How would we live if we knew for certain that our consciousness continued to exist after our hearts stopped beating?

Would we pay more attention to our death if we had proof that our souls survived the cessation of brain activity? What kind of funeral would we plan for ourselves if we might actually be in attendance? We would probably live our lives very differently, prepare for our death a little bit more and, at the very least, organize a playlist for our funeral…and for this and other advice on making our funerals more fitting to our lives we have My Last Song to thank.

A new book which I co-authored, The Ancestral Continuum, urges us to consider – in ways outside usual religious dogma – life after death with enough real stories and anecdotes to open the mind to the possibility.

Kathy Eldon, for example, recalls visiting a medium under a false name after her photojournalist son was killed in Somalia at just 22. She was sceptical until the medium told her that a vibrant, young spirit kept banging on about some young female who appeared to be trapped in a darkened room under heavy material. Kathy was bemused until the medium said that the woman’s name was Desiree. ‘That was the name he gave to his beloved Land Rover,’ Kathy recalled how she laughed and cried at the same time, ‘and she was under canvas in the garage.’

There is a more ethereal testimony from Aggie, an NHS nurse who recalls seeing the spirits of the dead floating above the living at burial ceremonies. ‘They look like shimmering figures,’ she says, ‘and remain attached to each other by cords of light until the cords are cut at the end of the ceremony.’

But mostly there are numerable stories from perfectly normal people about potent dreams and strange synchronicities that seem to come directly from deceased loved ones.  Of course, none of us can know what happens when we die until we’ve actually been there but, to paraphrase Carl Jung, better to go towards our death believing in something other than the black void of oblivion. And then, maybe, we will plan for the inevitable so it’s the ending we want…planning our exit strategy as my friends at My Last Song call their mission.

At the heart of The Ancestral Continuum lies a call to reconnect with our ancestral heritage. Whether that is an emotional or spiritual connection, there are immense riches to be found in understanding those who have lived and died before us. It places us within the context of a complex narrative that speaks to us of who we are and gives us clues to where we might be going.

Most cultures around the world maintain a faithful relationship with their ancestors: from altars in Vietnamese restaurants to graveside picnics in Mexico during the Day of the Dead; the honouring of ancestors before each American Indian ceremony, to ancestral reverence in Zulu, Shona, Xhosa traditions in Southern Africa, as well as similar respect to their forefathers in most of that ancient, mysterious continent. It appears that our ancestors have been uniquely discarded by Western culture.

Is that because of our fear of death, despite its inevitability? From the moment that we are born we move inexorably towards our death and yet most of the Western world behave as though it doesn’t exist. Most of us will die in hospital surrounded by tubes and machines yet it wasn’t so long ago that, living in multi-generational households, children would experience the death of a grandparent in the family home. Have we lost the sacredness of this profound moment as we desperately cling to life?

Today, while 70 per cent of people say that they would rather die at home surrounded by friends and family, only 18 per cent actually do. Dying at home requires preparation and forward planning. It commits us to make a choice and be sure that our loved ones know that is what we want, and for younger loved ones to know how their ailing relatives want to die, and not ignore the fact that they surely will.

A ‘good’ death, says the book, makes a happy ancestor and it also makes for a profoundly moving collective experience for family and friends. This can be immensely healing for the dying and the living. And death itself becomes less frightening; more teacher than enemy; more journey than destination. In our dying we can teach others how to live as though our very next breath might be our last.

The former Prime Minister didn’t share this irresponsible approach to one of the most important decisions we must take, as she insisted she did not want her body to lie in state or money to be spent on a fly-past. Even if she had dismissed the idea of planning her end of life event, as a past Prime Minister she would have been leaned on to approve her funeral arrangements of which the songs and readings are hugely important elements.

Her staunch Methodism was well known and she often cited Christianity to justify her support for the market economy and capitalism. Her Methodist upbringing will thus be commemorated by Charles Wesley’s hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and her patriotism by the music played at the start and end of the service by a British-only group of composers, and the last hymn, I Vow To Thee My Country.

Lady Thatcher wanted the service to be ‘framed’ by British music, hence the scores by Henry Purcell, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge, Charles Stanford, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The pieces by Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure and Johann Sebastian Bach are excellent choices too.

The order of service features Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality and TS Eliot’s Little Gidding.

She also decided that she was to be cremated, which is a break with tradition, and one of which we approve. We would have approved even more had she (or her family) chosen a green funeral and a woodland burial.

While not Thatcherites, most of the My Last Song team are old enough to understand her place in history and admire her courage in standing up to bullies whether the undemocratic trades union bosses holding the country to ransom or the fascist Argentinean military dictator General Galteri invading the Falklands. And on balance we agree that her funeral should reflect her place as a major figure, unlike the political pygmies that followed her as Prime Minister.

My Last Song was created to encourage and support people to plan their own or their loved ones’ funerals so they have the end of life event that best reflect their lives and values.

We have many thousand visitors every month but don’t think these include the Thatchers. Even so, it’s encouraging to know that the family’s planning of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral validates the My Last Song message. For what’s good for former Prime Ministers should be good for the rest of us too.

The LCP is designed to manage the withdrawal of unnecessary treatment given to dying patients to relieve suffering, and has been inaccurately reported in the Daily Mail (which seems to enjoy making it readers as anxious as possible) as a state sponsored way of killing the old.

Glyn Davies MP, who sponsored the debate, criticised such poorly informed criticism, without naming the Daily Mail, as shouting ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre, and said that to abandon the LCP was like “tearing up the Highway Code because there were some bad drivers.”

Sir Tony Baldry MP also spoke sensibly when he said that the NHS wasn’t failing because people died, but failed when they didn’t die well. He stressed the need for improvements in the way medical professionals communicated with dying patients and their families.

Credit must also go to the Shadow Health Secretary Liz Kendall who didn’t oppose this welcome development to the management of end of life but pointed out the LCP was only as good as the teams that used it.

The debate ended with the Health Minister Norman Lamb stating the government’s aim to make all patients’ end of life care as pain free and dignified as possible, and that it was totally unacceptable that patients were put on the Pathway without any notification of the patient’s family.

A vital and as yet overlooked concomitant to the Liverpool Care Pathway is the benefits of the terminally ill and ailing elderly having their own personal death plan, rather as mum’s-to-be have birth plans. Death, after all, is as inevitable as birth.

Filling in a death plan means that the end of life has to be discussed, rather than ignored because it’s awkward, upsetting or embarrassing. And the discussion will inevitably include loved ones, medical professionals and, if appropriate, ministers of religion.

Most importantly, an individual’s death plan will be a properly communicated record which doctors and others involved will, if appropriate, follow so that the patient’s death is as comfortable and comforting as possible. Even if some of the end of life wishes expressed in the death plan are unrealistic, at least the creation of the plan facilitates discussion between the patient, the patient’s family and the those providing the end of life medical care.

My Last Song has created a holistic death plan template which not only addresses medical issues but also other aspects which affect the quality of the end of life experience, such as who the patient wishes to be present, where they want to die, the music they want to hear, the aromas they want to smell, pictures they want to see and also practical matters so they don’t worry about, as an example, who will look after their pets.

We hope the government will suggest the adoption of personal end of life death plans and acknowledges that a good death is more than just good medical care.

Both will be terribly missed for similar reasons: their passionate love of cricket, their ability as commentators, their instantly recognisable voices, traditional values, senses of humour, strong personalities and personal and professional achievements.

There’s no need to go into details of their lives here, for there have been excellent obituaries. CMJ, or the Major as his colleagues called him, was chief cricket correspondent for the Telegraph and its obituary is a model. The Guardian’s obituary of Tony Greig is also excellent.

