Funeral trade association calls for regulation
The National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors has today issued a press release stating its position on the subject of regulation. SAIF members received an e-mail yesterday advising them that ‘after careful consideration we have decided that regulation across England and Wales is a good thing and welcome it’. The ‘careful consideration’ appears […]
Not in front of the family
Funeral directors have strong and varying views on what families should and should not be allowed to see — in the families’ best interests of course. Some undertakers are heavier-handed than others in the way in which they express their advice. The law is perfectly clear: the dead person belongs to the family, not them. […]
What constitutes corpse abuse?
We don’t have abuse of a corpse laws in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, nor Scotland, not like they do in the US. Indeed, the laws around what you can, can’t and must do with a corpse in the UK are few — so few that we’ve never managed to discover what they are. Perhaps […]
So silly to take sides
A few weeks ago I bumped into a funeral director I like and admire. He was bursting with something he had just learned and needed to share: Ken West is not bonkers, official. He’d met Ken at some do or other and had revelled in a feast of reason and a flow of soul with the great […]
Council changes ashes policy after bereaved family complains
From today’s Oxford Mail: A TOWN council has been forced to change its policy on interring ashes after a bereaved family took the authority to task. Christopher Harris objected to Woodstock Town Council’s rule that said people must employ the services of a funeral director to oversee the interment of a loved one’s ashes. Mr […]
Busybody nonsense
Christopher Harris Some time this evening Christopher Harris will deliver the following speech to Woodstock Town Council, calling upon it to strike out its requirement that the interment of his father’s ashes be superintended by a funeral director. Here’s another example of someone tenaciously pursuing the rights of the bereaved with an important test case. […]
