The GFG Blog
2012May
Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Charles
May
18
5 comments
Posted by Lyra Mollington Apart from a brief encounter with cancer when I was in my forties and a slightly dodgy back, I am in good health for a 74 year old. Neverthless I was perturbed to discover that I am only six months older than Jane Fonda. However, as
Habeas corpse
Charles
May
17
6 comments
An email flies in from a consumer advocacy org in the US. It’s about a British funeral consumer, let’s call him Jim, who has asked them for help. Jim has been told by his funeral director that there will be no funeral until he pays most of the bill upfront.
Kiwi death rites
Charles
May
16
6 comments
From an article in Stuff.co.nz: New Zealanders may be shy and reserved, but we hold long, personalised funerals for our loved ones, and show far more emotion than Norwegians, Swedes, English and Scots. Our funerals lean towards the American style, where everything – down to the cup of tea and
Philosophy and death
Charles
May
15
2 comments
Posted by Vale Yale University is starting to experiment with free open access video based learning. One of the courses it’s offering is run by Shelley Kagan who is Clark Professor of Philosophy at the University. It’s all about death. This is the course introduction: There is one thing I
Thank God for secularism
Charles
May
14
28 comments
Posted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson RR writes: I had planned to discuss funerals in Islamic cultures, but concluded anyone interested could find such information elsewhere. See link to 10 Muslim Funeral Traditions here: Instead, I want to address concerns about Islam’s conflict with faith-tolerating, secular society. This is
200 years since our PM was shot
Charles
May
11
3 comments
It’s quite a year for anniversaries from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. It’s also a year when deaths are commemorated from Captain Scott’s failed mission to the South Pole in 1912 to the sinking of the Titanic in the same year. Less
Norfolk Funerals
Charles
May
11
37 comments
Norfolk Funerals, which opened recently, is the UK’s first and only not-for-profit funeral director. It is a charity, based in Norwich, and it offers funerals at cost price for all merchandise plus a fee to cover overheads, running costs and the wages of its employees. Eyebrows have been raised. What’s
We Believe
Charles
May
11
3 comments
A new website has just hit the scene: CommunityFunerals.org.uk. It seeks to develop the concept of a not-for profit community funeral service, and presents for consideration four models of what it calls a Community Funeral Society (CFS). It hopes to grow the idea organically by inviting feedback from its readers, then
Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Charles
May
11
11 comments
Posted by Lyra Mollington Nearly twelve years ago, I was with my grandchildren in the queue for the newly opened London Eye when we saw an elderly man collapse. Paramedics arrived quickly but by the time the man was lifted onto a stretcher, a blanket had been pulled
Communityfunerals.org.uk
Charles
May
11
6 comments
We apologise for pulling the post on CommunityFunerals.org.uk without explanation. The website came under sustained and relentless attack from YouKnowWho. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. At this moment, 23 men in oily overalls and bearing large spanners are working round the clock, without breaks,
