Bang to rights
Richard Sage is up before the beak in Blackfriars Crown Court today. We can’t find what the charge is. Updates to follow, and all info welcome.
It is high time funeral people got behind statutory bereavement leave
A survey just out shows that 70 per cent of people support statutory paid bereavement leave. The record shows that churches, celebrant organisations and undertakers’ trade associations aren’t remotely interested in offering any leadership in the matter whatever. Are you aware of anything any of them has said on the matter? This is curious. The […]
Have Cambridgeshire’s badgers moved the goalposts?
If you want to be buried in Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, you’ll find the fees attractive but the rules, perhaps, restrictive. The parish council has placed a ban on coffins made from wicker, cardboard, bamboo or cotton. See the full document here. Why so? It has been suggested to us that badgers may be at the bottom […]
The new man fighting for ethics at the bank
Posted by Richard Rawlinson It’s a financial institution that should symbolise business and social integrity: mutual co-operation for the benefit of customers, employees and just causes. Instead, it’s scarred by dodgy financial transactions, cronyism and scandal. But despair not. There’s one man who may yet sort out the mess, a leader already showing remarkable ROI […]
The only way is Ethics?
The Co-operative — What Makes Us Different “I sometimes wonder if the greatest institutional problem of our time is not plain, unvarnished evil, but this obsession with Ethics as an outward form, with compliance rather than conscience. The whole idea of an Ethical business, as distinct from a normal one which behaves ethically, is […]
It’s legal to care for your own
Kimberlyrenee Gamboa’s son Kyle took his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in September, three weeks into his senior year in high school. A seemingly happy 18-year-old with lots of friends and into competitive lasertag, Kyle’s death was such a shock, his mother said, she doesn’t know how she’d have managed it […]
Carry the coffin, it’ll help you carry on
The Coffinmaker from Dan McComb on Vimeo. “I think one of the most important aspects of the coffin is that it can be carried. And I think we’re meant to carry each other, and I think carrying someone you love, committing them, is very important for us that we deal with death; we want to […]
Funeral Flowers
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Paul Flowers was a successful man: chairman of Co-operative Bank, Labour councillor and Methodist minister. He’s now shunned by all three pillars of the establishment—business, politics and church—after his penchant for taking crystal meth with male prostitutes hit the headlines. When Flowers first hooked up with Manchester Lads escort Ciaron Dodd, he […]
Winter warmers
The winter cold is beginning to nip your ears and gnaw your toes. Time to order some of Yuli Somme’s Foot Felts — incredibly warm, snug insoles for your shoes or boots. Here at the GFG-Batesville Shard, where austerity measures forbid us from turning on the heat until evening, we swear by them. Honestly, they’re […]
Why the shambles at the Co-op is so serious
“One version of the “better” that mutuals have to be is that they have to be seen by customers to be more “decent” than other businesses – because that provides a motive for some consumers to spend their money with them. And the second version of the better is that they have to be conspicuously […]
