This article is taken from the August-September 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
There is one word that seems to be increasingly applied to murder and unlawful killings, and that word is “senseless”. The application of this word to murder gives rise to the interesting concept of the sensible murder.
I am sure that there are many people who, in their darker moments, could think of people whom it would be very sensible to murder, but this is not the type of ratiocination that we should encourage. Loose talk, as they used to say in the war, costs lives.
The Evening Standard recently carried the following headline: “Man gets life for ‘senseless’ murder of talented footballer, 32, in south London car park”.
No doubt the paper followed the line of a statement about the murderer on the Metropolitan Police website: “Morin-Briton murdered Theo in an unprovoked and senseless attack in broad daylight.”
Not to be outdone in the attribution of senselessness to killers, the Guardian, in a story about a different case, stated: “Three teenage girls have pleaded guilty to a ‘senseless’ killing of a 75-year-old man in a street attack in north London filmed on a mobile phone.”
They pleaded guilty to manslaughter rather than guilty to murder; investigation of how such a plea came to be accepted would no doubt yield much to ponder.
The majority of reports of prison sentences are untruths, if not lies
But to return to Morin-Briton and his senseless murder. According to more than one report in the print and broadcast media, he was “jailed for life”. He was jailed for no such thing. He was sentenced, it is true, to life imprisonment but with a recommendation that he remain in prison for at least 27 years, after which, at the age of 63, he might very well be released — that is, if no future Home Secretary decides on what my grandmother, recommending the use of castor oil in children, called “a good clear-out”.
The majority of reports of prison sentences are untruths, if not lies. When an English judge says to a convicted man, “I am sentencing you to three years’ imprisonment,” he is doing no such thing. He is sentencing him to 18 months’ imprisonment, if that.
Oh, for Confucius and his rectification of names!
