Malice Aforethought

After a stressful week, I came home last night wanting some light comedic relief. So I decided to watch one of my favourite episodes of the classic ‘Fawlty Towers’ series entitled ‘The Builders’. The plot revolves around Basil employing the services of a cowboy Irish builder called O’Reilly, whose men proceed to make a number of serious mistakes to the original plans for the renovation of the hotel. After a near-nervous breakdown from Basil and a bruising encounter with Sybil, O’Reilly himself agrees to correct the shoddy workmanship to the full extent of his professional competency. However, that competency is soon exposed when an experienced builder called Stubbs reviews the work and is casually informed by Basil that a wooden lintel has been used over a door on a load-bearing wall, with the danger that the wall could collapse and take with it the entire building. As Stubbs phones his staff to bring an emergency screw jack, Basil is seen walking away from the hotel with a garden gnome under his arm – with the distinct impression given he is going to insert the gnome into O’Reilly’s posterior.

What makes this particular episode different is the fact that it’s rooted in Basil’s miserliness and O’Reilly’s incompetence, instead of the incompetence being demonstrated almost uniquely by Basil himself as is the case in nearly every other episode. But supposing that O’Reilly’s use of the wooden lintel hadn’t been as a result of his uselessness as a tradesman coupled with a chronic lack of understanding of gravity. Supposing it had been used deliberately as a way of collapsing the hotel and putting the Fawltys out of business. Under those circumstances, it certainly wouldn’t have been a comedy. What you would have instead is a dark plotline of hatred and intent to cause harm.

Where am I going with this? I’m simply pointing out the difference between an action you have no idea of the consequences of, vis-a-vis an action you carry out where you know other people will experience actual and serious suffering. And we know this government’s decision to abolish the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) to millions of vulnerable pensioners will cause actual and serious suffering up to and including fatality. How do we know? Because a study commissioned by the Labour Party in 2017, when May’s administration was toying with the idea, stated categorically that deaths would increase by almost 4,000 that coming winter.

It’s only when you look at what this disgusting, loathsome government did over the removal of the WFP that you come to appreciate the level of mendacity involved. Although MPs voted on the proposal on September 10th, it wasn’t until 3 days later they published a DWP “equality analysis” of their effect – and only then after their hand was forced by a Freedom of Information Act request (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/responses-to-freedom-of-information-requests-on-equality-impact-assessments-produced-for-targeting-winter-fuel-payment). Moreover, the government acknowledges that changes to the eligibility for the WFP will reduce the number of claimants by more than nine million (https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-07-30/2228). The DWP analysis says that nine in ten pensioners aged between 66 and 79, and eight out of ten of over-80s, will lose their allowance. Since those over 80 (such as my own Mum) receive a higher payment – £300 as opposed to £200 – they will take the greatest financial hit. This isn’t taking into account that the older you get, the less robust your body generally becomes in fighting illness, the cold or the consequences of both.

The Oxford Reference legal dictionary defines ‘malice aforethought’ as:

‘(1) intention to kill (direct express malice aforethought);

2) intention to cause grievous bodily harm (direct implied malice aforethought);

(3 realizing while doing a particular act that death would be a virtually certain result (indirect express malice: R v Woollin [1999] AC 82);

(4) realizing that grievous bodily harm would be a virtually certain result from the act, e.g. shooting at someone without wanting to kill him, but realizing that he is virtually certain to suffer a serious injury (indirect implied malice.The prosecution must prove one of these four types of malice aforethought to secure a conviction of murder.’

In my view, there can be little doubt that this government wants to either kill off, or seriously hurt, a large section of its own citizens. It can’t be because of financial constraints. After all, Reeves managed to find the money to pay off the agitators in the Labour party’s client trades unions quite handsomely. Now we’ve discovered the Bank of England’s ability to turn its hand to a level of creative accountancy worthy of Lehman Brothers, has unexpectedly found an extra £50 billion for the Chancellor to play with in next month’s Budget. All while millions of our older people will face a winter of illness and hypothermia (https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1954287/chancellor-winter-fuel-fiscal-rules).

The Left in Britain hate old people. The reasons they do so are because the vast majority of pensioners don’t vote Labour, and did vote for Brexit – two of progressivism’s most unforgivable sins. As revenge, and in a ruse to ‘save money’, a governing party which philosophically prides itself on fighting for the most disadvantaged in society is openly shilling for a project it knows will cause fatalities by the thousands. How evil is that? How morally bankrupt does one have to be to walk into a parliamentary lobby and mark with approval something whereby folk who have, for the most part, lived and paid taxes here all their lives are faced with the consequences of debilitation or death? Please bear in mind this is not only a government whose own members get to claim a heating allowance for their second homes, but one more than happy to roll out the red carpet to illegal invaders who break into our country on a daily basis, pay nothing into the system, but are provided with warm hotels and good food for an interminable period of time.

My late father once told me he had nursed a former minister in Anthony Eden’s government whilst working at an exclusive nursing home in Pimlico in the mid-1980s. This gentlemen suffered with dementia and was doubly-incontinent. Dad often said is was a sobering experience of how the once-mighty can fall with the inevitable passage of time. It’s likely that, one day, those who now gloat at condemning our elderly to a winter of unabashed misery will walk far more than a mile in their shoes. Karma’s funny like that.

Views: 48