Playing Saif
I’d hoped to have a sprightly little post for you yesterday on the matter of funeral costs. The trade body representing the interests of independent funeral directors, Saif, commissioned Ipsos MORI (how apt, that MORI!) to research funeral directors’ charges. A friendly funeral director emailed me to tell he’d just got the report, would I […]
Who wants to live forever?
Might we all live 100 years longer? 1000? (Aubrey de Grey) en Yahoo! Video Is the first person to live to 1,000 alive today? Aubrey de Grey, talking above at a TED conference, is just one of the scientists dedicated to helping us do that – not that he intends to stop at 1,000. If […]
The wages of solicitude
We worry about our football clubs. Many are encumbered by stonking debts. Manchester United owes £716 million. What of our big undertaking businesses? Well, Dignity Caring Funeral Services has just published figures which provide the current answer to that question. And the answer is (sit down, please, and clutch your whisky) that Dignity are leveraged […]
Attitudes to undertakers
There’s a very interesting blog developing over at Funerary Ramblings. If you’ve not been there, pop across. Today’s ramblings take an amble through attitudes to undertakers. It’s very good. So here’s to you, Funerary Rambler. You’ve probably not come across our Jake Thackray. Here are the words: I am a grave-digger, a […]
Dial up the dead
Marvellous, isn’t it, the feats of ingenuity those of an entrepreneurial bent are capable of in dreaming up schemes to part the bereaved from a pretty penny? I love Eternal Voicemail. They transfer a dead person’s mobile phone voicemail message to a voicemail box. Anyone who’s got the dead person’s phone number can call, listen […]
Exit strategy
It seems unthinkable that the practice of direct cremation, direct burial – the rapid and unceremonious disposal of the dead – could land on our shores. It’s been preying on my mind. Now I’m not so sure. Here’s a view from Rabbi Mark S Glickman writing in the Seattle Times about what he calls the […]
Robbing the dead while they’re still alive
Consumers are best served by people whose interests are their interests – people who want what their customers want. Ethics-driven natural burial ground operators are a good example. This is an equation, so it works the other way around. There’s not much understanding of this in the funeral industry. There are shining exceptions, but their […]
Looking like death
Most people don’t reckon to look their best when they’re dead, but this was not how the status conscious citizens of Palermo in Italy saw it. Starting in 1599 the Capuchin friars were mummified or embalmed, then displayed, standing, in the catacombs beneath their friary. The idea appealed to the wealthy citizens of Palermo, who […]
Blackened greens?
Is it just me or do you, too, feel that it seems like a long time ago since there was a consensus on climate change? I signed up to it because I met lots of people I liked and admired who had already subscribed and who read lots of books about it and quoted […]
The Co-operative reports 21% increase in funeral plan sales
No funeral director, however brilliant, can stimulate an appetite for their product – because we pass their way but once. But a funeral director can sign up tomorrow’s customers today by the ingenious means of selling them a pre-need funeral plan. Pre-need plans look like a very good bet. They’re inflation-proof. And they are easy […]
