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Kill All the Poor

That Mitchell and Webb Look2010Season 4Episode 4
That Mitchell and Webb Look
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

A government minister keeps nagging his civil servants to run one monstrous recession policy through their economic model, purely to see what happens.

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Community rating

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The premise

Here’s the bit.

With every conventional fix for the recession already modelled and found wanting, a minister keeps innocently asking his two civil servants whether they have tried killing all the poor. They refuse until he insists it is harmless fact-finding, so they run it through the computer, which reports that it would not help. When they explain that this is why the policy is off the table, the minister takes grave offence that only the arithmetic stood in the way, lectures them that its obvious immorality is exactly what made it safe to ask, cheerfully recalls other appalling schemes his department has tested, and closes with a sensible-sounding policy package that ends in a fresh atrocity.

The funny people

Meet the cast. 3

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

The computer's not going to be offended.

Shave half a percent off interest rates, shore up the pound, keep VAT steady for now, and round up all the dwarves.

Behind the scenes

The people who made it.

ScriptEnglish · 42 turns

Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.

  1. 00:00

    Civil Servant ?

    So, Minister, we've run every viable model through the computer and it looks like there just are no easy solutions to this recession.

  2. 00:06

    Civil Servant ?

    Yeah, raising VAT, cutting VAT, raising interest rates.

  3. 00:10

    Civil Servant ?

    Raising interest rates and VAT, lowering income tax and raising VAT.

  4. 00:14

    Civil Servant ?

    None of it seems to really help.

  5. 00:15

    Minister

    Have you tried kill all the poor?

  6. 00:19

    Civil Servant ?

    Sir, with respect, you know, we've had this conversation before.

  7. 00:23

    Minister

    I'm just saying, have you tried it?

  8. 00:24

    Civil Servant ?

    No, of course we haven't tried it. We're not going to try it.

  9. 00:27

    Minister

    I'm not saying do it. I'm just saying run it through the computer. See if it would work

  10. 00:30

    Civil Servant ?

    whether it would work It is not the issue.

  11. 00:33

    Minister

    So you think it might work. That's pretty right wing.

  12. 00:35

    Civil Servant ?

    No, I don't think it'll work.

  13. 00:38

    Minister ?

    I Think it might

  14. 00:39

    Civil Servant ?

    It wouldn't.

  15. 00:41

    Minister ?

    Why not?

  16. 00:42

    Civil Servant ?

    Well, because they do all the... You know, they... They clean or We need them for all the things that we don't fancy.

  17. 00:48

    Civil Servant ?

    Are you thinking of immigrants?

  18. 00:49

    Minister

    Look? There's an easy solution to this guys. Just run it through the computer and check well

  19. 00:55

    Civil Servant ?

    No,

  20. 00:55

    Minister

    I can't believe you haven't done it drunk as a joke

  21. 00:57

    Civil Servant ?

    What?

  22. 00:58

    Minister

    Well, just do it quickly.

  23. 00:59

    Civil Servant ?

    I'm not going to do it.

  24. 01:00

    Minister ?

    Why not?

  25. 01:01

    Civil Servant ?

    Because it's offensive and evil.

  26. 01:03

    Minister

    I don't see the objection. The computer's not going to be offended. Just run it through. The computer will say, no, it wouldn't help to kill all the poor, and I'll stop going on about it.

  27. 01:12

    Civil Servant ?

    See? There. See? Satisfied?

  28. 01:21

    Minister

    Have you tried raise VAT and kill all the poor?

  29. 01:24

    Minister ?

    Look, we're just fact-finding.

  30. 01:26

    Civil Servant ?

    Why do you so want to kill all the poor, sir?

  31. 01:28

    Minister

    I don't want to do anything of the sort, but I think it's important to know if it would help.

  32. 01:32

    Civil Servant ?

    Of course it wouldn't help, but the computer says it wouldn't help, so we're not doing it.

  33. 01:36

    Minister ?

    That's why we're not doing it.

  34. 01:38

    Civil Servant ?

    What?

  35. 01:39

    Minister

    That's the only reason why we're not doing it. Bloody hell, now I'm offended.

  36. 01:43

    Civil Servant ?

    I'm sorry?

  37. 01:44

    Minister

    I shouldn't have asked you to run that through. It turns out if it had come out positive, you'd have started work by now. Here I am, blue sky thinking amongst friends, and I didn't realise that it's only cold-hearted pragmatism that's keeping you from pumping gas into Lidl.

  38. 01:56

    Civil Servant ?

    I'm confused, sir.

  39. 01:57

    Minister

    Look, just because a computer says that killing all the poor will help the economy doesn't mean I'm going to do it. It's morally wrong, Anne. That's why we can run it through the computer, because we know whatever it says, we're not going to do it. That's the page I'm on, Anne. Are you going to burn the book? No. We were pretty sure that child brothels would help with arts funding, but does that mean we did it? No. Never got beyond a pilot scheme in Yeovil.

  40. 02:21

    Civil Servant ?

    You're quite right, sir. I'm sorry if I in any way cast aspersions on your commitment to the sanctity of all human life.

  41. 02:27

    Minister

    Look, it's all right, guys. I think it's pretty clear what we need to do. Shave half a percent off interest rates, shore up the pound, keep VAT steady for now, and round up all the dwarves.

  42. 02:37

    Civil Servant ?

    Yes, Minister.

The rabbit hole continues

One more couldn’t hurt.

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