Author: Charles

It’s your line to Mike McCollum

25 March 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Dignity

Church Action on Poverty and Quaker Social Action are holding an event which will bring together charities, communities, policy-makers and the funeral industry to seek joint solutions to the growing problem of funeral poverty.

They say: “It’s really important that all sides are represented at the event and participate in finding solutions. Unfortunately, Dignity Funerals – the largest corporate owner of funeral directors in the UK – has declined every invitation sent to them.”

They’d like you to email Mike McCollum, the ceo of what is probably Britain’s most expensive undertaker, and tell him he really ought to get down there.

Come on, Mike, make an effort and try and look good. The GFG’ll be there. We can talk about what to do with your share options.

Please send Mike an automatic email and explain why it’s so important he attends this event and gets involved in finding solutions to funeral poverty. Click here.

Shares

NOTE to the uninitiated: a LTIP is a long-term incentive plan. The above is the third coponent of their total package and is not awarded automatically

He’s still at it!

25 March 2014
Charles
No comments
Categories: Richard Sage

Britain’s most infamous undertaker Richard Sage is awaiting trial at Blackfriars Crown Court on 28 April on a charge of fraud by false representation. He stands accused, among other things, of having posted a series of bogus adverts looking for young people to work with him. It is alleged the adverts asked for a £400 administration fee, but the promise of a job was a lie.

A little piece of Sage’s previous has been brought to our attention. This goes back to the days when Sage was operating a private ambulance service alongside his undertaking business. The story features Nigel Gardner, who runs a private ambulance service called Ambukare.

Whilst working as a driver for an undertaker’s, Sage decided to set up his own private ambulance firm. He did it convincingly too, embracing the much-revered work-sharing ethic. He would take jobs from hospitals, demand payment up front, and pass the jobs on to other companies. One of the companies was Ambukare. Gardner received a call from an unfamiliar company, Inter County, but obliged the request all the same. He then had a lengthy period of chasing payment.

The undertaker’s firm hadn’t seen Sage for some time. Nor had any of his clients. Eventually, Gardner decided to ring the police, who it turns out were looking for him too. He was wanted for various acts of fraud. Gardner’s account added another to the list.

The CID tracked him down in Spain.

“A lot of people were angry as Sage hadn’t paid a single client,” said Gardner. “I knew I wouldn’t get my money back. I was just waiting to see what the courts would do to him.”

The courts were firm, giving him several years, “which I suppose is only fair”, Gardner laughs, “as we soon found out he’d been ferrying people around in hearses!” (Source)

Incredible as it may seem, Sage is still trading as an undertaker from three branches in Essex while his business is being wound up by the Redfern Partnership in Stratford-upon-Avon.

While we hope that the judge at Blackfriars Crown Court will bring his activities to an end soon, we have to wonder if more couldn’t have been done to stop him.

Sage

Lighten our darkness

24 March 2014
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Last Friday I met the theatre lighting designer who’s interested in helping undertakers light their chapels of rest more effectively. I shall call him Wayne, for that is his name. 20 years in a senior position with the Royal Shakespeare Company and now freelancing in Europe and beyond. Our venue was the chapel of rest at Hemming and Peace, Alcester. Thank you, Nigel Peace, for your indulgence and hospitality.

Wayne had not visited a chapel of rest before and was expecting something much bigger — even though the chapel we saw is twice the size of most. He took everything in, photographed it and then we adjourned to a coffee shop to chat some more. We talked about how it is possible to use light positively rather than negatively — to create an experience based in light rather than gloom. We talked about mood and how lights can achieve that. Bread and butter for a theatre lighting expert, of course. I asked Wayne what mood he thought would be appropriate in most cases and he said spiritual. We talked about personalising the experience according to the variable expectations of bereaved people and the age of the person who’s died. Some families are likely to prefer a simple scheme, others something more elaborate and, if you like, Disneyfied, with images projected onto the wall (a symbol, a photo of the person who’s died) and a more florid use of colour.