Both died from complications caused by cancer, both at tragically early ages,  Greig at 66, CMJ at 67. Despite the advances in medical research and healthier lifestyles – Tony Greig and CMJ exercised, played golf and probably ate well – cancer is still an effective killer.  So too are other illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and the increasingly common dementia in its various forms.

And then there are the random acts of stupidity, violence, nature and accident that take lives too early and with such shocking and devastating effect.

Yet so many people seem to deny that death will one day or another come to them… ‘who wants to think about their death?’ is still a common response when My Last Song is talked about.

Continue with this view if you want your final event to be dreary, unmemorable, distressing for your loved ones and inappropriate to your life and beliefs.

If on the other hand, you want to take responsibility for how you leave this world, to be remembered the way you want to be remembered, to have your life celebrated, to reduce the grief and anxiety felt by your friends and family then visit My Last Song to help plan your funeral and store your memories in your Lifebox so that future generations will know the real you. For all we leave when we go are our memories.

Space Memorials is when a portion of human ashes are flown into space on a commercial satellite. The practice isn’t actually that new, with the first flight taking place in 1997 with famous names such as Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry on board.

Alba Orbital will be the first European company to provide Space Memorials. We will be initially offering a sub-orbital and orbit options.

The sub-orbit service has a similar trajectory to many of the space tourism flights which will be coming on stream in the next few years. Orbit is when the satellite orbits the earth, usually every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 mph or 25,000 km.

While the more traditional ways of scattering ashes are appropriate for some families, we believe a growing number of people will find space memorials a fitting way to be remembered, and with the advances in small satellite technology, it will soon be available. We are currently building our prototype satellite in Glasgow’s MAKlab design studio.

We haven’t launched our product pricing yet, but we have been interviewed for the BBC and featured on Scotland on Sunday. We have a few exciting announcements planned for next year.

Find more information on our website or follow us on twitter @albaorbital.

But mankind is too short sighted and too self centred to be radical about helping the environment. Air travel is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases.  So you would expect our thought leaders and opinion formers to consider the consequences before boarding their flights.

Such people don’t inhabit the BBC, who quite unnecessarily flew numerous members of staff to and from the US to cover the presidential elections.  What messages does this give to viewers and listeners? A total indifference to the environmental consequences.

I emailed my views on this to the charming Shaun Ley, presenter of The World This Weekend, who joined his BBC colleagues in this four yearly short term migration. He argued that his trip was necessary to get a ‘sense of place’.  I’m sorry Shaun, but we got very little sense of place from the BBC and other UK media, but far too many versions of: “it’s only the swing states that matter; it’s too close to call (it wasn’t); women, blacks and Hispanics more likely to vote for Obama; not much enthusiasm for Obama, even less for Romney; employment growth will help Obama…”

The BBC’s US-based staff are just as able to give us this analysis without help from their UK colleagues who should have stayed put.

Jon Snow over at Channel 4 also took the opportunity to fly to the States to cover the election…yes the same Jon Snow who bangs on about his cycling helping to reduce pollution. He’ll have to cycle for several hundred years to counteract the damage his flight to and from the US caused.

The environment means nothing to the travel writers, telling us which undiscovered tourist paradises to discover once we’ve flown half way around the globe, and destroying their delicate biodiversity and sheltered cultures once we arrive.

One may hope in vain that the Guardian, that most progressive of our broadsheets, would think twice about the ethics of producing travel and holiday supplements, but why would it when advertising revenue is at stake?

Sports teams and their supporters are going to ever increasing foreign destinations, usually by plane, these fixtures driven by satellite tv revenue and vanity.  The NFL is now organising games between US sides at Wembley. UK fans of American football will be grateful, the NFL want to exploit a new market…and the hole in the ozone layer grows a bit larger as a consequence.

Our supermarkets’ wilful disregard for unnecessary food miles is best summed up by Tesco’s home delivery vans’ mouthwatering livery of  a bunch of asparagus, only in season in the UK between late April and mid June. For the rest of the year it’s flown in from Peru.

Ponder too the fashion industry. Every six months, fashion designs are promoted, new stock sold, more unnecessary garments end up in our wardrobes.  Fashionistas fly around the world from one ‘Fashion Week’ to another. Most items on show on the catwalks and then, if deemed to be fashionable, manufactured in vast numbers, are made of cotton, one of the most water intensive crops…and who cares that the world’s water is running out, or that to fly the garments from the sweat shops of Asia to the boutiques of the developed world only accelerates the damage to our environment?

We have no intention of modifying our stupid and selfish behaviour…we’ll all be buying our Christmas trees, not giving a thought about the water and nutrients it’s taken from the soil, the pollution caused by its journey from nurseries to our living rooms and the food that could have been grown instead of miniature pine trees.  We take pleasure in our Christmas traditions, and lots of money is to be made.

The food we eat at Christmas is likely to be intensively produced despite the terrible consequences of the intensive rearing of animals – breeding grounds for anti-biotic resistant superbugs and toxic waste.

In looking to the future, intensive production must be the way we feed the rapidly growing world population.  Well that’s what the few multinationals who stand to gain from intensive agriculture would have us believe, although it’s a myth.

Does it matter that we’re destroying the planet by our selfish desire to travel more, to wear the latest fashions, to eat what we want to eat when we want to eat it, no matter how it’s produced, to uphold Christmas traditions, to go on exotic holidays…? Yes, of course it does. But we are more concerned about our pleasures and vanities, so it’s to hell in a handcart.

And remember, while you’re separating your waste into various recyclable bins and bags, those who tell us what to do are flying around the world, buying the latest fashions and devouring as much food and drink as possible.

I can’t see the adoption of any radical solutions, can you?

It’s been difficult to know what his Republican opponent Mitt Romney really stands for, though his economic policy is woefully unconvincing and contradictory. His foreign policy seems two generations out of date, and his defence spending pledges are unaffordable and irrelevant.

He hasn’t been able to articulate what, if anything, the Republican Party has to offer apart from not liking President Obama.

We also take seriously what the Economist magazine says:  ”Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says…not a convincing pitch for a chief executive.” We don’t think he has the right policies to guide the US out of the economic mess of the past four years.

Obama’s policies of prudent government spending and encouraging small business to take on workers is gradually pulling the US into better times. He is less in the pocket of big business and the banks that have got the US, and the rest of the western economies, into the dire financial mess from which we are slowly emerging.

My Last Song believes that America shouldn’t go in Romney’s direction of travel: taking away women’s rights to have an abortion, reducing the tax paid by the rich (and therefore making the poor pay more or reduce their benefits), ignoring the case for equal marriage, giving big business more power and privileges, being indifferent to the needs of the disadvantaged and seemingly guided by the rules of the Mormon Christian sect.

As President Obama’s instinctive sympathy and desire to help the people whose lives have been devastated by storm Sandy shows, he’s a man of the people, and we hope that the people of the US will give him another four years as President.

When Milena Marinkovic died three years ago, she left her husband Milan a letter explaining the reason for her strange request. She didn’t want Milan looking at other women after she died.

This is a novel way of being remembered, not without its merits though unlikely to achieve its purpose.

But it’s a shame that Milena wasn’t aware of the My Last Song Lifebox, as she could have stored pictures of her vagina and indeed any other images in this secure online facility to remind Milan of what was likely to have been a memorable sex life.

She could have chosen those who she wanted to open her Lifebox…we recommend a fairly restricted group of friends and very close family, and thus saved the blushes (or smirks) of the stonemason and those noticing the unusual opening etched on the grave.

