2/23 - Going for a new speed record

As announced.

L4: Presumably there is an upstairs bathroom, quite likely cleaned by CW4. If this is a regular habit of CW4's, it seems reasonable that she might use the master bathroom before she cleans it. Then again, I hardly trust LW4 to get this across in a proper manner. LW4 might just consider this along Savagerian lines as a price of admission - if CW4 is such a treasure, then this one inconvenience might not be enough to justify replacing her if LW4 can't reasonably expect a more positive overall balance sheet.

L3: Why on earth is UE3 a poor hiring choice? What else is a trial period for but to determine whether someone is going to be a good employee or not-so-good? As its purpose is evaluatory, the idea is to make creative hires, secure in the knowledge that some won't work out and some will. One might argue that, just as any bridge player who defeats every contract (s)he doubles does not double often enough, anyone whose new hires all pass the trial period easily is likely too cautious in hiring. Of course, LW3 does not exactly seem a prize; it might have been rather just of the Prudecutor had she advised LW3 to give UE3 a glowing recommendation, so that the whole thing would come back to bite LW3 later. UE3 recalls to mind the colourless Hoskins, who always opposed any addition to Chambers staff at Number Three Equity Court on the grounds of having to support four daughters.

L2: On the brink of disappointing us all and getting one right for once, the Prudecutor manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory quite impressively this time. Yes, LW2 was a miserable mother. The situation is entirely of her own making. And most of the letter is all about her, and the attention she wants from S2 but isn't getting. So far, so good. But what does the Prudecutor propose by way of remedy? She recommends the sort of Obvious Social Lie in the form of admiration for what S2 has made of his life (and we have not a scrap of evidence about what LW2 actually thinks about what S2 has made of his life) that is bound to result in failure. Again, it might be clever were the Prudecutor doing it on purpose. If LW2 wants to approach S2, the way to do so is in a manner that centres S2 and his new family. At least he has a thorough understanding of How Not to Parent - and without having to undergo a week of torture at the hands of TLC.

L1: First of all, as LW1 has accompanied W1 to this particular conference in years past, those posters who will doubtless pile on LW1 and complain that he has no business calling a work conference a near-vacation are out of line in that particular. LW1 is more out of line in his archaic beliefs, which render a response to W1 of DTMFA to be not entirely out of line. One might reasonably postualte that anyone who objects to the gender of hir spouse's friends deserves a cheating spouse. So far, so good for the Prudecutor. But she fails to inquire into why both spouses let this slide until now. Clearly there has been some unresolved difference between them; the departure from her life of XCW1 presumably seemed a decent reason to cease hostilities. But now look where that strategy led. And the Prudecutor completely fails to explode LW1's assumption that XCW1 is only waiting for a moment alone to get his tingling naughty parts, as the Church Lady would say, into W1's panties.

To send W1 off to the conference by saying that he and the boys will be doing "guy stuff", all LW1 will achieve will be to make his wife as glad as possible to be going. If I were to give the Prudecutor real DIOP credit, it would be this time. But the correct approach for someone who sounds as if he's read A Fairly Honourable Defeat and only absorbed about half of it is that LW1 has several months in which to make W1 so attached to home and kin that she will spend the entire conference longing for the family and pulling out photos of husband and children until XCW1 gives up in disgust.

Moral: "I suppose it's just possible that some solicitors have daughters, too!"