Slick,
I suspect that you may have missed the point of the discussion...
Hudson, in fact, is a very experienced big bird instructor .. who personally prefers the minimum speed philosophy and is endeavouring to stir up some interesting discussion on the subject. While he is not a performance engineer .. he knows a lot more about performance than the great majority of pilots do ... trust me on that one ..
Looking at your comments ..
(a) if the V1 adopted for the takeoff is 120 kt (providing that that speed is not less than the minimum permitted nor greater than that scheduled for the RTOW) and a decision is taken to abort at 115 ... where is the problem ? ... if the 70T case can schedule a 120 kt V1, then a lightweight reject from 115 kt is hardly going to present a greater problem than the heavyweight case for the pilot on the day ....
(b) second segment climb gradient will be rather wonderful at 45T using 70T weights ... if it is OK at 70T it is going to be much more OK at 45T .... think about it a little
(c) we all concur that performance scheduling is full of old wives' tales .....