AIBU to question why taxpayers should fund Ian Huntley’s cremation?

[PassingStranger]

Can't Ian Huntleys mother who was at his bedside and in touch with him, pay for his cremation.
Why should the tax payer pay?
He's already cost the taxpayer loads.🤔😫

The state always pays if noone else offers and deceased had no money. What do you think normally happens? Do you think families are normally forced to pay?

When Brady died the only place that would take him to store his body pre funeral was the Christie Hospital. In fact that’s where the Manchester bomber went too

Funeral businesses unknowingly handle murderers, rapists, paedophiles, abusers, and more every single day. Lots of monsters manage to fly under the radar their whole lives. The only difference between their corpses and this one is that people know this one is a murderer.

A discreet, anonymous cremation at an unspecified time and location is all that's needed. It is a necessary process that has absolutely minimal impact upon the life of anyone here so why all the frothing? What benefit is there to castigating his mother or demanding his body be flung in the sea? As a PP said, IH has left the building. There is no justice to be had in desecrating a corpse. All that's left to do is to hygienically dispose of the remains through legally acceptable channels.

The longer the hard of thinking bleat on about taxpayers money, the longer this is dragged out in the press (not aimed personally at you, just a comment). All these dipsticks harping on at everyone to "think of Holly and Jessica's families..." should maybe do the same when they're ensuring continuing press and social media coverage with their petitions and their rants.

That's the unfortunate thing - any kind of funeral that isn't paid for by his family ultimately winds up being paid for by us (the taxpayer). I still think my idea of ditching him at sea or just slinging him in an unmarked grave somewhere is the better option!

I really don't understand this argument that the tax payer shouldn't pay his funeral? Who are people proposing pays for it? If there is no money in the estate of the person then the state will pick this up as the case for everyone else.

Why should his mum, who has absolutely no responsibility for his crimes pay up? And if he had no family, what then? Just leave his body to decompose in a mortuary until the end of time?

He isn't having some state funeral that costs millions to the tax payer. He'll be having a no-fuss, lowest cost cremation. A quick Google tells me this will cost less than £2k maximum. Hardly worth the frothing at the mouth about. Certainly far less than it would have been to keep him in prison.

But even this ditching him in sea or ditching in him in an unmarked grave will still cost money. The cost of hiring a boat and staff to do this. Or the cost of a coffin, transport and people to do this burial.

People aren't going to do it for free, which still ends up coming back to the tax payer. And given how cheap a direct cremation is, all these ideas people keep throwing about aren't going to be any cheaper.

No, you're right. I understand why people feel incensed about it all though.

Oh for goodness sake! How do you ever come to terms if you were her, her life was ruined to and I doubt she's had it easy trying to come to terms with what her son did. Yes he was still alive in prison but she didnt have the son she thought she had. Your lack of empathy is shocking.

I'm guessing you have no idea how much a burial plot costs - what you're suggesting is more expensive than what the council would do.

Its probably cheaper and quicker to have a very basic cremation
An unmarked grave would still need to be dug etc
I can forsee all kinds of problems with burial at sea and it would need to paid for
The body still needs to be disposed off even if only in the interest of public health
I really cant imagine it being a big occasion with lots of mourners.

I am not sure why the state pays for the funeral of prisoners but presumably the law says it does. Presumably in the majority of cases prisoners have no family, are disowned by family, or their family do not have the means to pay. Maybe it's easier to pay for all of them than to try to find out who should pay/get the money out of them. They could also just be left with a load of bodies to house for weeks on end while who was paying was sorted out.

YABU to believe the system should treat Huntley any different to any other prisoner.

Sadly I do know...

But why though? He's dead. Why are people wasting energy on being angry on a situation that they have no control over. He has no money, so the state pays. End of. Being angry isn't going to magic up money of his own to pay for it.

People keep going on about Holly and Jessica's family. But as far I'm aware they've not said about anything publicly on who pays for the funeral so I'm not sure why people feel they need to do this on their behalf. I can imagine they just want to be left alone, to deal with it quietly and will probably feel some relief once Huntley has been cremated and out the public eye and I can imagine they'll want this done as quickly and quietly as possible so they can move on with this chapter of their life.

All this bleating and frothing at the mouth about who pays for the funeral just forces him back in the public eye which is probably the last thing they want. I can't imagine they want any more discussions on him.

Instead of being angry about an unmovable situation where its frankly a negligible cost to the tax payer, why not channel anger towards actual justified causes like violence and safety towards women and children?

Then why suggest it? If he gets the council option, there won't be any grave at all. They may not even offer the ashes to the family. It's a physical disposal, nothing more.

Considering that his mother was still in touch with him, I agree she should pay. If she’d washed her hands of him, I’d say she should be free to have zero involvement or cost.

The thing is with these threads, I think it's a chance for people to think they're somehow morally superior by being angry that the tax payer is paying for his funeral yet offer absolutely no reasonable alternative for what the funeral arrangements would be or who should pay for this?

Ditching him at sea? So we have the cost of storing his body while we wait for the right weather to go out to sea, cost of hiring a boat, cost of staffing a boat, cost of a coffin and the cost of transport to wherever the boat is.

I can imagine will run significantly higher than a direct cremation. The mind honestly boggles.

I’m in the business of disposing of bodies. Sometimes of heinous people. Although not this particular one.

It’ll cost around £1300. You won’t know when it’s done. There will be no ceremonious pomp of a funeral, he will be quietly cremated and in 95% of cases like this, the ashes aren’t claimed.

Any of your own pennies are unlikely to go towards it so stop fretting and talking out your arse.

Which is what I said in the first instance. A basic cremation with no-frills and if anything more elaborate than that is desired, it should be paid for by his family.

The point I made is that whatever disposal method is used, and at whatever cost, it comes back to the tax payer. I am fully aware that this is just the way it is, sadly.

My comments regarding him being ditched at sea or dumped in an unmarked grave were alluding to the fact that this is all he deserves - literally a hole being dug somewhere off-grid and him being launched in - not a burial plot! Obviously I know that can't and won't happen. But it should!

Most people leave enough money or assets to fund their own funeral.

And even then the body was disposed of…

In the good old days, of course, the bodies of criminals were put up in cages and decomposed in public as a terrible warning. I guess that was pretty cheap. But I must say it gives me the ick a bit.

Because he was murdered in a place where he should have been safe, and that place is owned and run by the British state.

Huntley was a grown man in his 50s. His mum wasn't responsible for his crimes. Why should she pay? And how do you propose we make her pay for it anyway?

No one knows how we would react if our child had committed murder. Saying what we would do is one thing, it actually happening in real life is quite another. I don't think we can see her as being in touch with him as condoning his actions. None of us know how often she visited him or what the nature of their visits were.

Funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Huntley has already paid the ultimate price for his crimes. Who pays for his funeral won't affect him.

The only people the funeral costs will impact on is his family - who (I have read) hated him for what he did. That being said, no matter what he's done I wouldn't begrudge a mother grieving her son and can understand why she was at his bedside. A state funeral is appropriate to gift the family for a prisoner that was killed in prison tbh.

Yep. I wouldn’t care if he was executed for the murders, so I’m not coming from a place of sympathy but:

The rules are he gets his body disposal paid for. Why would an exemption be made just because this guy is well-known?

Other murderers have quietly had theirs paid for, and £3k is pennies really to just be done with the whole thing. Are there not other things we can be angry about?

It ain’t happening, can people just be pleased this saga with Huntley being looked after by the state is over and move on now? This is the families’ pain, I bet they’re also sick of it being dragged along the news etc.