Should anyone else feel like putting images or any messages designed to keep their memories in front of their loved ones, consider getting a Lifebox…far more private for your privates.

Chronic illness can be very difficult to endure for patients and their families. During times of greatest need, sufferers of life-threatening diseases require all the support they can get from healthcare providers, family and friends.
Since patients will spend most of their time accompanied by a nurse in a medical facility or in-home nurse while at home, the strength of the bond that forms between the two could be the key factor in determining recovery rate and potential.
Even if recovery is impossible, good support can bring calmness, acceptance, and closure to the afflicted.

Why is emotional support so crucial to the recovery of patients?

As human beings, we are emotional beings. Our fondness for one another is based on a combination of similarity, frequency of interaction, sentimental behaviour, and emotional and intimate connections. The more ‘proof’ that a person receives from another individual to show that they care, the more attached he or she becomes to the supporter.
Humans need to have confirmation and assurance of their relationships with others to feel secure. Without actions, words mean nothing.
Nurses who show genuine desire to help and befriend patients are the ones that do their jobs the best.

How can a strong relationship between nurse and patient affect recovery?

From liver failure and brain tumours to pleural mesothelioma and malignant melanoma, a close bond between caregiver and patient can speed up recovery time and improve the chances of survival regardless of how grim the circumstances.
First, a positive and honest relationship between a nurse and patient gives the patient happiness. Knowing that somebody trustworthy is always there to look out for them can be a very comforting thought that reduces massive amounts of stress and anxiety.
Fear of death cannot be avoided, but strong physical and emotional support can brush aside many of those constant worry that add to stress and anquish.
Additionally, many chronic patients do not have any family or friends to visit them during times when they need the most love. Caring nurses can replace those missing loved ones to provide the same important emotional support that helps the afflicted fight on despite the overwhelming odds.
Second, caring nurses have intimate knowledge of their patients. This is a huge advantage when providing medical assistance that lessens the strain and pain.
Take the example of 26-year-old breast cancer patient Theresa, whose nurse, Jessica, was her caregiver and also became her best friend. Having been by Theresa’s side for many years, Jessica knew Theresa’s medical history. She gave Theresa candy before the drugs that always initiated her gag reflex, to use a longer needle on her, and to check her bowels if a physician doesn’t request an enzyme test.
By contrast, patients who have to transition frequently between nurses don’t have the beneficial personal connection. New nurses aren’t familiar with how the patient has things done, and they don’t have the personal bond to make them care for the patient like a true friend.
Lack of knowledge about and lack genuine concern for a patient are two things that could hinder recovery progress and contribute to worsening health.
Finally, a significant personal bond between nurse and patient give nurses more reason to give their all in providing for the sick. After spending so much time together, the patient is no longer just a stranger but a good friend. As a true friend, a nurse will have personal reasons along with a career obligation to provide the best care possible.

It’s an interesting and commendable exercise, based on over 30,000 funerals in the UK conducted in 12 months up to September 2012.

The survey confirms the continuing demise of hymns and rising popularity of secular songs. Both types of music are still played at very many funerals, confirming the popularity of the modern British funeral, which is a mix of secular and religious elements, readily agreed by most CoE and other low church denominations.

As it has been for many years now, Frank Sinatra’s My Way heads the list of secular songs. Given the Cooperative Funeralcare’s attitude to funerals, exposed on Channel 4’s Dispatches, some might think Sinatra’s cover of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes more suitable.

The release of this year’s survey fuelled the interest of NME, pop music’s must read source of news and views, and its readers and writers have risen to the challenge of selecting their last songs with gusto.  Those under the age of 30 should read and enjoy and then if inspired, send in their fave five funeral songs to My Last Song, so far lacking more modern music.

During his excellent talk on funeral desert island discs,  Paul Gambaccini revealed that the original lyricist of My Way electrocuted himself  standing in his bath changing a lightbulb shortly before the release of Sinatra’s version, thus losing the huge royalties that would have boosted his bank account.

Gambaccini also made the case for two other brilliant farewell songs from Sinatra, Always…a poignant  reminiscence of a love affair,  and  It Was A Very Good Year, in which the singer, now in the autumn of his years, looks back on a lifetime of romantic attachments. There are a number of My Last Song aficionados  of Frank Sinatra, and other tracks recommended are We’ll Be Together Again, Goodbye (a particular favourite of this writer) and I Thought About You.

So when thinking of a Sinatra song for the farewell ceremony, there are many alternatives to My Way, which Paul Anka re-wrote to be an emotional but now rather hackneyed mass seller.

It’s really hard to judge experts in an unfamiliar area.  It reminds me of when I visited schools to decide where my boys should go. 

When you aren’t familiar with schools it is hard to pick the right one, and you can get misled by having a good interview with the head, who may leave, or simply be good at impressing parents.  If you were a teacher I’m told you would ‘get’ the school simply by walking through the gates, but it’s not so easy for the rest of us.

Here are some pointers for choosing a lawyer:

• You must rate the person who is doing the work.  The person you meet at the first appointment will not always do the work, but simply be a front man or woman who is good at impressing prospective clients.  Ask who will actually do the work and make sure you talk to them;
• Ask specific questions and see if you understand the answers, and they make sense.  Lawyers are not always the best communicators in the world;
• Are they a specialist?  These days it is impossible to do a good job across a variety of disciplines.  Particularly if the matter is complex or unusual – eg medical negligence, you must use a firm that has special expertise in that area;
• Even for areas of work like Wills and Probate and conveyancing, a specialist has to be good, because their reputation stands or falls on what they deliver.  Too often probate and conveyancing are ‘also ran’ departments within a larger practice where the less good lawyers get parked;
• Check out the fees.  If skyscrapers are built on a fixed quote it should be possible at the very least to provide a cost range within a fairly tight margin.  Be wary of firms which charge a percentage of the value of the estate.  It simply isn’t justified and solicitors have got away with it for too long;
• Efficiency is important in most legal work.  This is harder to assess, but if the person fails to return your calls within a couple of days or makes small mistakes that should give you cause for concern;
• It’s a bonus if you like the person, particularly in sensitive areas where emotions are raw such as divorce and probate;
• Don’t feel you are under any obligation to the firm your family has used in the past. Most people think that following a death they have to use the firm which drew up the Will and has it in their safe.  This isn’t true. What matters is that you can work with the person who is assigned to look after you now.
• Get a quote from Purely Probate.   

It is difficult to comprehend the absolutely disgusting, disrespectful, racist, venal and unprofessional attitudes that characterise Funeral Services Partnership’s approach to handling every aspect of a funeral.

Despite the repeated apologies of Phillip Greenfield, CEO of Funeral Partnerships, nobody will believe his assertion that the practices exposed by an undercover reporter taken on as a casual worker at Gillmans are exceptions.  This description of their business, on their website, says it all: ‘a midlands based consolidator of funeral care providers.’

The appalling practices of dealing with a body, loathsome attitudes towards families, particularly those from ethnic minority communities, lack of training and understaffing is clearly endemic in an organisation that believes, in Greenfield’s words, to be a high street business just like any other, and whose main aim is to increase shareholder value.

So whatever you do, do not purchase a funeral from any company that is part of Funeral Services Partnership.

The same advice must be true of any funeral director that’s part of Dignity. It’s a stock exchange listed company, it wants to make as much profit as possible and it does so by ripping off the client. And clients who are bereaved, in shock and affected by intense grief are very easy to rip off, as Dignity know only too well. They’re good at it, so avoid a Dignity owned funeral director if you believe integrity is more important than profit.

