‘Mooving Funerals’
We recently had our attention drawn to a new campaign that has been launched by the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), in conjunction with Westerleigh, the cremation company. The campaign (described as a toolkit) is intended to aid small funeral businesses faced with the aggressive marketing tactics of large direct cremation companies. We […]
Not good enough
A couple of thoughts
Those additional observations on the FSCSR consultation we mentioned in our previous post this week: 1. At the GFG, while we welcome any improvements in the funeral industry Codes of Practice, we despair at the length of time it has taken NAFD and SAIF to come up with revisions to existing industry codes to make them remotely […]
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 […]
To SAIF – an open letter from a member
An open letter to SAIF, the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors from Cara Mair, Director, ARKA Original Funerals, sent 4th May 2018. Dear all at SAIF I write this to you as a longstanding member of SAIF, in the hope that you will not see this letter negatively, but more as a […]
Changes they are a’coming
The GFG was back on the road this weekend, over the border in the ancient Scottish town of Stirling. Some 720 years after Sir William Wallace led his Scottish army to the historic victory over the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, the welcome we received was significantly warmer, although the towering National Wallace […]
Trade association carrots and sticks
Posted by Richard Rawlinson The annual subscription renewal request has arrived in my in-tray for the media association to which my publishing company employer belongs. What do we get for the membership fee? Aside from a glitzy awards ceremony and occasional parties enabling us to ‘network’ with amicable rivals, the association aims to support by giving […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
University of death
Hardly anyone buying a funeral pauses to consider whether or not an undertaker is formally trained. Consumers are trusting people. They suppose that he or she is. Well, it ain’t necessarily so. Training for funeral directors is presently in something of a dark, even unstable, place. The foundation degree course at the University of Bath […]
Unmasking the wolves
Over in the US, Service Corporation International (SCI) the multinational deathcare conglomerate which, here in the UK, begat Dignity, is in hot water. Again. One of its funeral homes, trading under the name of Stanetsky Memorial Chapels, mixed up two bodies. When they realised what they’d done, it seems that they illegally exhumed the one […]
