Does death really matter so little?
Citizens of the UK have no statutory right to bereavement leave. Momentous as the event of a death may be, it is not reckoned to be of sufficient magnitude to enjoy equal rights with birth. Says a lot about our cultural attitudes to mortality, doesn’t it? There’s currently an e-petition calling for a legal right […]
Undertakers feast on misery, situation normal
There’s a story in the Scottish Daily Mail, 7 June, that exemplifies very well the misinformation and scaremongering that are characteristic of media treatment of funerals in the UK. Here it is: LOCAL authorities and funeral directors are making money out of family misery, with ‘the cost of dying’ reaching thousands of pounds in Scotland, […]
Peaceful EV feeling
Was there anything we missed? We spent three days at the National Funeral Exhibition, most of it talking, very often to people with whom we have had a virtual relationship for years. It’s a weird thing about the world today that you can get to know someone very well indeed — without ever having met […]
Daddy, where were YOU at the NFE?
Are you coming to the National Funeral Exhibition? The NFE is the biggest and best business-boosting/networking/nattering event in Funeralworld and we are delighted to have been invited. To mark the occasion we are presently decanting the GFG-Batesville Shard, packing the wretched, zit-face interns into charabancs, and looking forward to spending the next three days sampling […]
Doing the rite thing
On Monday, in response to this: … we get to carry on without the benefit of a formal ceremony or other ritual observance after near-bereavement experiences like the breakdown of a relationship, or redundancy, or a child leaving home. We resolve those privately. Kathryn Edwards wrote: … from my ritualist perspective … how is it that we […]
Lobbying scandal strikes Funeralworld?
The lobbying scandal presently raging in Parliament has drawn the spotlight to all-party parliamentary groups — APPGs. Three dishonourable Labour peers were caught by undercover cameras (remember them?) telling reporters that an all-party parliamentary group could be set up as a lobbying vehicle for a fake South Korean solar energy company. The ignominious Patrick Mercer declared his willingness […]
Beyond wordless
David Aaronovitch tells a tale in today’s Times which seems to speak volumes about, uh, attitudes to death, or families, or Britishness or… something, such that I thought I must share it with you. The background is that the Aaronovich family dog, a Kerry Blue, has been diagnosed with cancer and will die soon. When […]
Funeralcare for sale?
The capital shortfall at the Co-operative Bank is estimated to be somewhere between £1–1.8 billion. This debt has been downgraded by Moody’s to junk status. The Co-op is going to have to sell assets in order to pay it off. Here’s the news for Funeralworld. Today’s Daily Telegraph speculates as follows: Further asset disposals are […]
Thinking the unsinkable
In October 2008, in a piece about direct cremation, I wrote this: In the UK we are culturally conditioned to believe that a funeral for a body is indispensable. Could that change? In July 2009 I wrote: I never thought [direct cremation] would jump the Atlantic, but it has. We now have our first direct cremation service over here and it’s busy. Simplicity […]
Undertakers overcharge, situation normal
You may or not have been up early enough to catch the ITV Daybreak piece on funerals on Thursday morning. The GFG media monitoring team wasn’t. It was at the seaside. Had it not been for a call from Rosie at the Natural Death Centre we would have missed it altogether. Impelled by a strong […]
