Sluggo and I have been very lucky during the Great Global Economic Collapse of 2008. Since we didn’t have any money anyway, we didn’t have anything to lose. But other folks have not been so lucky, including dead folks.
A big long article in the British newspaper The Daily Mail said that dead people in England were being hit hard by the credit crunch, and some were having to wait more than two months to be buried. I imagine that must be difficult. And I can’t tell from the article whether or not the dead are being embalmed while they wait, or even whether they get to wait in a refrigerated facility or are just stacked up like cordwood in some abandoned Wal-Mart.
It’s all due to British bureaucracy, it seems. People who are on the dole (half the population, even in good times) have to apply to a government agency called Department for Work and Pensions’ Social Fund to pay for funerals, and the Department is taking quite a while to decide whether or not to issue the checks, having first to determine whether someone is or is not dead. (“He’s dead!” “He’s not dead!” “He IS! He has expired, he has ceased to be!”) Meanwhile the esteemed members of the Royal Casketeers and Buriers Guild of Bodymongers, or whatever they call themselves, say they can’t be performing funerals on credit. You can’t blame them, really.
Things aren’t much better here in the U.S. Last month in Pontiac, Michigan (AKA Fun City, USA) five dead people and a bunch of cremated remains were evicted from a funeral home. The owners were known for providing services even when the families couldn’t afford to pay, so then they couldn’t pay their own taxes. Obviously the British Bodymongers know what’s what. At least they know it's death and taxes.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to you if you should die while all this financial sturm und drang is going on, but I do know that Costco sells coffins.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.
I'm not dead yet! I think I'll take a walk now! I feel happy! I feel THUMP
Posted by: Sean Daily | November 24, 2008 at 06:05 PM
Things'll be like that in the US soon enough once Barack Hussein Obama has his way.
Posted by: Frankie | November 24, 2008 at 06:17 PM
Bronwyn, I cannot wait to hear your John Cleese impersonation when the show comes back.
Posted by: Joe | November 24, 2008 at 09:48 PM
I had always planned on driving over to the Brooklyn Casket Company for my final ride. Are they still there now that Brooklyn is all hoidy toidy? Barring buying my own from the box store, I'm pretty sure home burials are legal, and I've instructed my wife to dig a hole in the backyard, wrap me in a sheet and throw me in, then have a party. No one visits headstones anymore.
Posted by: Dale | November 24, 2008 at 10:22 PM
Don't believe anything you read in The Mail - it's the worst kind of sensationalist, Nazis rag. I haven't noticed any corpses lying around our UK streets as yet. We're an island nation anyhow; we usually just sling our dead into the sea. You're never more than 75 miles from the coast which isn't much of a drive (with granny wrapped in a rug in the boot).
Posted by: Bunn | November 25, 2008 at 06:24 AM
Bah!! Stupid liberals making a fuss about how the alleged "recession" is effecting burials-- obviously the answer is STOP DYING!! But your foolish used-car-salesman-socialist-Muslim president will probably use MY taxpayer dollars to pay for burying those lazy f@#ks who died, rather than just issuing an executive order to not permit any more deaths.
Posted by: Ted Neeyokahn | November 25, 2008 at 11:24 AM
The Daily Mail (aka The Hate Mail) is a scummy piece of rightwing trash. It blames Immigrants for pretty much everything - including the economic collapse - and spends each and every issue screeching and foaming about Parasitic Single Mothers, Pervert Gays, Smelly Foreigners, Evil Liberals and Dangerous Teens.
Imagine the WingNutDaily, minus the religion.
Posted by: Kapitano | November 26, 2008 at 07:52 PM
The Daily Mail (aka The Hate Mail) is a scummy piece of rightwing trash. It blames Immigrants for pretty much everything - including the economic collapse - and spends each and every issue screeching and foaming about Parasitic Single Mothers, Pervert Gays, Smelly Foreigners, Evil Liberals and Dangerous Teens.
Imagine the WingNutDaily, minus the religion.
Posted by: Kapitano | November 26, 2008 at 07:53 PM
Ditto on the Mail comments. This is the newspaper that supported the Nazis.
FYI
UK unemployement is 5.8 per cent of UK workforce, 980,900 people (workforce is 29 million, pop is circa 60 million)
Posted by: Mal | November 28, 2008 at 07:18 AM
that's why they call them the big box stores!
Posted by: flick | December 03, 2008 at 11:48 AM