“People are also turning to alternatives to the traditional funeral. Some are holding do-it-yourself funerals, and even having to bury relatives in their back garden. A number of companies are offering cut-price funerals, including “direct” cremations that have no formal service attached to them.”
That was Emma Lewell-Buck MP presenting the Funeral Services Bill in the House of Commons yesterday and somehow managing to name-check Royal London three times in the first 4 paragraphs.
You’ve read about this because it’s everywhere — the lurid claim that disadvantaged people are burying their dead in their back gardens. I expect you felt, as we did at the GFG, that Ms Lewell-Buck under-egged her argument. For she must know as well as us that poor people are routinely and in sharply rising numbers also disposing of their dead in wood-chippers, acid baths, on garden barbecues and in country lay-bys.
What’s odd/interesting/remarkable is that no one seems to have queried her claim. Anybody in possession of a right mind would, you think, have smelled an XL rat and called her bluff.
Nope. The readiness of the great British public, including the great British press pack, to suspend their incredulity when presented with ocean-going baloney about funerals is amazing.
So, well done Ms L-B, you seem to have got away with it. Well done for stigmatising DIY funerals and direct cremation while you were about it. Well done for branding a public health funeral a pauper’s funeral. And well done for distracting people from serious discussion of the issues.
We are sorry to hear that your Bill will lapse due to lack of parliamentary time.