Of the big conglomerates, that leaves the Co-operative Funeralcare Services. However, their funeral directors are now affected by a similar exposure of unprofessional, greedy and disrespectful attitudes broadcast earlier this year. As with Funeral Services Partnership and Dignity, the Co-operative Funeralcare is driven by accountants wanting to increase the bottom line figure, with service to the client coming a rather distant second, despite of course, statements to the contrary from their managing director. This blog shows their lack of professionalism.

Contrast this with the excellent standards shown by the funeral directors taking part in Dead Good Job. Of course, they knew a camera crew were following them around, but what is more germane is the attitudes of those running their independent funeral service companies such as Paul Sinclair of Motorcyle Funerals, Carl Marlow of Go As You Please and Gulam Mabud Taslim and granddaughter Moona Taslim-Saif who run the family Muslim funeral company, Haji Taslim in London’s east end.

Of course they run commercial businesses, but their shared ethos is to provide a good service which is based on a sympathetic understanding of giving what their clients want and can afford.  Indeed what was interesting was the community role played in particular by Haji Taslim, their community being the Muslims of Whitechapel and environs.

There needs to be a re-evaluation of what we expect a funeral to be and how it’s delivered. One increasingly attractive option is for a community funeral in which various members of a community, however that is defined, collaborate to deliver the care, the expertise, the mourners, the officiant and pooled funds to give a member of that community a good funeral.

That’s at the personal not for profit end of a spectrum at which the other end squat the disgusting, venal ‘profit is everything’ companies described above.

Somewhere closer to where we should be looking short term are the small, independent funeral directors not yet purchased by the Co-op, Dignity or utterly wretched Funeral Services Partnership. These independents deserve our support.

Allah, via the Archangel Gabriel, told Mohammad to write in the Qur’an his rules on how Middle Eastern society 1,600 years ago should behave.

As the one God he thought people should be unquestioning of his wisdom and so deemed it right that his followers should punish those who disobey, criticise or mock his work. These days we would say Allah is a totalitarian control freak demonstrating self-doubt.

Mohammad didn’t help matters by not putting much thought into his succession…disputes between his offspring and son-in-law caused the division between Sunni’s and Shi’ites which has resulted in butchery between the two ever since.

It’s in the nature of religions to encourage fanaticism. A religion that demonstrates self doubt won’t get very far.

Those who wrote the Bible as the word of the Christian God saw the weakness of saying in effect, this is the word of God but if you want to ignore it, fine. Jews believe they are commanded to read and understand every phrase in the Torah.

Most of us find it difficult to be fanatical about something we can’t fully support, and this is what fundamentalists fear. The violent Muslim fundamentalists who killed the US ambassador to Libya and demonstrate in the streets are showing just how feeble Islam is, just as zealots of other religions demonstrate their fear that their faith might be misplaced by killing or persecuting ‘heretics’ who have the temerity to disagree with some dogmatic detail.

If extremists from any religion believed their faith had the strength to withstand critics, comics and those of other religions, they would not resort to violence and murder to defend it.

The vast majority of people who share a faith take the positive from it and ignore the dangerous. Indeed Islam went through a golden period from about 750 to the 16th century of tolerance, artistic excellence and scholarly endeavour.

But being fanatical is a dangerous consequence of a religious belief as it is sanctioned by the people who started the religions.

Paradoxically if there’s one antidote that dilutes fanaticism within the fanatic, it’s humour. So it would be a good thing for those moderates of all religions who abhor killing in the name of their faith to encourage people to laugh about it.

I laugh about religion as the alternative is to cry.

First, Brian Jenner and Charles Cowling put a huge amount of effort into organising such an interesting and enjoyable Friday evening – and indeed Brian should be praised for the Joy of Death events that filled the weekend.

Second, the venue – Bournemouth’s Green House Hotel – provided excellent food and service.

Third, Sharp Jack Media, a TV production company, was filming the event for a programme commissioned by Sky TV – which means more valuable coverage for those in the less than ratings friendly funeral business.

Fourth, the witty and self-deprecating compering by Charles Cowling who should consider becoming a stand up should he tire of publishing the Good Funeral Guide and leading the ‘funeral progressives’ movement.

Fifth, the large attendance of people from the broad church – an inappropriate metaphor – that was two years ago called farewell innovators but which could be described as funeral progressives. There is probably a better collective term for the diverse group wanting to provide an end of life service/information/resource that is a significant improvement on the current drab and dreary offering.

The one puzzling issue for this attendee (My Last Song was nominated for the Best internet bereavement resource) was the award for Embalmer of the Year.  My source for information on green funerals is Julia Hailes, author of the Green Consumer Guide, who states that embalming the body with formaldehyde is particularly damaging to the environment.

I was therefore a tad surprised to see Best Embalmer as an award category (I have nothing against embalmers – I sent much time talking to the charming nominee Julie-Anne Lowe and her family who had come from Liverpool to attend).

My puzzlement was made more complete because other attendees were right in the green burial space, for example Jan Hall from the Natural Death Centre and Claire and Rupert Callender from the Green Funeral Company.

I’m all for accepting as many people as possible into the funeral progressives’ tent, but are embalmers progressive? Maybe some are but they weren’t allowed to display any progressive credentials to those attending the ceremony.

The story, from Northern Ireland, was newsworthy because sick vandals had set the animal alight and although not killed, it was put out of its suffering by being humanely destroyed.

The Lisburn police force put a note on their Facebook page which repeated the phrase used by the dog’s owners that it had been ‘put to sleep.’

This euphemism for the death of a pet is clearly misleading. Living things wake from sleep, their lives continue. Dead animals remain dead so to describe their death as being asleep is dishonest.

The often used dishonesty is justified by the misguided belief that one shouldn’t upset a child by telling it that the loved family pet is dead. But to lie to the child is surely worse than the short term grief felt because an animal has died.

As adults, we don’t lie to each other about the permanence of death, but we are still reluctant to address it, despite the excellent work of the Dying Matters coalition.

If we continue to deny death and dying because our mortality is too upsetting, too awkward, too disturbing, too embarrassing to address, we won’t have the end of life experience we want. By end of life experience I mean the medical, spiritual, physical and emotional needs leading to the death; and also the farewell event, the funeral.

Ignore death and dying and the result could be prolonged, futile, painful and distressing medical intervention; and an anonymous, dreary, depressing funeral service.

Address the inevitable and you can be in charge of how and where you want to die, and you can plan for a personal, positive, celebratory end of life event that will add pleasure to the memories your loved ones have of you.

And these loved ones of course include children. If they are told you’ve gone to sleep, their memories will be of a dishonest confusion.

So, BBC, vets, police, parents, don’t tell children the family pet has gone to sleep. Use the death of a family pet to introduce children to the idea of death and that it is a part of life we have to manage.

It was the now usual pattern. At one of the bases where the Islamists are training those of our young men disloyal enough to take their place when they return to the Middle East next year, one of our resistance fighters enrolled only to take the first opportunity to slay the occupiers.

In fact, the ‘loyalty’ of most of these trainees is questionable…many either belong to the British Intrepid Terrorists (BRITS) resistance movement or are sympathetic to us.

While we BRITS are still divided between Catholics and Protestants, fundamentalists and atheists, moderates and extremists, England versus the other nations, we’re united by our belief that we should run Britain the way it has been run for centuries and our hatred of an army that has slaughtered so many innocent British people.

We didn’t invite the Islamists here to shore up the corrupt Blair regime, but they invaded nevertheless, telling us and the world it was for our own good because Blair was ‘moderate’ whereas we BRITS and our supporters – most of the population – wanted free elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, equality between men and women, decent education for girls, tolerance for people of all backgrounds and religions… and to drink alcohol as we have done for centuries.

