23.

The human cost of funerals

There was, on the television this week, what struck me as a very sad debate, the cost of funerals. Once again, one could only join the debate on Facebook or Twitter. Which meant, that to join in this debate, one had to be paying an internet service provider for your broadband line and have a computer capable of internet use. So you could not join the debate if you could not afford those luxuries.

Yes they are luxuries and yet our Government, for their own purposes, is putting everything ‘online’. Even filling in claims for benefits can quite often only be done by computer which means you have to sign up to a monthly bill on top of your telephone bill, your gas bill, your electricity bill, your council tax bill and that is before your rent, mortgage or food.

I have had my first inkling of what Governments are in for this week. Owners of software can withdraw their products leaving whole departments with no systems to run and no alternative systems to fall back on, in other words ransom. As cuts deepen so we will see more and more of this, if we are told the truth. Yes people well and truly threw out the baby with the bathwater this time.

To come back to my point this week, funerals. Who can remember the Insurance man who came to collect your premiums? Yes a man/woman used to come around monthly to collect your life insurance so should the inevitable happen just get in touch with the Company or the agent and the costs were covered by your policy.

No one got rich in those days when someone died. Huge insurance policies were only for the rich and famous, not for the ordinary man or woman. The prices of funerals had not escalated to what they have become today. They have become big business.

The television reporters spoke to young families who were in despair because they could not afford to bury loved ones. People must take out loans of thousands of pounds to pay big business to dispatch those who have committed the ultimate sin and died without making preparation for the event.

Yes we all need to prepare for this event. Yes we should all take responsibility. But and this is a big but, society is now so divided, there are so few jobs and so many people no longer have bank accounts as they cannot afford to fund the banks when they throw easy money at you and then demand it back.

There are no longer people coming around every few weeks for a friendly chat and to take your small amount of money to pay for the inevitable. Death has now become big business and the cost of life insurance has spiraled to those who have lost control of their finances. Let’s be honest many have opted out and cannot face the cold hearted corporate face of the banks and big business any more.

Some of these people will have no one with the money to bury them if they cannot bury themselves.

There is now nothing left to savage surely. Our dignity has been taken from us even in death. Perhaps we had better have a pauper’s cemetery for those who are irresponsible and did not have enough in their bank account to be of note.

Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. Councils now charge extortionate amounts for disposing of you in the crematorium. Churches jealously guard their ever dwindling graveyards for their own followers and charge accordingly to swell the church funds. I actually know of one place where the local farmer allows parking on his land to secure a place in the cemetery when his time comes.

Money rules supreme, if you have it we can give you the best funeral money can buy. If you do not have it then sorry, rot in hell.

You should not have the internet, you could pay the amount of your internet service provider into a fund then, to pay for your demise. But wait, without a computer I am nothing.

Do away with your car and use public transport. Hang on, what public transport, they have taken most of it away, I cannot get to work any more. Anyway without a car I am nothing.

Do away with your television; there is nothing on it anyway. But the television licensing authority would not believe that I did not have a television and they would threaten me and make me pay the £100 plus a year they are entitled to, so they can pay those big bonuses to the inept people the BBC throws out. But hang on without a television I am nothing.

My mobile phone, no one phones me anyhow, get rid of it and get a landline back. Another fifteen pounds a month for the telephone landline without the calls. Hang on if I do not have a landline I am nothing.

Is there a man out there who will come and collect my life insurance money, please? NO you have to have a bank account and pay by direct debit or you are nothing and none of the big corporate companies can see me down here, in fact they do not want to see me, I am worth nothing.

Human life to me is the most precious thing on this earth, yet to others that human life and ultimately death means only one thing, money.
That is wrong and goes against the teachings of every religion in the world.

So get rid of your mobile phone, get rid of your computer, get rid of your television and get rid of your car and save your money for your funeral. That is surely what we are being told - life is purely to save for your death.