Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 12

     
     1   MR. RAMPTON:  If my calculations are right, and I think they
     2        are, but again as we are only looking at trends it does not
     3        really matter, of the 22 million I have then gone, as it
     4        were, down a scale, I have ignored everybody at McDonald's
     5        who ate less than once a week during the course of the
     6        year, because when one is looking at diet and health they
     7        really do not come into the picture at all, and I have
     8        concentrated on four possible categories, which are the
     9        ones the box.  There is nobody, according to this, in
    10        category 1 every day, though, as a matter of reality, I am
    11        sure there are some people in this country who eat at
    12        McDonald's every day including, no doubt, some of their
    13        employees, but they are not statistically significant and
    14        therefore I cannot make an estimate as to what their
    15        numbers might be.
    16
    17        Then I have made three other categories, just according to
    18        the table -- nearly every day, several times a week and
    19        once a week -- and I have put the amount, the numbers of
    20        people, in the second column and a percentage which they
         represent of the 22 and a half million in the third column.
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
    24
    25   MR. RAMPTON:  Everything that follows, the various tables and
    26        graphs which I have done, follow from those basic
    27        assumptions, so far as this country is concerned.  As
    28        your Lordship will have noticed, the American problem is
    29        rather more ticklish.
    30
    31        I have to say in relation to that, I am sceptical how far
    32        one can use my figures to arrive at what I might call
    33        'concrete conclusions' about numbers.  My hope is that
    34        your Lordship would agree with me that, as I think I have
    35        suggested somewhere in this text, the best approach is
    36        probably to use the English, the UK, figures and then to
    37        see how they match up with the broad picture which one can
    38        get from what American figures one has.  If, as I believe
    39        they do, they show a broadly consistent pattern between the
    40        two countries, making allowance for the probability and, I
         would say a strong probability, that the number of
    42        McDonald's visitors in America is proportionately much
    43        higher than it is here, one can arrive at a broad picture
    44        of the likely eating habits, patterns of eating, at
    45        McDonald's by age group, which is, for this purpose, what
    46        matters.
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    49
    50   MR. RAMPTON:  I have made the observation -- I make it this 
    51        once, I hope I will not have to make it again.  I have made 
    52        the observation somewhere in the text, I think it is in 
    53        this part of the closing submissions, that -- and, of
    54        course, it applies throughout justification and fair
    55        comment -- I do not actually have to prove anything at
    56        all.  I have gone a great deal of the way down the road to
    57        disproving the Defendants' propositions, and those of their
    58        witnesses, merely because I thought it would help
    59        your Lordship and, secondly, because if I get the findings
    60        to the effect that they are positively untrue, obviously