Yes, some of our beers ended up on the streets of the Middle East but that is hardly an excuse for an army of muslim zealots to tear up our barley and destroy our breweries.  How would they like it if we sent our troops to ruin their poppy crop?

Faced with such occupiers, hostile to and ignorant of our traditions and values, the British people (apart from those who gain from assisting the Islamists and the Blairite administration it’s shoring up) have made their lives hell.

The Islamists policy was to defeat the BRITS (believing we were an unpopular group of extremists) and then convert the rest of the British people to be ‘moderates’, to support Blair and his cronies, to keep our boys and girls apart as they grow up, to persecute gays and minorities, to abstain from alcohol and give groups of local elders powers to decide civil disputes. They should have known the British would never be told how to live by people who have no idea of our history and values.

And despite their use of the most advanced weapons and the terrible toll of lives of our freedom fighters, our bravery and determination to remain British has given us victory.

The Islamist Force to Protect Britain were doomed from the start, and our resistance has forced them to announce they are going back to their countries – Saudia Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and those other feeble states who have sent their young men on such a thankless task.

Their politicians’ face saving tactic in the months before they go is to train some of our people to be police or security officers to enforce Blair’s corrupt laws after they pull out.

Their stupidity knows no bounds…this training gives our brave resistance fighters the weapons with which to kill their trainers, and the easiest of opportunities to do so. No wonder the people of these Islamist countries want their young men to leave as soon as possible.

The BRITS have won! We fought them in the back streets of London, the Yorkshire moors, the Scottish Highlands, the valleys of South Wales. Now they are holed up in their compounds, going on meaningless patrols of moribund villages, and even here we BRITS kill or maim them.

Long live the free people of Britain! And if those Islamists have any sense, they won’t interfere again in countries they know little about and have little interest in.

As a Merseyside police officer said: ‘The images on the computers cannot be replaced. This burglary has devastated the family.’

This was the last thing this poor family deserved, because the mother, Laura, was only 29 when diagnosed with an aggressive cancer which took her life six weeks later. In those six weeks, she had recorded herself singing and other messages as well as photos for the family, and in particular her young son Elliot.

It is a real life example of the benefits of the My Last Song Lifebox. This is a secure online storage area which can only be created by the owner, and only accessed by the people to whom he or she gives an access key that will open the Lifebox on your PC or other device.

Within the Lifebox are sections to make it simple to store information. These include photos, music, scrapbooks, lifestory, friends, family, funeral wishes, favourite things…there’s even a section for your secrets.

It can also store a copy of your will, advance decision (aka living will) and death plan.

There’s a free period for people to try the Lifebox.  The more who store their precious memories in the Lifebox, the less chance of the terribly sad loss suffered by Laura’s family.

This is not because we think he deserves privacy. Indeed we support The Sun’s arguments for publishing the photos…they inform a discussion about the Prince, his behaviour, his character, his friends and his security taking place across the country and beyond.

Nor are we, as a website, cowed by the Leveson inquiry. Unlike the Sun, other UK newspapers seem frightened to publish these photographs in case the judge decides that the level of media regulation he’ll undoubtedly recommend is heightened a notch or two.

We haven’t been influenced by St James’s Palace or those close to the Prince who have asked the media quite reasonably to respect the privacy of a young man doing nothing more than having a good time with friends.

The deciding issue for My Last Song was a business reason. We have created a Lifebox, a secure online storage area for people’s memories to be available for future generations to access and understand better the life and times of the departed loved one.

The Lifebox has easy to populate sections including ‘Family’, ’Friends’, ‘Lifestory’, ‘Obituary’ and, yes, ‘Secrets’.

The Lifebox can only be opened by those given an access key, and once opened nothing within the Lifebox can be altered.

Each section has the facility to store photographs and other digital information.

We want our visitors to understand the benefit to them and their loved ones of populating their Lifebox with the memories, even secrets, that they only want close family and friends to see. These may include photographs, videos, letters, emails that would be very embarrassing if made available to a wider public.

And that dear reader is why you won’t see photos of Prince Harry on My Last Song.

Due to an unavoidable family commitment, I was a late comer, joining those of his friends who had stayed to spread his ashes as our final farewell to our dear departed, troubled and unforgettable Bernard Shaw.

I had missed a good party attended by many old and newer of his diverse friends and close and, it seemed, somewhat bemused family.

Thankfully the essentials were still in place – good friends, Bern’s favourite music reminding us of the soundtrack to his life, lovely food, copious drink, shared memories and a surreal, part comic part tragic atmosphere.

And in the middle of the garden table around which we were enjoying the last of the food and wine was the urn containing Bern’s ashes.  As he had been so many times in the past years, Bern was, if not the life and soul of the party, the central attraction.

My arrival sparked the discussion about the final farewell, the spreading of his ashes.

Bern’s cremains, cremulated appropriately into a fine powder, were going into the Thames, over the side of Lambeth Bridge. So Bern was carefully poured into several sandwich bags which, along with two bottles of champagne and colourful disposable cups, joined the convoy that parked close to the bridge a few minutes before Big Ben struck 11.

It was a lovely balmy evening with wonderful views of the Palace of Westminster and the central London skyline as we chose the place on the virtually deserted bridge over which Bern was about to be poured.

The champagne bottle popped as Big Ben chimed. We toasted Bern, and then we each walked to our own little space, emptied our bags over the side of the bridge and said our silent: ‘goodbye old mate.’

Before Their Time is a musical resource, a series of CDs, dedicated to the memory of people who died young to help loved ones recover from the emotional trauma and extended grief that follows a premature death.

The variety of music included in Before Their Time appeals to a broad audience, and although people will be familiar with some of the songs and performers, many will be new to most listeners. Executive Producer Michael Whitman hopes that listeners will discover a universality in the songs’ messages, and that these memorial songs, about the spirit of life as well as the poignancy of loss, will be remembered for their beauty even more than for the grief they express.

Besides offering musical comfort, this project raises money and visibility for organisations helping individuals and families going through end-of-life experiences with revenue from sales going to hospice and suicide prevention programmes in the US.

We wish it well, and hope that visitors to My Last Song and readers of this blog purchase some or all of these powerful, moving and beautiful pieces of music.

She works for an online company that provides life insurance quotes, and she drew my attention to a piece they have on their website, 8 Ways Funeral Homes Will Try To Rip You Off.

I like it because of the humour: “While funeral homes may stop short of asking you if you want fries with your casket, they may try to convince you to add on products and services you simply don’t need.”

It also warns of what I hope is a practice not used here, which is that funeral homes (UK English: Funeral Directors) employ ‘grief counsellors’ who call the bereaved family and try to upsell, or as they put it: “a salesperson trying to guilt-trip you into upgrading to a $5,000 coffin.”

The way not to get ripped off is to be better informed, which is why Hannah and her colleagues have written such a useful and engaging piece.

It is why here in the UK  Charles Cowling, publisher of the Good Funeral Guide, should be supported and congratulated. The funeral directors he recommends are those like Poppy Mardall, who are moving away from what Charles calls the ‘hush-and-awe’ approach, to be more modern, transparent and flexible.

What a contrast to the Co-operative Funeralcare’s venal approach exposed earlier this year.

Her business is recommended by the Good Funeral Guide and the Natural Death Centre and they don’t give out their recommendations lightly.

