WIBU?- Roadside shrines

[Arnoldthecat]

This is more of a ..would i be unreasonable....to not want a roadside shrine directly outside my house/garden gate/in close proximity..?

About time a bye law outlawed the random erection of these shrines. Then people trying to remove them from their property or eyeliner won't be in conflict with 'mourners' - the council can remove them.

What do these people think cemeteries are for - that's the place to put your flowers. But I'm sure the council won't mind people donating money for bulbs or trees to beautify a town. Many forests allow you to plant memorial trees with a 'ceremony' and plague to your loved one. Think of the good tree planting does for the planet and the beauty it brings each spring.

Many forests allow you to plant memorial trees with a 'ceremony' and plague to your loved one.

“Would you like the bubonic option, madam, or a more contemporary contagion?”

That’s terrible Canoe!

What cocks me off most is flowers left with the cellophane wrapping attached. Just take off the cellophane and put down the flowers. They will do as nature intended and become one with the ground. Cellophane is awful, an eyesore, a danger to wildlife and just unnecessary.

You’ve answered your own question – these are ‘conspicuous grief’ show-offs who want the shrine to last the longest amount of time with the minimum amount of effort. If they took the cellophane off, either the shrine would biodegrade in weeks, or they would have to come back every so often to replace the flowers.

Plaque

Many apologies

Sorry Stone, I was just teasing. I recognised it as an auto-correction.

A family near me had a teenage son who liked to race his motorbike at 60mph along our residential streets. One day he was doing a wheelie on the wrong side of the road and came off the worse with a double decker bus. Cue family creating a tat-shrine, with pictures of their boy, balloons, tea lights, and flowers replaced every week. At some stage a plaque appeared and was screwed onto the wall. Once or twice the council cleared it away and the family would replace everything. This was not about grief, it was a form of intimidation.

There was also the burglar who broke into the house in Lewisham last year and was stabbed and the family kept trying to erect a shrine. Not everyone who has one of these erected is a blameless victim.

Both the preceding examples were families from the traveller community, is this a traveller thing?

Similarly some kid was shot not far from me as part of a gang feud. His gang gathered at the scene of the crime one night and left a load of baseball caps (the kid was apparently fond of caps), drinking Courvoisier and they left the bottles with candles shoved in the necks. Again, this isn’t grieving, it’s not even a real shrine, this is intimidation and marking of territory.

I wonder if some of you would like to explain your arguments to the family and friends of Jodie Chesney. No I thought not.

Ah, I've just seen the guidance that @Piggywaspushed has copied. My toes are curling a bit at the idea of undergoing mediation with a family who've put a massive shrine up on my street - at least partly because the family who I know did have one up are quite intimidating.

I'd also be surprised if many people would actually go out and clear up a shrine set up for someone not related to them. I'd be quite frightened of doing this.

Quite a few people on here have said that those who are opposed to shrines are snobs. Yes, I am a snob. It is a very rare soul who never finds anything ghastly.

We have some notable ones in our area. One has been going for around 10 years now. Personally, I don't like the litter it creates and it is distracting for motorists. I think the council should clear the stuff away and families should visit a grave or plant a tree somewhere and visit that area.

Thing is, this is why we have graveyards. Because every inch of ground you walk on, every place you go, someone dropped dead or got killed there, at some point. Everyone dies. There are designated places to remember the dead (and, eventually, actual graves become obsolete when no descendants or friends of the person are alive any more). Cluttering up other places with crap is unacceptable because the living matter more than the dead. (Well, until the day when zombies happen,then we can argue about the rights of the dead...)

Also, WRT things like terrorist attacks or accidents which killed a lot of people at the same time: it's possible to create memorials for major events which aren't a massive pile of shit that gets in everyone else's way, indefinitely. For major events, a plaque or statue or whatever is not unreasonable. But some fuckwitted thug getting stabbed by another fuckwitted thug outside a chipshop doesn't actually justify several years of compost mountains outside the door of said chipshop.

Fuckwitted thug gets stabbed by another fuckwitted thug outside a chip shop What you mean like the poor young man stabbed to death and robbed for his Rolex on his way out of a jazz club in Greenwich last year? Do you actually read the news at all?

I wonder if some of you would like to explain your arguments to the family and friends of Jodie Chesney. No I thought not.

My views are still the same, thank you. .

My views are still the same, thank you.

Would you say that to her family though? That was the question.

@10IAR that's exactly the "how dare you attitude" my grief and need to publicly display it, trumps your feelings. That's why councils want mediation and confrontation....

They should all be banned! No need for them at all.

So no I wouldn't say it to the family at this point, but that doesn't mean I agree with them , but as I said previously it would lead to drama and more flowers and a bigger shrine and more attention.

The same thing that happened when the burglar killed by the man whose house he was burgling sheivecwas taken down, it just cane back bigger.

*shrine was

howwillwedeal it's not a how dare you attitude, not from me anyway.

I just think being blunt about it is easy when you're online, but not so much in reality.

Personally I'm not keen on shrines, at all.
But then it's not about me, just as it isn't about you.

You can't really accuse someone of trumping your feelings when you intend to do the same?

Isn't that the point, two absolutely opposing opinions and neither trumps the other?

The family of that burglar (or indeed anyone using an apparent shrine to intimate) are of course wrong and should have been dealt with using harassment laws.

But are you seriously comparing an organised crime family looking to cause fear and people grieving sticking a few bunches of flowers somewhere?

Grief is an odd thing, it affects people differently. Temporary shrines being an issue seems pretty unfair to me, permanent ones are slightly different.

I wonder if these shrines create an obligation that is then difficult to stop. It is a very public commemoration, do some of the people doing them feel they must continue because they think people will "judge" them for stopping?

There’s one near me, on a rural A road. It’s had teddy bears and cellophane bunches of flowers tied to a fence for over 15 years. The farmer has actually had to fence a couple of feet of the field off behind it to stop animals eating it and harming themselves. They’ve even attached plastic flower holders to the fence. Somehow it always sickens me to see it. I guess it’s easy to say when you’ve not lost anyone, but I’d think I’d like to remember my deceased somewhere they were happy, not on some cold, windy road.

TBH I think they should all be removed as litter and the people who put them up should be told firmly that the place for that is the cemetary.

I wonder if these shrines create an obligation that is then difficult to stop. Given the FB postings about one I mentioned I think you are right. The shrine was removed and immediately there were questions, quite aggressive ones too!

A family member posted and explained their reasoning and were told that some of his friends hadn't finished with their grief yet! It was all very pointed and, from the outside, sounded like some posters were getting competitive, almost daring the family to not be as sad as I am ... utterly baffling.

There's one near us, someone hit by a stolen car during a police chase. It's about six feet wide and has MASSIVE Scotland flags and a massive photo of the guy. To a casual observer it looks more like a Yes independence protest than a shrine.

The photo and flowers are one thing but IMO the flags are a dangerous distraction.

It's bizarre that anyone on this thread thinks littering and damaging wildlife and the environment is ok because it might comfort someone grieving. Grief does not trump everything.

In general, roadside ones highlight the dangers on our roads. Anything that gets drivers to slow down and/or drive more safely is a good thing.