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?