Poppy wrote a particularly interesting piece in Huffington Post, Funerals: Why Do We Spend So Much? She answered the question in these words:

“The reason we blow money on funerals… is a mixture of the unstoppable pain we feel after a death, mixed with our complete inexperience of arranging a funeral, with a drop of terror at finding ourselves in an undertaker’s shop decked out in the style of Oliver Twist. We will go along with anything they suggest. Which is insane. Because whilst undertakers are often lovely people…they are running a business and they need to pay for the costs of the fleet of hearses, the chapels of rest, the embalmer’s salary. So they’re going to encourage you to buy the whole package.”

She is absolutely right, and it’s been clear to me for a long time that people pay too much for funerals because they are uninformed customers making what is usually a panic purchase.

There is also another reason, and that is the family dynamics, or psychology. Which family member is going to say: “Do we really need to spend so much on mother’s funeral?” Who would risk the recrimination of wanting to save money on the funeral, or the shame of the implicit lack of money to pay for it?

My Last Song was created to inform people of the choices they had, to encourage people to plan ahead, thereby turning our visitors into informed customers of the funeral trade and able to make a more rational rather than panic purchase.

We also knew of the problems of ensuring that funeral wishes – let’s say wanting a green funeral, or a humanist celebration of life, or having a message read or played to the gathering –  were recorded and fulfilled.

That’s why we spent a lot of time, and money, creating a digital Lifebox in which funeral wishes can be stored securely, available only to close family members. The Lifebox does more than store your funeral wishes, it helps you record everythin that was important about your life that you want future generations to know about you…a sort of digital immortality.

Use your Lifebox properly and not only will your funeral be remembered for the right reasons, but your life as well. It’s the least you can do for your family.

I hope the politicians who involved the UK in Afghanistan, those that continued with this flawed foreign policy and the senior military men, either active or recently retired, who announce to the media that our strategy is paying off, sleep well at night.

I’m not sure how they can as they have sacrificed over 400 brave young lives in an excise they knew was doomed. History alone should have taught them to stay out of Afghanistan, though if they had analysed the situation in the country in 2000 the only sensible decision would have been to leave the country to sort out its own divisions and problems. The argument that by confronting the Taliban in Helmand province the streets of our cities would be made safe from Islamic terrorists is palpable nonsense.

Let’s hope that the abject defeat suffered in Iraq, the unsuccessful campaign against the Taliban (a collective noun for warlords, Islamists, bandits and nationalists) in Afghanistan and the failed and dangerous state that Libya now is – all reports show a descent into anarchy and lawless revenge killings – will stop any thought of intervention in Syria.

The situation there is desperate…it is beyond comprehension how Syrians can kill and torture fellow Syrians, how President Assad can turn his troops on his own people, how doctors turn in patients to the authorities if they have been injured while demonstrating.

But as the Russians and Chinese have argued, to use force in Syria in an attempt to bring peace will make the situation worse. Russia in particular knows first hand how the various factions are being supported by Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose enmity makes every dispute in the Middle East a war by proxy. Israel is, of course, happy to see a hostile neighbour at war with itself and will do nothing to help resolve the situation.

Add to that the febrile atmosphere of sectarian hatred: Christian against Muslim, Shia against Sunni, and the previously persecuted Alawis who now control the army and security forces determined to hang on to power at any cost. The President’s family is from the Alawite community and was from a poor background until his father rose in the military and took power in a coup in 1970.

You have only to read about the Hama massacre to know what Assad has inherited from his father and other family members.

Syria is now gripped by a civil war and the international community is unable to impose a peaceful outcome.  We will look on hopeless, horrified, depressed and desperate to alleviate the suffering. But we will also be helpless…we cannot help and to try will only make matters worse.

Around 22,000 people responded to the first survey to measure care leading up to death – published by the Office for National Statistics.

The most striking, though not surprising, finding is that for those who expressed a preference, the majority (71 per cent) preferred to die at home, although most people died in hospital (53 per cent).

People’s reluctance to die in hospital, is reflected in the findings that hospitals, where most died, had the lowest ratings for caring for the dying with dignity and respect.

Only 30 per cent of people who died in hospital were given a choice about where they died, said relatives, compared to two-thirds of those who died in a hospice.

Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, made a key observation on the findings: “The end of life care which needs more work and investment is the involvement of patients in the decisions made about their care, and the recording of those decisions.”

She is absolutely right. Too often the end of life – dying and death – is ignored because it’s awkward, distressing or embarrassing to address. So the key decisions such as level of medical intervention, where the patient wants to die, who they want present and the type of funeral are left to medics, grieving loved ones and, in the case of the funeral, the chosen funeral director.

It’s going to take time to change this attitude of denying the inevitable, although the Dying Matters coalition is doing a great job, but change it will especially when baby boomers increasingly address their mortality. This is the ‘me, me, me’ generation, and they have been well informed and self centred about most decisions they’ve made and the same will be true for their end of life choices.

My Last Song has anticipated this by providing a death plan template which encourages the patient to be the centre of decision making, but involving their doctors, carers, close family members and, if appropriate, a minister of religion.

The issues covered are medical treatment, where to die, who you want present, and more holistic items such as any music you may want to hear, pictures you want to see, fragrances you wish to smell, how you may want to be dressed or made up. It also covers the pragmatic such as planning what happens to the pet and suggesting that the funeral wishes and will are up to date.

A death plan won’t guarantee a good death, but its adoption will ensure that a far greater number of deaths are comfortable and comforting.  That’s the least we deserve, surely.

“Would you consider advising families to research the growing number of cheaper and eco-friendly alternatives to wood-based coffins? Are you anticipating a growing demand for more individual farewell ceremonies and if so how are you training your staff to supply these bespoke funerals?”

This is the answer I received:

“Thank you for making contact

you may find visiting our web site to undertnad how we support a whole range of differing styles of fuenral arrangements. Including the items you make note of.

Cleint Relations”

I can tolerate the poor punctuation and improper grammar. The misspelling of ‘funeral’, ‘understand’ and ‘client’ is appalling.  And what does it tell us about the organisation?

The reputation of Co-operative Funeralcare has been badly damaged by a TV exposure of dishonest, venal and disrespectful practices. It quickly put two video responses from its contrite and concerned managing director George Tinning on its website along with the questions. So far so good, as the buck stops at the top.

Below Mr Tinning’s talking head are the questions and the space to ask your own questions. Standard crisis management stuff, with the ability to ask questions winning some brownie points.

But Co-operative Funeralcare didn’t bother to ensure the people who were answering them were trained or competent, if the response I got is in anyway typical.

Think about it. The person chosen by The Co-operative Funeralcare to communicate to people wanting to find out more following the exposure of poor practice did not have the necessary competence to do this job properly.

What does such an attitude say about its delivery of funeral services?

Planned purchase. You know you need to make the purchase; you research the costs, value for money, quality and availability of the product or service. You get information online or from experts, friends and relatives whose knowledge and expertise you trust. Once planned, (or researched, possibly a better term) you make the purchase.

Panic buy. Something you didn’t plan or anticipate happens and to deal with the issue you have to purchase something at very short notice. You defer to other people’s expertise, don’t question the price, buy immediately…and often regret it afterwards because what you purchased wasn’t fit for purpose or value for money.

Now let’s look at the purchase of funeral services. In theory they should be planned purchases. (If you think you or your loved ones will live forever, stop reading here.) Once we reach a certain age, suffer from terminal or life threatening illnesses or feel for whatever reason the time is right, we have to address our – or our loved ones’ – mortality. And this, of course, includes thinking about the funeral.

And yet the vast majority of funerals are panic buys. Despite the best efforts of the excellent Dying Matters coalition, death and dying is still a taboo, ignored until a loved one has died at which time grieving relatives, in a state of shock, go to the funeral directors they have used before, or are nearest in the local high street, or whose marketing messages have been most successful.

