On the Scrap Heap.
Local councils are becoming more and more adventurous in their bid to fill the gap between the funding increases they were promised by Gordon Brown and the reality of the empty coffers inherited by Cameron – commonly referred to in shorthand by the misleading ‘Cuts’, or even ‘vicious and heartless cuts’.
Oop in Darlington, they racked their brains until some bright spark pointed out that the expanding elderly population were being cremated along with their expensive metal hip replacements – no one was callous enough to mention their gold teeth, or even the titanium wire holding their fractured bones together, or the gold wedding ring that no one had the heart to take off grandma’s finger, so we shan’t, shall we children?
Enquiries were made and it turned out that the crematorium attendants were in the habit of gathering all this scrap metal together and giving it a fine and decent burial – don’t be so cynical at the back there!
The Borough Council’s Neighbourhood Services committee has now decreed that a ‘national company’ will collect the metal and recycle it, all profits going to charity….
Darlington Crematorium has been in business since 1901 – now there’s a challenge for the scrap metal thieves, find this mythical dump where 110 years worth of gold teeth and wedding rings and other precious metals have been given a fine and decent burial…..
February 17, 2011 at 08:20
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How long before some zealots from Greenpeace go up to the government with a
proposal like this:
GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE – 01-April-2017
“A report today from the campaigning group Greenpeace described how a new
initiative could revolutionise recycling. They are confident that the new
Labour/Conservative coalition government will give it consideration.
They propose a revolutionary new system for recycling and bereavement
therapy and they say it will also create many new green jobs and boost the
economy.
The system, called Out of Body, requires all humans to carry an
Out of Body permit card which describes the manner in which the
government will allow their body to be recycled. Any person not signing up for
one of these cards will be denied any services from the government industries
such as the NHS, the National Supermarket Group (the nationalised chain which
was formed from Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s by our glorious leader, Ed
Miliband in 2015), or from Gazprom, the nation’s single and favourite energy
provider.
Users of this system will be allowed to specify how each of their valuable
body parts are to be recycled and to specify which rendering factory the rest
of their flesh and bone are to be boiled down in.
The report describes the huge amounts of trace elements, minerals and
nutrients that could be reclaimed by this system, for the good of us all.
Another revolutionary part of the scheme is the “Sell By Date”, which is a
date beyond which the human will be given a free, but mandatory, recycle for
the good of the People. Already, many in political circles are showing great
enthusiasm for these proposals, especially the bit where they get to decide
the rules for applying a “Sell By Date”.
Some industry leaders are queuing up to make it known that will be very
interested in singing up for the huge contracts for rendering facilities and
slaughterhouses that this scheme requires. ”
Extremists form the political centre have been denounced by all of the
liberal media for objecting to this. Their unfounded claims that this is
“dehumanising” and “destroys peoples’ liberties” were widely denounced as
irresponsible and typical of the bigoted attitude from far right
extremists.
- February 17, 2011 at 10:02
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The Sell By Date will be decided by the advent of individual Pensions,
but this could change as time goes by, extending eventually to those of 90
years old
There will be an delay for some at the start as they catch up
with the backlog
- February 17, 2011 at 06:36
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Oh my God, I never thought of this. Thanks for the tip. I must remind my
children to hack out all of my gold teeth before they bury me. The Government
will be digging up coffins before much longer.
Whoops, I forgot. They
already do.
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February 16, 2011 at 22:21
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I have to say I’m somewhat in sympathy with Daedalus, it is
worrying.
Even more chilling is the tendency for science fiction to become
science fact.
At some point, a disturbingly large amount of the horrors
envisaged by the authors of classic fiction has either become, or is becoming,
fact.
I have to say too, that I boycotted the Internet for years, because
of similar worries. Even now, I’m not entirely comfortable with it. It brings
out the best in human nature sometimes, like on here with good and caring
people, but it also facilitates the absolute worst, because it is so easy and
so accessible and we can have conversations with almost anyone around the
world at the touch of very easy buttons.
Just wish I knew the remedy,
that’s all.
- February 16, 2011 at 21:40
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Sinister!
Sounds very like the socialist dystopian future portrayed in the film Soylent Green,
(spoiler alert, don’t read this if you want to see the film).. It was
quite a good thought-provoking film, made in the early 1970s with Charlton
Heston and Edward G.Robinson.
It looks like all the Fabian elements are being set in place to push us
towards this kind of nightmare.
The similarities between that film and our current socialist state
are:
– We have assisted suicides and suicide clinics that the state almost
sanctions.
– The state allows or encourages the old to suffer (such as
negligent healthcare, being forced to sell their homes for care fees, rising
fuel costs and the destruction of their pensions).
– The state is
increasingly dictating to us what we should eat.
– The state is making us
adopt the perverted socialist forms of “Green” and “Global Warming” ideologies
which force us plebs to pay double the price for heating than freer countries
and forces us to accept declining standards and less democracy.
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February 16, 2011 at 20:29
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I have always been told that gold teeth from the corpses were a standard
perk of the job for crematorium workers; I never doubted it for a moment.
As for the useful things in the council skips, well of course you’re not
allowed to take them: those people don’t get paid very well you know, they
need that stuff to make a decent living.
- February 16, 2011 at 19:07
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I suppose some militant Crem staff could threaten to strike over the loss
of a (very) valuable ‘perk’.
