Hi Andrew,
the most efficient way for you would be to set up a filter in gmail. Since every communication seems to involve the OP's email address, you should be able to set gmail to filter out based on that.
Go to the top message of this thread. Click the "More" dropdown and select "filter messages like these." Enter maclaren's email address in the "has the words" field. Select the checkbox to apply the filter to all the messages in your inbox that already match, and see if it catches replies as well. Select "move to trash" (or whatever the equivalent is) for the resultant action.
That should automatically catch and trash any messages to or from maclaren, and you should thus never have to read them. If (for some reason) it doesn't work, let us know.
Cheers.
Also,
Andrew