There’s a good chance that the funeral director so chosen is part of the Co-operative Funeralcare group, whose venal, dishonest and disrespectful practices in exploiting panic buyers were exposed by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme on Monday 25 June.

While I’m fairly sure the programme highlighted practices that most Co-operative Funeralcare employees wouldn’t accept, the impersonal treatment of bodies and the desire to make the greatest profit is an inevitable result of a corporate mentality of money before service rather than the other way round.

Understandably, most people have no interest or desire to know much about funerals.  Which is why it is so reassuring that trustworthy sources of information, advice and expertise exist.

The Good Funeral Guide is a comprehensive guide. The Natural Death Centre is ideal for those wanting to plan a natural burial. You wouldn’t expect me to ignore the wide range of advice found in My Last Song.  (My apologies to those growing number of organisations not mentioned whose sympathetic advice on funeral planning also enables the customer to be better informed.)

As baby boomers – used to good service, questioning old fashioned rituals, less likely to be church going – increasingly address their mortality, a big change in attitudes towards funerals will take place. They will be informed purchasers, they will think about the environmental impact of their funerals, they will want to stamp their individual personalities on their final event.

The funeral industry, in the main rather conservative and distrustful of innovation, will have to deal with informed customers making planned purchases and demanding a very personalised service which will test the professionalism and business skills of many funeral directors.

The two conglomerates, Dignity and Co-operative Funeralcare, should anticipate this now and start providing a more imaginative and customer led approach because otherwise smaller, more creative companies will take growing amounts of business from them.  It will be interesting to see how they deal with what will be quite revolutionary changes.

The production line ‘hub’ for the treatment of bodies is the inevitable result of rationalising (making more profitable) the most time consuming part of the process. The advice to embalm – damaging to the environment, expensive and usually unnecessary – and the reluctance to make customers aware of cheaper coffins, are also the results of profit being more important than service.

Given the nature of TV exposures, I’m pretty sure that the majority of Co-operative Funeralcare staff give a better service and are more sympathetic to the wishes of their customers than portrayed in the programme. But since when has good news or good behaviour been highlighted by the media?

Charles Cowling, publisher of the Good Funeral Guide, made the very good point during the programme that most customers make their funeral decisions without any knowledge…a funeral is normally a panic purchase.

Death, our own and that of loved ones, is inevitable so there is really no excuse not to plan for it. It is also depressing, awkward and difficult to address. So go one of two ways. Ignore or plan.

Ignore and you risk the treatment exposed by Dispatches…and the more likely the profit motive will prevail over ethical service within the funeral industry.

Plan and you’ll get the send off you or your loved one deserve, pay a lot less and help move the funeral industry forward. For businesses are only as good as their customers want them to be.

My Last Song was established because we believed a ‘good life deserves a good ending’. Another catch phrase that sums up our philosophy is the encouragement to visitors to ‘plan their exit strategies’.

To this end we have many articles on funeral planning, but to make matters easier…and to get the best service possible from the funeral director, go to the funeral planning checklist article and print out the checklist. Use it to plan the funeral, and get the best deal.

If you think your demise, or that of loved ones, is some time away, store it in your Lifebox.

Far better than ignoring the funeral planning until it’s too late, because then it really is too late.

It’s from Dr Kimberly Manning, who works at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta Georgia. In it she describes how and why the decision was made not to prolong unnecessarily the life of one Mrs Cafferty and how it was accepted by her family, there at the hospital by the side of the dying woman.

When challenged by a colleague why the medical team shouldn’t do all they could to keep this patient alive, Dr Manning replied: “Mrs Cafferty is dying.”

The blog continues: “I stated the facts and left it at that. In silence, it set in. I could see their wheels turning. Imagining those same things that I was thinking like, Why are we sticking her with needles and pricking her fingers for blood sugars when those things hurt? Why are we not focusing on keeping her as comfortable as possible?

“We entered her room that morning and…discussed these things with the family. By this point, Mrs Cafferty was lapsing in and out of consciousness, so this conversation took place with her children. And no, this was not the first time that the subject of end-of-life care had been brought up with them, but it was the first time they were ready to accept what was happening.

“ “Let her go in peace,” the eldest daughter finally said. “This is our decision. Mama would not want us to keep her alive this way. Please just keep her comfortable.” The rest of the family nodded in sombre agreement.”

Why this is important is that it describes a changing of a mindset that assumes the medical profession should do all it can to keep someone alive regardless of the diminution of quality of that life, to one where the futility of such intervention leads to its withdrawal. And so, with the informed consent of the family, medical treatment is ended so that death can come naturally, with no more tubes, chemicals, machines or doctors’ valuable time used to delay the inevitable.

In short, society and the medical profession are beginning to believe that while the prolonging of life is accepted as a medical absolute, to prolong death is a futile, cruel and costly perversion.

To make this changing view of medical practice more acceptable, it’s essential that people have their individual death plans, filled in following discussion by the ailing patient, their close family, their medical professionals and if appropriate a minister of religion.

My Last Song has created a holistic death plan that covers the medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and practical issues, even down to who looks after the pets. It includes considerations such as the aromas the patient wants to smell, music to hear, people to be present, where the patient wants to end their life and, of course, the level of medical intervention.

Its aim is to make the end of life as comfortable and comforting as possible.

The easy to complete template can be found in the Lifebox section of My Last Song. Once filled in, it can be securely stored, updated and accessed by selected loved ones so the end of life experienced by the dying will be one supported by those like Dr Manning who have the quality of their patients’ lives foremost in their minds.

Gail runs A Good Goodbye out of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Its strapline, which appeals hugely to the My Last Song team, is ‘Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die’. We have two straplines which benefit from greater brevity but lack the clever humour. They are: ‘Plan Your Exit Strategy’ and ‘A Good Life Deserves A Good Ending’.

Gail’s blog looked at what she loosely titles funeral films, and then describes the great music played in the soundtracks.  Quite a few have been chosen by visitors to Family Bhive in their fave five – the five songs they want to be remembered by, or played at their funeral, or send off party. Several haven’t yet been chosen but should be listened to because they are  excellent farewell songs.

What was encouraging was the confirmation that there is  a growing interest in the importance of getting the right music played at your farewell, rather than clichéd hymns (and I recognise how important hymns are for those of the Christian faith) and even clichéd secular songs.

My Way comes top of those songs that show little imagination. There are better Frank Sinatra tracks, even though Paul Anka’s lyrics are very apt for the final review of a life about to end.

In the past few months there have been increasing number of online forums, mainly in the US, Canada and UK, discussing funeral songs. The range of suggestions has been vast, covering most modern music genres, as well as arias and classical pieces.

Anything which makes people think about their mortality and plan to make it as positive and successful a goodbye as possible should be encouraged. That’s why we are part of the Dying Matters coalition here in the UK and want to share information and ideas with people like Gail Ruben in the US.

In the UK, the excellent website Gransnet, founded by Justine Roberts who previously set up Mumsnet, posted a forum on whether photographing funerals was acceptable. I’m a great fan of Gransnet, not least because of the wisdom and eloquence of its editor, Geralding Bedell. Other good things about it are the general common sense and progressive views of its members and visitors and its use of social media including twitter.

I used twitter to point out that funeral photography was a growing trend, and linked to articles on My Last Song by Priscilla Etienne and Rachel Wallace, two excellent funeral photographers. Hopefully Gransnet twitter followers will consider the benefits of commissioning either of these photographers the next time they have to organise a funeral, which I also hope is not for a long time.