[Whilst supermarket staff & those in the various transport industries
get 10% staff discount, 10% off your forthcoming cremation isn’t much of an
incentive to take up that particular career.]
- February 16, 2011 at 17:27
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It sounds like something the Nazis would do.
- February 16, 2011 at 15:53
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It’s too gruesome: poor old Granny – teeth pulled out, hips cut open &
pacemaker torn out of her chest. That’s it, I’m opting for burial in one piece
and to let the bacteria feast on my rotten corpse in time-honoured
fashion.
- February 16, 2011 at
15:55
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February 16, 2011 at 15:39
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@JuliaM – Simple metal detector would find things. Obviously you could use
the type used by treasure hunters, but this is the goverment regulation
beaucracy so it’s probably some £100K machine.
- February 16, 2011 at
15:52
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February 16, 2011 at 15:30
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I’ll get my shovel.
- February 16, 2011 at 12:28
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Yup APW, the other day saw 2 bits of angle iron in a skip in council
“recycling centre” …. absolutely perfect for a project I’m working on. Could I
have em … no way pal feck off, those are going for recycling … I was going to
recycle them without transporting them for miles and firing up a furnace
producing nasty toxic fumes to melt em down, transporting the result to
another factory who would make em into …. bits af angle iron!!
- February 16, 2011 at 11:54
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Sometimes I despair at the thoughtlessness of our civic guv’nors. I suppose
they leave the skip to hold the scrap metal discretely behind the crematorium
furnace.
It’s a wonder they aren’t they aren’t trying to sell the ashes as plant
food.
- February 16, 2011 at
12:36
- February 16, 2011 at 11:44
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There is of course a precedent for all this, but those earlier pioneers did
not actually wait for the owners of those valuable metals to die naturally
first.
APW,
Surely you must realise that if lots of people are
scavenging rubbish tips in order to make a profit, that makes us look like a
third world country, sorry, “developing nation,” and we can’t have that, can
we? Nor can we allow anyone to make a few bob without paying the elite for
it.
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February 16, 2011 at 11:19
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So let me get this straight, if I go down to the local ‘recycling’ centre
(Council Dump) and remove a chair that is capaable of repair and reuse, I am
guilty of an ‘offence’. If the Council however remove artifacts from a coffin,
it does not constitute grave robbing or theft.
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February 16, 2011 at 12:45
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Not a crime because to meet regulations all metals and other non-organic
materials need to removed from the body prior to cremation. Sometimes done
by the undertaker, or done at autopsy, or if no-one else does at the
crematorium.
The reason the stuff is removed is because metals don’t burn and other
stuff can cause an environmental hazard, eg. the mercury in teeth
filings.
- February 16, 2011 at 13:56
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Are you saying all corpses have any teeth with fillings extracted
before cremation?
- February 16, 2011 at 14:45
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Yep.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article402237.ece
http://www.fbca.org.uk/defra-oct06.asp
- February 16, 2011 at 14:58
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OK, teeth are visible, but on some of the other stuff, how do they
know? Especially if there’s no autopsy?
Do they x-ray all bodies?
- February 16, 2011 at 11:13
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The Northern Echo article on this topic suggests that it would be
voluntary, that the council would donate any profits to a charity and that it
wouldn’t include jewellery. It also suggests that other councils already do
the same thing.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/8854769.Plans_for_crematorium_recycling/
It may sound gruesome but you can’t hand over large chunks of metal in the
ashes container, so something else has to be done. It’s either this or burying
the metal, and in a way it is similar to organ donation.
- February
16, 2011 at 11:55
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It’s certainly similar to organ donation, in that increasingly the state
presumes ownership of the organic bits too!
- February 16, 2011 at 11:05
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“… a ‘national company’ will collect the metal …”
I can’t figure a way round Godwin for this. Any suggestions?
- February 16, 2011 at 10:52
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Surely this has to be another nail in the ‘rule by council’ coffin. These
entities are now totally irrelevant and have no place in my world.
They
parisitize the people they allege they serve and do not provide the level of
service they promise in their ‘offer’.
Speaking of which the ‘offer’
masquerading as a “How we spend YOUR money” booklet, will be arriving on
doormats across the land in a couple of weeks time along with an
invoice.
It behoves all of us to go through that offer and reject the bits
we don’t want and formally accepting the bits we are happy to pay for by
sending it back to the council for them to issue a revised offer.
Every day offers arrive on the doormat and are rejected by ignorance. If BT
offer you a service by leaflet you ignore it and BT cannot force their offer
upon you by tacit acceptance because you didn’t explicitly reject it.
If
the council send their offer and you ignore it they assume you have actually
accepted it in full by tacit acceptance and will pursue you through their fake
courts to extract money from you.
Instead please take the time to go through it and send it back by return of
post along with a letter telling them what you are willing to pay for and what
you are not.
At the very least it will make those who take the state’s coin
think, if only for a second or two and it might turn out that actually you can
alter the way councils do things simply by making a conditional offer of
contract with them and reduce their income accordingly.
Apologies for rambling a bit and straying off topic slightly but I am
trying to get my head round how a council (aka the state) can provide a
service without a contract. No other entity can do this.
- February 16, 2011 at 10:07
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Disgusting, if true. Britain continues its New Labour induced descent into
oblivion, only now the “cuts” are to blame.
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