It’s all perfectly doable and, once the lights are in place, not at all difficult for an undertaker to create an appropriate lighting design. The opportunities are extremely exciting. Wayne knows that most undertakers don’t have a lot of money to spare and he’s gone away to price up equipment. If he can come up with something affordable, our next stop will be the chapel of a leading undertaker who has expressed a strong interest.

We’ll keep you posted.

Keep the red flag flying

21 March 2014
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

The late Tony Benn and I share in common Bristol City FC, a team in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. Known as the Robins  due to their red home strip, I came late to their fan-base as a part-time resident of Clifton, whereas Benn supported the team during 50 years as a Bristol MP.

In the first game since Benn’s death, the Robins drew 0-0 against Swindon at Ashton Park, the grounds in the shadow of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Earlier this month, a terminally ill fan was allowed to meet the team in the dressing room before they played against Gillingham. Mark Saunders, 54, with days to live due to lung cancer, berated the squad for their recent lacklustre performance, which has left them under threat of relegation. His dying wish was they’d reverse their fortunes. They went on to win 2-1.

Both Saunders and Benn would no doubt recall more dramatic ups and downs over the years. Between 1980-82, the Robins had a staggering three relegations, and were declared bankrupt. Benn’s Old Labour was in trouble, too.

But such is humankind’s indomitable spirit of optimism, we keep the faith: that our team will regain its mojo; our party will rediscover its principles; our religion will be guided by truth; our estranged http://www.mindanews.com/buy-celexa/ loved ones will return to the fold; and that we ourselves will do better.

Gods, saints, angels and ancestors are called upon to guide us through life’s successes and failures. Their symbols and rituals, from crucifix to family crest, aid this dialogue. In football, fans like to touch the mascot for luck, Bristol City’s being a man dressed up in a cartoon robin suit.

This leads me to a subject of great import. Bristol City FC changed its badge from the red robin to the City of Bristol’s official crest: unicorns mounting a shield depicting a ship. Ditch the friggin’-in-the-riggin’ slave galleon and bring back the robin, please.

Legend has it this beautiful little bird has a red breast after he chirped into the ear of Christ in order to comfort Him while suffering on the Cross. The robin’s breast has ever since proudly borne the stains of the Lord’s salvic blood.

On the all-too infrequent occasions when Bristol City players show bird-like agility and ‘bounce’, supporters sing, ‘Red robins bounce around the ground’ to the tune of thye Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, while themselves bouncing up and down continually in the stands.

Chants, rituals and symbols. Angels and even mascots. They’re all signs of man’s wonderful reliance on things other than pure reason.

The Co-op is dying, long live the co-op

20 March 2014
Charles
24 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity

“Every private equity company in the country has been in touch to try and buy its funerals operation.” Lord Myners

  In recent times the Co-op’s reputation has been kept afloat by sentiment fostered by its of-the-people-for-the-people origins, fortified by ‘ethical values’ and holier-than-thou policies on fair trade. Fondness has blinded people who should know better to its executive infirmities. Scarcely a day goes by without the announcement of fresh horror at the top. And the bad news stories about Funeralcare just keep on coming:

Mirror

Source

With a £2 billion loss behind it for the last year alone, and strife at the top, the viability of the ‘Group’ is now in doubt.

The GFG has earned a fair amount of hate mail for the way it has campaigned against Co-op Funeralcare. We’ve done so more in sorrow than in anger. No need for a detailed analysis of where it all went wrong, the bare bones tell the story.

Funeralcare offers a very poor deal to funeral shoppers — something all the sentimentalists who’ve tenaciously viewed the Co-op through hogwash-smeared spectacles must now acknowledge. At a time of funeral poverty and ever-rising costs its social purpose seems to have gone AWOL, the pursuit of profit remaining its sole purpose.

The predicament of the Co-op Group is dire. If things don’t get better the Co-op’s banks will have no option but to seize its assets and sell them off. Funeralcare remains vulnerable therefore to circling venture capitalists (see quote above). Under new management it could relaunch as a corporate predator — a dreadful legacy. 

