British government want funeral homes to have open days, to help people “prepare themselves” better for death
God help us but can no-one rid us of this meddlesome state…?
Funeral homes and crematoria will be encouraged to hold open days as part of a government plan to help people better prepare for death. Ministers believe such events will make death and dying less taboo subjects, and will encourage more people to make wills and plan for where they want to spend their final days.
New labour simply never knows what it bloody wants, now does it? For months now, they’ve been waffling about knife crime and how they won’t tolerate how a ‘few’ will be allowed to put the mortal fear (or those knives) into the hearts of the majority of decent, law-abiding etcetera etcetera – and now they are going to take all of us on some subsidised trip around the nation’s embalming, burying and torching shops?
That will take the average citizen’s mind off the international financial crisis, I suppose. Nothing like a bit of mortuary panic to make people forget about their mortgages.
Not all that surprisingly, by the way, but the national Death Dealers Union is quite enthusiastic about these new death row theme ride schemes:
Paul Stubbs, of the Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities, said people often wrongly assumed that cremations are all done together at night because smoke is not seen coming out of crematoria during the day. He said: “They are very surprised when they go into the crematory – where the cremation takes place – and see the sophisticated equipment we use.”
Right, that’s me sorted then. I’d always thought they used those old-fashioned witch burning pyres – and maybe those cute wicker men in the more touristy parts of Wales.
Ah well, of course there is one way of convincing the British public that this latest New labour scheme will turn out to be a useful one. Yes, if the first ones to go on such a tour would consist of all the members of the cabinet, from Gordon Brown to the lowest Undersecretary’s whipping boy, then I think that the British public would loudly cheer them on their way – but only after we had forcefully explained to the funeral parlour in question that this was NOT to be a bloody test run.
In fact, in this case we would demand that the business was taken care of during the day, so that all of us, like the gathered faithful in Rome’s St. Peter’s Square, could loudly cheer when we saw the smoke rise from the chimney. Unlike those Catholic faithful, waiting for the new Pope, we would only cheer if the smoke were black.
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