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: McSpotlight: In actual fact; if you examine the evidence; you will see that McDonald's is all for free speech for themselves; but have tried to gag more than 30 groups and companies in the UK alone; by issuing libel writs and threatening huge legal fees; for nothing more than the exercising of free speech.
: Does free speech cut both ways, or do you believe it should only be available to those with the money to hire good lawyers?
: As to exploiting, well, let's quote the UK's official legal representatives on the subject;
: "... the sting of the leaflet to the effect that the Plaintiffs exploit children by using them, as more susceptible subjects of advertising, to pressurise their parents into going to McDonald's is justified. It is true."
They do not exploit children. They freakin' advertise!!! If the leaflett had said something like: Their ads can strongly influence some children, it wouldn't have been slander. However, they said exploit, and no matter what that crazy guy says, they aren't expoiling anyone.
: ... the First and Second Plaintiffs are culpably responsible for cruel practices in the rearing and slaughter of some of the animals which are used to produce their food...
Does McDs raise it's own animals? Maybe you should be after the suppliers, not the company...
: The Second Plaintiff does pay its workers low wages, thereby helping to depress wages for workers in the catering trade in Britain. To this extent the defamatory charge in the leaflet is partly justified.
Low wages???!!! If you can get in trouble for that, companies would completely run out of capital paying everyone. Seriously, there is really no standard for low wages, I don't know what you have over there(under the LABOUR PARTY), but over here we have minimum wage(ridiculous though it is), and anything above that is fair game. As long as McDs pays it's employees the legal minimum, there is no evidence supporting the fact that they pay them "low wages".
: ... I do find that various of the First and Second Plaintiffs' advertisements, promotions and booklets have pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which McDonald's food, high in fat and saturated fat and animal products and sodium, and at one time low in fibre, did not match.
Uhhh...not quite sure what you're saying. Please explain.
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: and, from the Appeal judgement;
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: it was fair comment to say that McDonald's employees worldwide 'do badly in terms of pay and conditions' [Appeal Judgment p247], and true that 'if one eats enough McDonald's food, one's diet may well become high in fat etc., with the very real risk of heart disease.' The Lord Justices went on to state that this last finding 'must have a serious effect on their trading reputation since it goes to the very business in which they are engaged. In our judgment, it must have a greater impact on the respondents' [McDonald's] reputation than any other of the charges that the trial judge had found to be true'. [Judgment p264]
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So it's not health food. Big deal. Most Americans/Brits/any other industrialized or colonized people eat junk. They don't have to, and no one forces them to. They just do.
: Is a totalitarian corporate state any less repressive than a totalitarian communist one?
A totalitarian state controlled by companies? Oxymoron? Privatization is a means to LIMIT government, and a state without government cannot be totalitarian.
