Day 079 - 27 Jan 95 - Page 72
1 had been represented, long before now I would have sought
2 the consent of whoever represented you and the consent of
3 Mr. Rampton to put time limits on witnesses or parts of the
4 case. If I had not had that consent I would have probably
5 imposed the time limits anyway.
6
7 I appreciate how difficult it is when you are acting on
8 your own behalf and I have not, therefore, considered time
9 limits; for instance, saying: "You have a day or a day and
10 a half to cross-examine Mr. Walker". But if I had imposed
11 the time limit on counsel or a solicitor representing you,
12 it would have been a time limit of something of that kind.
13
14 You have to repay my understanding of your position by
15 doing your very best to concentrate on what you really need
16 to ask questions about, and then getting to the point of
17 that line of questioning absolutely as quickly as you can.
18 In fact, if you do that, it will not only help me, more
19 importantly, from your point of view, it will help you
20 because the evidence will be much more contained than a lot
21 of it has been so far.
22
23 I do not propose to say any more at this stage. I do not
24 find homilies attractive. I have said something similar in
25 the past. What I do ask you to do is spend a bit of time
26 over the weekend. You have, obviously, prepared your
27 cross-examination already, looking at just what you need to
28 ask Mr. Walker about. Moreover, in case I ask you on
29 Monday: "Now, where are we going now?" preparing
30 yourselves so you can say, quite concisely: "It is on this
31 point and it is relevant for that reason".
32
33 MR. MORRIS: If I can just say that we did expect to be finished
34 by today but we were completely thrown out by the admission
35 from the Preston food poisoning outbreak and the cloud that
36 was erected around that. That is all I am saying. It did
37 take a long time.
38
39 MR. RAMPTON: It took an hour.
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Even if you were right about that, that
42 cannot have taken more than something like three-quarters
43 of an hour out of today and yet, apparently, we may have
44 another day to go. Now go away, get a bit of rest over the
45 weekend but, please, go through the exercise I have just
46 asked you to do. It will not only help me, I think it will
47 help you. We will resume at 10.30 on Monday morning.
48
49 MS. STEEL: I am sorry, there was something else I wanted to ask
50 about. Yesterday there was the dispute about matters of
51 opinion and whether we are entitled to express a matter of
52 opinion or not. Mr. Rampton said that he was going to have
53 some argument on that. I would like to ask that, if
54 possible, whether we could have a written argument on that
55 as soon as possible or something.
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have forgotten what context that arose in.
58
59 MS. STEEL: About rearing and slaughter of animals,
60 about whether we were entitled to say that all suffering of