And a harsh but necessary lesson for all those sentimentalists who suppose that a co-op is intrinsically better equipped to do business than a plc. The lesson we must hope they have learned is that there is no point in trading as a co-operative if you can’t get a better deal for your customers. If you can’t do that, your co-operative is a failure no matter what ethical values it signs up to.

The good news is that if any activity lends itself to a social enterprise business model it is the provision of funerals. No other model can compete. One of these days someone is going to get it right (and Dignity is going to go to the wall). Whether it’s member-owned or worker-owned, it’ll do more than walk like a co-op and talk like a co-op, it’ll act like a co-op.

FOOTNOTE: The GFG does not seek to make a name for itself by naffing people off. We exist to look for good news wherever we can find it and put bereaved people in touch with the best suppliers of goods and services. We like the co-operative model so much we even developed our own — here. 

Does distance disadvantage the bereaved?

19 March 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony

Guest blog post by civil funeral celebrant Wendy Coulton

More often the next of kin I work with to plan non-religious funeral ceremonies live in another part of the UK but this week I have had my first experience of discussing and planning arrangements with relatives living on two different continents!

Creating trust and an open dialogue through long distance telephone calls and email communication is more challenging than a conversation in person. A lot can be gleaned from reading facial expressions and body language or observing how relatives interact with each other. There is also of course the power of silence or pauses which can reveal so much about relationships or emotions which may not be as comfortable on the end of a phone line.

I ask the client how they would like to communicate and whether they would like the planning of arrangements to be broken down into bite-sized chunks or prefer to do it in one long conversation or email.

Some clients drip feed me questions or responses by text and others co-ordinate contributions from other people who contact me direct. Offers to skype have not yet been taken up.

Personally for me the most difficult aspect of the ‘remote conversation’ is the tribute research and feeling I have captured the real essence of the person who has died.

It does feel different meeting a client for the first time minutes before the funeral starts but there is a notable shift by the time our shared funeral experience ends. And it’s possible that some prefer the detachment of long distance preparation.

I don’t want my clients to feel disadvantaged in any way because they live so far away and I hope communication technology doesn’t dilute my warmth and professionalism. Any tips or guidance would be welcome.

Future funerals: technology to boost personalisation and sustainability

18 March 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Marketing

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Five generations living now are neatly labelled as follows:

Traditionalists (born 1925-45)
Example: great grandparents, born in the mid-1930s. Brought up during WWII, a culture of patriotism and waste-not-want-not. Faith in institutions and a job for life. Strong work ethic and stubbornly independent.
Slogan: Keepers of the Grail.

Baby boomers (born 1946-64)
Example: grandparents, born in early-1950s. Brought up in the age of post-war optimism, idealism and the questioning of authority, but also an era of competitiveness. Part of the social revolution that left their parents gobsmacked: human rights protests, mini-skirts, free sex, drugs and rock festivals.
Slogan: We changed things.

Generation X (1965-1980)
Example: Parents, born in the early-1970s. Brought up in a society with a rising divorce rate and working mums—latch-key kids, used to being left alone. Skeptical but resourceful, adapting as adults to the technological revolution. Hard-working and socially responsible. While boomers value teamwork, Xers prefer unilateralism.
Slogan: Work to live.

Millennials (1981-2006)
Example: Born in the mid-1980s, brought up with computers from an early age. Indulged by parents. A trait of entitlement balanced by concerns about the environment, recession and global violence.
Slogan: All about me (and the endangered tiger).

Linksters (2000-)
Example: So called because they’re used to being linked by technology, these teen and pre-teen offspring of Generation Xers and early-phase Millennials will enter the workforce not knowing a world without Google and smart phones, let alone microwaves. For them Diana’s death and 9/11 are historic events before their time, just as Edward’s abdication is to baby boomers or Kennedy’s assassination is to Gen Xers. As well as being tech dependent, they’re closely tied to their parents. While Trads, boomers and Xers don’t like to be micromanaged, Millennials and Linksters crave instructions about how to do things, welcoming mentors.
Slogan: Text me what to do next.

