There is no doubt about Obiter’s judicial hero of the week. Mr Justice Williams in the family court went out of his way to praise counsel acting pro bono for parents – one of whom is deaf – in a difficult case.

Admittedly, the literary allusion he drew on was not totally flattering. ‘So far removed from the stereotyped “fat-cat”, the legal profession in cases such as this are more akin to Boxer in George Orwell’s Animal Farm always telling themselves “I will work harder”,’ the judgment states. 

And Gazette readers were quick to point out the sad fate of the Stakhanovite horse in Orwell’s tale: being taken away in a van marked ‘Horse Slaughterer’. ‘Comrades Falconer, Straw, Clarke, Grayling, Gove, Truss, Lidington and Gauke have all played their part in painting “Modernising legal services” on the side of the knacker’s yard van,’ one reader observed. 

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