“It’ll save you the bother when I’m dead.”
Jeremy Clarkson, writing in the Sunday Times about the death of his Mum: Right in the middle of all that brouhaha about sloping bridges and Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, my mum died. So there I was, in Russia, in the middle of a Top Gear tour, trying to organise her funeral and tell the children […]
And the winner is…
Does it get any better? The First Women Awards is the UK’s premium awards programme focused on senior-level business women and professionals. The Awards are founded by Real Business and the CBI, and are held in association with Lloyds Banking Group. And this year’s winner, announced last night: Poppy Mardall. Here at the GFG-Batesville Shard the inmates are breaking out the bunting and […]
Nominate someone for a Good Funeral Award now!
The Good Funeral Awards move this year to Bournville, Birmingham. The date: 6 September 2014. Nominations are open. In just three years our little acorn has grown into a flourishing oak. To many funeral directors the Good Funeral Awards might once have looked like an impertinence. Who on earth were we, a bunch of industry […]
Imagine this: when someone dies we don’t hand them over to strangers
When the GFG, in conjunction with the Plunkett Foundation, announced a community funerals initiative back in 2012, we supposed that someone might pick it up and run with it. The Plunkett Foundation, far cleverer than us, was pretty confident they would. They contacted all their community shops and community pubs and we waited with bated breath […]
The only way is ethics
In the Guardian, Niall Booker, head of the Co-op bank, writes: We got ourselves into a mess … That’s why this week we will be asking our customers for their views on our ethical policy and wider values. Refreshing our existing ethical framework and also asking about three new areas – responsible banking, transparency and […]
A promise made is a debt unpaid
The devaluation of the Social Fund Funeral Payment is the main cause of funeral poverty, but there are others. Some families sign up to more than they can afford – and funeral directors let them. The impact on both parties can be devastating. While the great and the good convene conferences to debate solutions, a […]
Should old acquaintance be forgot
There was a time, way back when the world was new and green (remember green?) and a joyous revolution in funerals was imminent. It was a time when scarcely a day passed without the launch of a new online memorial website. The concept ticked all the boxes, floated all the boats, captured the zeitgeist: innovation + […]
All blood runs red
“By all means have memorials. Make them out of Government stone if you like. Make them uniform. But you have no right to employ, in making these memorials, the bodies of other people’s relatives. It is not decent, it is not reasonable, it is not right.” “When the widows and mothers of our dead go […]
Calling all you snappers
The Memorial Awareness Board (MAB) invites you to commemorate the centenary year of the First World War with a national photography competition Launch date is on the 30th May with entries closing on 31st July, with the winner to be announced on 1st September. Now in its fifth year, this critically acclaimed competition calls on […]
A Concerned Priest in South London
On a hot June Sunday morning, David Hall, of Vintage Lorry Funerals, set out at 0600 hours in his 1950 Leyland Beaver for a Monday morning funeral in Walworth, South London. When David was a lad in the 1960’s, Sunday was a sacred day and there would be very little traffic on the road during […]
