Portsmouth protest against funeral home

[HungryHelga]

www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/politics/hundreds_sign_petition_against_portsmouth_funeral_home_bid_1_3423985

People are protesting and other people are saying they are stupid. But I am not sure I would want a chapel of rest next door to me. I already have enough trouble reassuring my DS that zombies and ghosts aren't real after he has seen something scary on TV or had a scary story read at school.

My dd's school is in the street leading the main Brussels cemetary. We walk past the memorial masons every day. She is 7 and due to much questioning, already knows more about common funerary practices than most. When my BIL died, at the funeral she complained she didn't have a good view - she was fascinated by what was going on. She is certainly not a psychopath I hope traumatised by all this. It is part of life.

She has already picked out a heart shaped headstone for her "boyfriend". I just hope to God she hasn't mentioned this to him......

Bizarre protest. I can see the back door of a funeral parlour from my office. It's not the sight of coffins that cause concern, it's watching the loaded hearse doing an eight-point turn to get in and out without crashing that keeps me glued to the window

There are over a hundred comments from Portsmouth residents - many of them very witty - following this article, and they all seem to say that the dozen or so residents in the article are being silly.

There were riots in Paulsgrove in the north-west of Portsmouth some years ago in protest at the (alleged) housing of paedophiles [sex offenders] in disproportionately large numbers in that community. I think it was somewhere else where a paediatrician's office was attacked.

It's already a funeralcare 'shop' ffs.

The only difference will be that the coffins inside will be occupied!

Ooh yes, who is that woman with the fur coat and dark glasses looking furtive in the photo?

Maybe she's a spy from a competing funeral director?

Mortisha Addams on a day-trip?......

(Morticia... )

Perhaps they are the same people that complained about the movie with no soundtrack here

I think it is a desperately sad story. No compassion or understanding at all for the people who may want / need this service, and might prefer it was more local to them - which is presumably why the Co-op want to do this.

FWIW, these private ambulances and hearses are super-discreet. I was sitting on the pavement one day as my DD was looking at ants. One pulled up, the staff went into a house, they came out with the coffin on a wheeled stretcher, then loaded the car, they drove off. My daughter did not notice a thing. Seriously, when I asked if she wanted to know what was in the car she looked at me like I was insane and asked "what car"?

It is not like Oliver Twist with mourners in all corners who've been taught to weep in tune, or however that song goes!

Sometimes I miss working for a local paper.

Indeed, limited. Two people make a story, ten people are worthy of a full-blown protest.

'Cat in tree' stuff, for sure.

My first chief reporter told an excitable trainee: 'Julia, it wasn't like the Towering Inferno. It was a small fire at a bungalow in Ilford.'

Julia muttered that was how the neighbours described it to be told: 'Julia, people say stupid things all the time. Our job is to make them sound intelligent without actually making it up.'

My favourite outragee from that Portsmouth story is the woman posing sexily in a fur coat and dark glasses.

sorry x-posts about the mystery woman.

According to one of the posts under the online article, the mystery outragee (love that !) is the girlfriend of the biker man and she doesn't even stay over that often.

By some coincidence I think, parents aren't generally of the morbid persuasion I'd lived with in five minutes walk of two cemetaries and a funeral parlour by the time I was twelve. Really didn't see very much, but it didn't bother me when I did - although I was curious and did read up on it a bit to see what was going on. My only issue with Co-op Funerals is that my bus journey to work used to be marred by their hearses in the bus lanes, but that's a pretty small gripe really and also applies to certain greengrocers' vans in the same district.

That photo doesn't do them any favours, especially Mrs Fur Coat. Dear oh dear.

Some nice comments from the Portsmouth article too.