Day 310 - 04 Dec 96 - Page 27


     
     1   MR. RAMPTON:   Plainly, one cannot judge it by the standards of
     2        some Utopian society where everybody gets paid hundreds of
     3        thousands of pounds for doing nothing.  One has to judge
     4        it, we would respectfully submit, by the standards
     5        obtaining in the society in which the libel was published.
     6        If it be a feature of that society that people who do the
     7        kind of work that ordinary crew members at McDonald's do,
     8        at the ages at which they do it, that is to say the
     9        majority of them being under twenty-one, if, for that group
    10        of workers, the standards of society said, well, this is an
    11        adequate rate for the job or a fair rate for the job, one
    12        cannot, we would respectfully submit, sensibly say that the
    13        pay is low, according to some other standard which is not
    14        one which applies in the society in which the libel was
    15        published.
    16
    17        If I may be slightly pompous for a moment, I hope it is the
    18        first and last time.  If your Lordship were a jury, one
    19        would have to say to the jury, 'Look at the world in which
    20        you live and ask yourselves, do you really think that, for
    21        the job that it is, it is a poor rate of pay?'
    22
    23        The other thing I should mention - I probably mentioned
    24        this before, and if I have I have in general terms, but it
    25        is an important consideration.  The examination of the two
    26        particular restaurants at Heathrow and Bath, one of the
    27        things that it reveals is that the performance related pay
    28        reviews, or pay rises, are a reality.  They do happen
    29        regularly, and they do result in regular pay rises during
    30        the course of the year as opposed to being what one might
    31        call a flat rate increase at the end of each year or upon
    32        an annual review.  So even if one is one of those that
    33        leaves within three, six or nine months, one will have had
    34        two, sometimes three, increments on the basic rate before
    35        one leaves.
    36
    37   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Thank you.  I just want to check a note I made
    38        of matters I wanted to ask on the legal submissions you
    39        have given me so far.  Yes, it goes back to the question of
    40        comment.  Perhaps it is not really law at all.  It is,
    41        I asked you about -----
    42
    43   MR. RAMPTON:   Your Lordship said something about rainforests.
    44
    45   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, it is whether the statements, either or
    46        both of the statements, about contributing to a major
    47        ecological catastrophe or helping to wreck this planet are
    48        comment.
    49
    50   MR. RAMPTON:   No.  They are not.  They are excessive 
    51        characterisations of the destruction and havoc alleged 
    52        specifically in the rest of this part of the leaflet.  They 
    53        are descriptive.  They are colourful certainly, but they
    54        are descriptive of the actual facts, the scale, alleged
    55        specifically in this part of the leaflet.
    56
    57   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Well, I think my next question you have just
    58        answered.  So even if they were comments, they will have to
    59        rely on what is in that column rather than any extraneous,
    60        any other, matters?

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