The caveat is that generalisations about generations are valid only to a point. After all, so-called Trads include octagenarians Michael Heseltine and comedy’s Joan Rivers. Baby boomers range from Vladmir Putin to Janet Street Porter. Both David Cameron and Johnny Depp are Gen Xers, with Millennials including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and that jobless couple on C4’s Benefits Street.

Preamble over, let’s talk funerals. Sticking to the stereotypes, ageing Trads remain more likely to have a funeral in a church or with a priest at the crematorium.

Baby boomers, many of whom will be dying of old age in 20 to 30 years from now, look set to be more receptive to more personalised funerals.

Ditto Gen Xers, although some are more small c conservative than their parents. Thatcher’s children and all that, fed up with the way hippies threw away rituals and social conventions that benefit social cohesion. A nuclear deterrent and bras are good. The Saffy backlash against ‘trendy mum’ Edina in Absolutely Fabulous.

Tech savvy and eco-doomsayer Millennials look set to make green funerals totally mainstream when they start dying, aged 100-plus, around 2080.

What will our world be like then? Technology, rather than homogenising life, is allowing for greater personalisation. For example, retailers already email and text information to customers based on their previous purchases and demographic profile. No point in marketing bumster jeans and megaclub nights to a fogey like me, but I might be interested in an offer on dinner for two at a newly opened restaurant.

Personalisation, sustainability and technology: three keys to satisfying funeral planners of the present and future.

FOOTNOTE: Although global population is estimated to grow to over 9 billion by 2050, Jonathan Porritt’s new book, The World We Made, offers a surprisingly optimistic vision for an environmentalist renowned for scaremongering. Utopian rather than dystopian, his future is one of sustainable food supplies and renewable energy sources, where the rich are poorer—yet happier—and the poor are better off. People also manage their own health and die when they want. But that’s another issue.

Missing

17 March 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Grief

Monday, November 27 I got up very early, and just before nine o’clock Caroline was brought back by the funeral director and she lay on a trestle in the front room, with lots of flowers. She lay there until half-past twelve: over three and a half hours. All the children arrived and the grandchildren, and the guest began arriving, and they all went in to see Caroline, who looked so beautiful. I kissed her, and dropped tears on her cold, cold face.

Thursday, April 25 Where is she? Her body, which I loved and knew so well, was taken away and burned, but she’s not there … I think she’s happy, but I’ll never, ever see her again till that day I die and after that, who knows?

Tony Benn — Diaries

Last week we looked at belief in angels. There were some good comments, and not for the first time we reflected that losing someone is something that is, for most people, decidedly not susceptible to rigorous rational analysis. As Gloria Mundi had it, “it’s a deeper need than rational thought … Who’s going to jump up in a funeral and say ‘he’s not looking down on us, he’s gone, dammit’?

Wendy Coulton believes that her deceased grandparents act as her guardian angels: “It hurts no one else to believe this and I consider myself blessed and loved from people I cherish. They do not have wings and their special power is an enduring and unconditional love for me. I believe in them and they believe in me.”

The feeling that the person who has died is out there somewhere, waiting for us, is strong, expressed for many by that Henry Scott Holland reading about the one who has died being in the next room.

It’s a mystery. It’s mystery that keeps us wondering and also keeps hope alive. The same for people disappear in this world and whose body is never found. Those who love them never give up hope that they are somewhere.

It’s happening now to the families of those who were flying on MH370. In the words of the brother on one missing man: “We are not giving up hope. Because if there are no answers, there is no finality. So, miracles have happened…”

No finality. No end to the mystery. Every one of us goes missing in action someday. For those who love us there may live on a hope or even a belief that we are out there somewhere. For the relatives of those on board MH370 there is the same hope and, as for Tony Benn, the terrible pain of not knowing.

Gloom is no mood for a chapel of rest

17 March 2014
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Marketing, visiting

Undertakers put a great deal of effort into making people who have died look good for when family members come to see them. There is, they feel, great therapeutic value in the experience of visiting someone who’s died, especially if they’re looking serene. They employ a range of cosmetic treatments to achieve a good ‘memory picture’. If the family is pleased with what they see, this reflects well on the undertaker’s duty of care. They are (relatively) happy customers.

