We know best
The funeral industry commissions very few surveys. When it does, they are about what bereaved people are doing, not what bereaved people want. These surveys are almost always self-serving and, if spun well, appeal to lazy journalists. Result: free advertising. This is something the GFG has taken up with broadsheet journalists to no effect. Why […]
An open letter to George Tinning, Managing Director, Co-operative Funeralcare
Dear Mr Tinning I am writing in the aftermath of Undercover Undertaker to proffer an olive branch. The Good Funeral Guide has attempted to talk to Funeralcare in the past and met with no reply. In the best interests of the bereaved, the cause we both have in common, I want you now to consider […]
Good Funeral Guide offers hope to funeral shoppers in wake of Dispatches Undercover Undertaker.
Channel 4’s Dispatches film Undercover Undertaker (Monday 25 June) has shocked viewers with its undercover revelations at Co-operative Funeralcare, the obvious and most deserving target of such treatment*. The production line nature of the ‘hub’ depicted in the programme is the corollary of consolidation and rationalisation in the funeral industry. Its acceptability to consumers has […]
Closing ranks
We’ve got to be careful because we don’t want to be sued and the email we have just received says that “If you are not the intended recipient, any form of reproduction, dissemination, copying, disclosure, modification, distribution and/or publication or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance upon this message or its […]
First responses
And so it goes on. A thermo-nuclear half hour?
Dancing the Macabray
Posted by Vale In Neil Gaiman’s great children’s book ‘The Graveyard Book,’ Bod, a little boy growing up amongst the dead, dances the ‘Macabray’. It is Gaiman’s own version of the Danse Macabre where, in this instance, the dead and the living dance together. In the audiobook version every chapter is introduced by this lovely […]
A modern Danse Macabre
Posted by Vale The tradition for images of the Danse Macabre is of death alongside all of the different classes and stations in society. The message is clear – he is coming for us all. Here is a more recent version of the old tradition in a series of terrific woodcuts from the artist Hermann-Paul […]
Learning to dance with death
Posted by Vale I was reading the vision statement for the Dying Matters Coalition recently (as you do) and stubbed my toe on their ambition to address death, dying and bereavement in a way that: ’will involve a fundamental change in society in which dying, death and bereavement will be seen and accepted as the […]
GMFU non-self adjusting
The cat is out of the bag. Monday’s Dispatches will mount a televisual airstrike on Co-operative Funeralcare. Channel 4 managed to get an undercover reporter into a hub and filmed bodies stacked “like TV sets” in racks – a disturbing image which will have a devastating impact on an organisation which has spent a great […]
Co-operative Funeralcar
Brand new wheels for grief journeys bought by Co-op Funeralcare in Nottingham. One point two million quid’s worth. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comfortable.” More here.
