If you're going to be wrong at least wear clean underwear

About 25 birthdays ago I had the bright idea of becoming an arbitrator as well as a barrister. Why am I talking about birthdays? Oh it’s because another one has just slipped by. Hardly noticed. Hardly noticed the anti-wrinkle cream neatly wrapped in pressy paper. Hardly noticed the hair thickening shampoo. Hardly noticed the slippers. Slippers!! And you might think that after 25 years of deciding construction industry quarrels the job is a tad easier than 25 birthdays ago. It’s not, oh hell it’s harder. What dawns on me now is that in them days I didn’t know what I was doing . . . and now that I think I do, I am on eggshells. I tippy-toe across the dispute terrain, there is a land mine up ahead, no no to the left, no no to the right. Whoosh!!

And there is all this business of having your clothes taken off in public. Did you not know that arbitrators have to have squeaky-clean underwear all the time? That’s because at any moment a big red London bus full of lawyers and High Court Judges are likely to run you over in mid-Award. The Court strips every ounce of clothing from the arbitrator there and then and exposes all his things and thingys to the world. It’s ever so ordinary for an arbitrator’s decision to be picked clean like a carcass on the Serengeti and then the pickings are laid out in public. See hear, ha ha, ho ho look how this arbitrator is wrong in law, wrong in fact, wrong on procedure. I don’t know a single naked arbitrator nor come to think of it a single naked Judge that enjoys having his thingy poked fun at in public.

Mind you I have learned a trick in the 25 years. I have learned that I am never wrong. True. It’s written in lipstick on my shaving mirror, “The arbitrator is never wrong”. “He was just sold the wrong argument that’s all." Arbitrator doesn’t decide who is right, he decides who has the best argument that’s all. So it’s the Advocates that ought to be in and out of M&S for frequent changes of underwear and having their naked thingys poked fun at. Meanwhile, must go, busy arbitrating . . . oh hell here comes another big red London bus. Clean undies, clean undies!!