Day 308 - 28 Nov 96 - Page 27


     
     1
     2        Finally, on page 33, we talked about the Working For Big
     3        Mac pamphlet.  I think somewhere in the case, I cannot
     4        remember, we put the document where they had referred to
     5        trying to suppress the production of a play in Scotland
     6        called Jimmy McBurgers about the conditions in the
     7        fast-food industry for workers.  It was a youth production,
     8        and they used the retraction from transnationals who wrote
     9        Working For Big Mac, when they wrote to the people who had
    10        done the play, getting them to cease production of their
    11        play, and then I put to him that Harriet Lamb had
    12        retracted, or had said that she stood by the Working For
    13        Big Mac, she was the researcher, retracted her apology or
    14        their apology, or whatever, in the witness box she did so.
    15
    16        The point being they continue to circulate, Mr. Preston
    17        knows that they are circulating documents attacking us for
    18        distributing lies.  "The basis for these must be lies", he
    19        says, "is because other people have apologised".  We have
    20        clearly shown either that apologies were extracted under
    21        false pretences, for example on the rainforest issue, and
    22        here we have the apologies to do with the employment issue,
    23        Harriet Lamb said that she stood by what she had said in
    24        The Guardian article and in the Working For Big Mac
    25        pamphlet, and yet despite all that McDonald's continue to
    26        circulate the press releases when even Mr. Preston's weak
    27        and pathetic basis for justifying the word 'lies' has been
    28        completely removed because it is clear absolutely why we
    29        should take no notice whatsoever of any apologies given to
    30        McDonald's, certainly not the ones that have been referred
    31        to.  I have nearly finished.
    32
    33        Day 248, page 10.  This was about, you remember, the
    34        photographs in the McDonald's UK Annual Review, which
    35        showed -- the actual issue of those photographs, the actual
    36        content is not important.  It just basically showed that
    37        the report attached to it was deceptive, because the
    38        photographs had been clearly taken at different times, when
    39        it was pretending to be a continuous process.  He accepted
    40        that the photographs could be inaccurate, but only after
    41        enormous pressure on that -- the point being that they were
    42        deceptive and that he did not want to accept it until it
    43        was really impossible to say otherwise.
    44
    45        Then he was asked, at line 44: "You are completely
    46        100 percent biased and loyal to the company that pays your
    47        salary?"
    48
    49        Answer: "I am loyal, yes."
    50 
    51        "And biased?" 
    52 
    53        Answer: "No.  I think I can separate truth from fiction,
    54        truth from stories."
    55
    56        Then he thinks he is not sure about that.
    57
    58        If I just say one more thing on his evidence.  Day 247,
    59        page 31, at the bottom of the page, is where he says that
    60        Behind The Arches -- he says that Grinding it Out was a

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