere other than slap bang next door to the attorneys who have always worked slap bang next door to CIPA. Because these people are allergic to public transport. And I said: it doesn’t matter right at this moment what price we are paying per square foot because we can talk about all that at the special meeting with lunch next month. So shut up. They got their own back by picking holes in the Bye-laws, which were supposed to be ready to send to the Privy Council but in which people have suddenly spotted fatal flaws. The Bye-laws have now been amended and re-drafted so many times we have lost track of what I believe is called, in polite circles, “version control”. Doing version control at CIPA is like doing portion control at an American fast food outlet, with everyone assuming a sort-of “all you can eat” format. They wanted to re-draft the offending clause right there and then, in 12 different ways with 13 different types of punctuation. I said no, that is not going to happen; instead Mr Davies is going to re-draft it and send it for approval, which you are going to give because Mr Davies is the most legally-literate plumber we could find and let’s face it he is our only chance of getting anything to the Privy Council before 2020. Mr Davies gave me a very black look, which suggested he did not feel particularly honoured to have been given this task. I gave him a very black look back, which suggested that honour did not come into it. I am beginning to wish I had insisted we played the Don’t Stop Talking game, like at WIPO. With me doing the not stopping talking and Mr Davies doing the not stopping writing and nobody, but nobody, doing the not stopping nitpicking about details.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |