Lobbying scandal strikes Funeralworld?
The lobbying scandal presently raging in Parliament has drawn the spotlight to all-party parliamentary groups — APPGs. Three dishonourable Labour peers were caught by undercover cameras (remember them?) telling reporters that an all-party parliamentary group could be set up as a lobbying vehicle for a fake South Korean solar energy company. The ignominious Patrick Mercer declared his willingness […]
Thinking the unsinkable
In October 2008, in a piece about direct cremation, I wrote this: In the UK we are culturally conditioned to believe that a funeral for a body is indispensable. Could that change? In July 2009 I wrote: I never thought [direct cremation] would jump the Atlantic, but it has. We now have our first direct cremation service over here and it’s busy. Simplicity […]
Not in front of the family
Funeral directors have strong and varying views on what families should and should not be allowed to see — in the families’ best interests of course. Some undertakers are heavier-handed than others in the way in which they express their advice. The law is perfectly clear: the dead person belongs to the family, not them. […]
Forward into the past
Most progressive initiatives in the world of death and funerals are characterised by a spirit of ‘Stop the clock, I want to go back’. Up in Tyneside, Michele Rutherford (DipFD) has just launched a retro initiative. It’s for those people who don’t want men in black macs taking away the person who has died, but […]
What’s in a hearse?
All cats famously look the same in the dark. All hearses look the same whatever the light conditions. What a thing to say! Undertakers, we know we sometimes get up your noses and you probably think we do it for sport. Mostly we don’t. In the matter of the above outrageous statement, we assure you […]
Calling all angels
When Ed Emsley, a film student at the University of Falmouth, rang me up to talk about his idea for a documentary about the death industry, I was struck by what a very nice fellow he was. I gave him all the help I could — a mouthful of wellmeaning advice and a list of […]
Chowing down with the antecedents
Debate about attitudes to death, funerals and the commemoration of the dead has largely been colonised by a section of the liberally-educated chattering sector of the middle class. They’re the ones most likely to opinionate about this stuff; they’re the ones who like to think think they can get their heads around it. They are intellectual […]
Today is launch day for the GFG bereavement volunteers scheme
Here at the GFG we’ve been banging on about our community volunteering scheme for some time — here and here for starters. The scheme is designed to address short- and medium-term practical problems facing bereaved people in the aftermath of a death. It promotes community engagement and a neighbourly duty of care. It revives, in a 21st […]
Suit ya?
There are six Rosedale funeral homes. Headquartered in Diss, they straddle the Norfolk-Suffolk border. This is a gentle, conservative part of the world. If you’ve not been for thirty years or so, you’ll find it exactly as it was. Rosedale is headed up by Anne-Beckett-Allen. She was brought up in the business and spent some years working […]
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
Pace the spirit of the age, a celebration-of-life funeral does not fit everybody. Nasty, bad, horrible people die, too. We refrain from holding celebration-of-death funerals for them, preferring instead to curtail, allude and acknowledge, to a degree, often disguising our meaning between the lines. Difficult people die, too. They often mean different things to different […]