But the fruits of the cosmetic work carried out in the mortuary are so often let down by the decor and especially the lighting of the chapel of rest. Most undertakers, when asked to demonstrate their lighting, adjust a dimmer switch — in other words they achieve the desired mood-effect not with light but with gloom. That gloom, taken together with the physical coldness of most chapels of rest, can make for a sub-optimal experience for the visitors.

Old fashioned tungsten bulbs, with their low colour temperature, shed a warm light at any intensity. But they’ve been outlawed, and undertaker must nowadays fit halogen and LED lamps with a much higher colour temperature — ie, a much colder white light. Result: it now takes even more gloom to mitigate their coldness in the chapel of rest.

I’ve only seen one chapel of rest which uses additive colour  to light the chapel and, above all, the person who’s died. By mixing red, green and blue light it is possible to achieve a variety of effects (see pic below). If, for example, there is still evidence of jaundice in the face of the dead person, it is possible to counter that by careful colour-mixing. It works better than dimmed white light but leaves something to be desired if the quality of the equipment is not up to the job. It’s important to have the right kit.

Better still is to do what theatre lighting designers do and use colour filters. An actor of a certain age will always ask for pinky-lavender filters in the front-of-house lanterns because pinky-lavender flatters older skin.

Theatre lighting experts know all this. They know how to light human faces of all ages and, just as important, they know how to create mood onstage with subtle use of colour. Even to them, though, lighting a dead human face is likely to pose a challenge because the light does not encounter warm blood beneath the skin. They would have to experiment with their colour filters according to the age and condition of the dead person. They’d bring in ambient light from other lanterns in the chapel of rest. They’d crack it, for sure.

Shortly, the GFG will be working with a theatre lighting expert to transform the lighting in a chapel of rest. When we’ve done it, we’ll tell you what we did and show you before and after photos. If you’re an undertaker and you’re interested in a makeover in your own chapel of rest, do get in touch.

Where angels care to tread

14 March 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Immortality

Do you believe in angels?

According to research by the think tank Theos in 2012, around a quarter of the population do. If you’ve not seen the Theos report, do have a look: it’s a fascinating survey of the faith of the faithless generally.

Belief in angels is, of course, as old as time itself and is shared by many religions including all 3 Abrahamic ones. In classical Christian belief angels encircle the Godhead and sing alleluias and suchlike worshipful greatest hits, arranged concentrically in choral hierarchy: Seraphim,  Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Angels. God employs them as messengers, and we note that it’s a pretty plebby sort he dispatches to planet Earth — mere Archangels, for heaven’s sake.

Today’s angels — perhaps we should call them post-New Age angels — are often evoked by unchurched people when someone dies:

So go and run free with the angels
As they sing so tenderly
And please be sure to tell them
To take good care of you for me

Children who die are often fondly supposed to have grown angel wings and flown to heaven. As a proportion of the population, females are probably more likely to transition to angelhood than males. Old people are seldom reckoned to have been the beneficiaries of this celestial makeover, probably because they don’t conform to the aesthetic. A nan with wings really isn’t a very likely look. 

Just how thought-through and developed this modern belief in angels is I have no idea, so I hope you can come in with some info and points of view. Belief in guardian angels is widespread, as in: “One day, when my son was a baby, I tripped while I was holding him, and he went flying headlong toward a brick wall. There was nothing I could do to protect him, but I watched as he inexplicably stopped an inch from the wall and fell gently to the carpet. I knew immediately that an angel’s hand had been his bumper pad.” Source. People pool their experiences at Angels Online.

Angels are part of the modern iconography of death, which includes other winged creatures — eg, doves and butterflies — together with rainbows, as in:

Time for me to go now, I won’t say goodbye;
Look for me in rainbows, way up in the sky.

It would be interesting to hear the reflections of celebrants on funerary angels. Are they part of a Disneyfication of afterlife beliefs generally? Do they play an influential part in people’s grief journeys?