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Feed me to the sharks!
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Tim Lund


Posts: 255
Joined: Apr 2008
Post: #1
20-02-2011 10:18 AM

I'm sure lots of you SE23 residents heard your very own Alex Feakes on the Today programme yesterday morning:

Quote:
0834
The UK's death rate is projected to rise over the next 20 years as the baby boomers begin to leave us, a problem for cemeteries in cities, towns and villages across the country. Our reporter Tom Bateman has been to a part of south-east London where it is getting harder to find a burial space.


But I seem to remember hearing something else about the problem of ocean depletion - that with the ever expanding human population, by 2050 there would be no more large fish such as sharks and cod in the ocean. I can't find the link, but here's one to a Horizon documentary from last year

I think there's a link here ... and 'm sure you've got my (ocean?) drift. Previously I've thought I'd want a green burial, maybe in some woodland, not wasting fossil fuel on cremation, and let my rotten body fertitlise the earth. Now I'd like it collected and dumped at sea where these threatened large fish can feast on it. And if my children and grandchildren should ever wish to remember me, let them go down to the local fish and chip shop.

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Jon Lloyd


Posts: 151
Joined: Nov 2007
Post: #2
20-02-2011 11:11 AM

It's a good idea. There's also a sky burial (not for the faint-hearted):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial

I suspect though that these sorts of ideas of course will never have 'large-scale' or even minimum uptake, so I would plump for cremation.

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derbybill


Posts: 122
Joined: Jan 2010
Post: #3
20-02-2011 12:41 PM

No, I don't think we want "sky burials" in Forest Hill: too many foxes around!

Cremation is ok and used by 70% of the population, but we ought to be looking at heat recovery methods and try and make use of the heat energy. Maybe for the nursery next door.. "from the cradle to the grave"?

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Tim Lund


Posts: 255
Joined: Apr 2008
Post: #4
20-02-2011 03:41 PM

Yes - one part of my thinking was how Parsees leave their bodies to be eaten by vultures, but hadn't known they were called sky burials. I was thinking more about how simple yet dignified burial at sea can be. Here is what the Book of Common Prayer offers

Quote:
At the Burial of the Dead at Sea.

¶ The same office may be used; but instead of the Sentence of Committal, the Minister shall say,

UNTO Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the sea shall give up her dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.


I do actually take seriously the importance of having somewhere to remember the dead, but for me the sea - any bit of it really - would do as well as an overcrowded cemetry, or some private unmarked woodland grave.

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Jane_D


Posts: 189
Joined: Jan 2010
Post: #5
20-02-2011 09:29 PM

Burial at sea does sound rather wonderful, and as you say, any ocean scene, or picture even, would be a memorial of the loved one.

Not so tempted by sky burial in a built-up area though.

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