I wonder if you’re following Gail Rubin’s thirty funerals in thirty days? I’m hooked. She’s on no. 3.
For me, this is a social document and a celebration of the lives of ordinary people. For you?
Find her blog here.
Archive: 2 November 2010
Zombie journalism
Here’s some nasty journalistic furystirring from the Daily Mail under the headline Councils to stockpile bodies to cut the costs of cremation
Bodies will be stockpiled for cremation under new rules to cut costs and carbon emissions.
Rather than being cremated straight after a funeral, corpses will be stored for days in coffins or body bags in local authority buildings so they can be incinerated in one go.
Council bosses claim the decision to use cremators during one period rather than after every service will cut down on energy bills and reduce their carbon footprint.
This is a reference to the practice of holding over, discussed in this blog in September. The Mail wails on:
The policy will leave families having to return up to a week later to the crematorium to collect the ashes, causing unnecessary additional stress … It is not the first time that councils have been accused of trying to profit from funeral services.
You get the picture? Stockpiles of corpses, like at Buchenwald. In back rooms at the town hall. Held there for a week.
A Conservative MP called Philip Davies has obliged with a ludicrous quote: ‘Councils have lost sight of what they were set up to do in the first place – serve the people and not obsess about climate change.’
A serious subject turned into horror fodder. Read the whole story here. Read as many of the comments you can bear.