In the US, Carolyn McClanahan contributed a thoughtful piece to Forbes, I’ve Accepted I’m Dying. Now What? This was as good a description of why I started My Last Song four years ago as it’s possible to get.

It urged people to plan their funeral in advance, work out the probate, put their financial affairs in order and leave their memories, wishes, life stories for others to share, in the form of specially recorded videos.  This is an endorsement for the My Last Song Lifebox idea, and Carolyn hadn’t come across My Last Song when she wrote this piece.

I commented, repeating my support for her views, namely a good life deserves a good ending…but it has to be planned.  Carolyn immediately replied that the problem was getting people to ‘do it’.

And she’s right…death, dying, our mortality, our funerals are the most difficult subjects to discuss and plan.  My blog yesterday argued that if the reason for discussing death was to have as good an ending as possible, the discussion might just be more approachable.  The vehicle for this discussion would be the filling in of the ailing person’s death plan. It makes sense to me, but there again it would…I created the death plan template.

Hopefully Carolyn McClanahan will see the benefits of a death plan and write about it in Forbes.

So we take the easy way out, and the end of life decisions are then made for the dying patient rather than by the dying person. Hence the medical professionals will assume that the family expect medical intervention.

Family members too will take decisions, usually confirming the doctor’s view that they want prolonged medical intervention so their loved one lives longer.  Some will decide they haven’t the ability, facilities or inclination to care for a dying loved one and so the person whose life has run its course is left to suffer unnecessarily prolonged intervention in a frightening and often lonely hospital.

Very few medical professionals or close loved ones will think about the sensory elements of the dying person’s end of life experience. Where do they want to die? Who do they wish to be present, or not present? What do they want to see – photos of loved ones, lovely views?  What smells would they like to experience as their life ends? Do they want their hands held, to be caressed, to be massaged?

They will, of course, want to be rid of concerns, so issues such as their funeral wishes, their probate, and the care of their property and pets, should be dealt with in advance so they can ‘die in peace’.

The Royal College of Physicians’ report that recommends that doctors are regularly trained on communicating end of life treatment with their patients is clearly limited to their role in providing suitable end of life treatment. Quite rightly, they see the need for planning for the death well in advance in the hope that patient and doctor have a meaningful discussion. The palliative care, which should extend to the spiritual and physical, will be limited to the medical.

My Last Song believes that by having a personalised death plan, the medical decisions and the existential decisions can be discussed and agreed at the same time, with the involvement of the patient, the medical professionals, loved ones and if appropriate ministers of religion.  We’ve created a death plan template to make it as easy as possible to fill in, edit and save.

The result should be a more comfortable and comforting end of life experience, and if this is the likely outcome, then the discussion is less difficult to initiate, less likely to be misconstrued.

They brought us into this world, nurtured us, educated us, paid for us and still play a big part in our lives.  For those whose mothers aren’t alive, their absence often highlights how much we loved them because we miss them and their love for us all the more.

So with Mother’s Day only two days away, consider the virtues of buying your mother a Lifebox.

This is a specially designed and easy to use secure online storage area in which her digital memories, images, videos, music, wishes, achievements can be stored.  If she’s not confident with computers, then younger members of the family can help her, which will increase the bonding between family members of different generations.

Populating the Lifebox with her memories, names of her friends and relatives and her life story means personal family and social history is captured that would otherwise be lost forever.

It also means that your mother will feel valued and pleased that the family want her memories to be accessed and read for generations to come. And you and your offspring will also find reassurance and happiness in opening her Lifebox from time to time to know more about her, her life, her achievements, her dreams, her wishes.

You will also find it useful too as it will encourage her to write down her final wishes and the information the family will need when she eventually passes.  Okay, this might seem shocking, but it’s far more shocking when nothing has been planned, nothing decided and the details you or the executor is lost or difficult to locate.

But to stress the positive…how wonderful that by having her Lifebox, your mother’s memory will live forever.

A cruel, or stupid, sub-editor highlighted the crassness of Pollard’s piece by selecting this statement as the stand out: ‘Now that going out is as easy as staying in and watching TV on the sofa, we behave when we’re out as if we are watching TV on the sofa’. Clearly Pollard hasn’t tried to reach or park in theatreland in the past ten years, but why let facts get in the way of a space filler.

Rod Liddle fills his space with a daft piece that argues the falling support of right wing racist parties will result in a rise in racial violence because bigots and fascist thugs need an outlet for their anger.

Lucy Bannerman writes just about the only worthwhile piece, reporting on Zambia’s achievement of changing goverment peacefully after last year’s election – fairly rare in Africa – and the appointment of a white man as vice President – understandably an exception in post-colonial, post-apartheid Africa.

James Delingpole, who a few weeks ago contributed what was virtually a press release praising the children’s book The Hunger Games, this week attempts a critique of Quantitative Easing, equating it with Soviet style planned economic policy.  He fails, not least because he admits that he isn’t an expert in this area. Is there, readers probably wonder, any area on which Mr Delingpole is an expert?

In the Arts section, it goes without saying the reviewer, Andrew Lambirth, is taken in by Cy Twombly’s scribbles.  This sentence confirms the reviewer is a fool. “Looked at in one way, it’s only a bit of scribble. Differently angled, it’s a rough chimney shape in blue crayon with five dabs of pink oil paint and three further touches of pink.” So it doesn’t matter which way you hang it up were you daft enough to buy it.

But why I won’t read another copy of The Spectator is the insert, The Spectator Guide to Independent Schools.

The publisher  of, and contributors to, The Spectator are too myopic to realise that private education, available only to privileged children, divides and perverts our society. Unimportant to them that the guide is full of fluff such as the importance of going to open days to see if a private school is worth the money, which schools specialise in sport, why one writer enjoyed his private school days as an army cadet, and the most absurdly self indulgent and banal piece by James Delingpole (yes, him again) justifying why he sent his son, whom he calls ‘Boy’, to Papplewick, a school in, where else, Ascot.

‘Boy’ was boardered there because it had a snake club, and when taking his son round on the open day, the inane Delingpole senior was hit on the chin by a rearing and understandably annoyed snake. ‘From that moment on,’ he says, ‘ I knew this was the school for Boy.’

‘Boy’ apparently asked his parents during the tour: ‘Might I really be able to come here?’ Anywhere rather than staying in the company of his pompous father would be a considerable relief to ‘Boy’, one suspects.

The adverts from these wretchedly unrepresentative educational establishments in the guide may subsidise The Spectator, but it now has one fewer reader.

Dr Evison said that when she visited the country two years ago her thinking about the cause for which her son died changed. The social pressures as well as “the revenge culture” and the physical size and layout of Afghanistan made her doubt if the war was winnable.

No war waged by foreign forces in Afghanistan is winnable. Experts in the Foreign Office will have stated this to Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, pointing out not just the lessons of history but that the current situation with the country divided into competing ethnic groups, tribes, warlords, bandits, Islamic extremists, run by an unpopular, ineffective and feeble central government, and with Pakistan, Iran and other neighbours intent on destabilising it would result in heavy casualties inflicted by a fanatical, invisible and, in some areas, popular force called the Taliban.

They would have told the politicians that the Taliban, the religious extremists and warlords would fight any moves to impose external values and culture with deadly effect. They would have dismissed the notion that an external force could defeat the Taliban, build a coalition to govern democratically or change a culture so embedded and so utterly different to ours.

Blair and Straw had commited to helping the US to invade Afghanistan and ignored the advice. Eleven years later and 400 plus brave, loyal and never to be forgotten deaths later (as well as thousands of innocent Afghans whose deaths have made the country’s hatred of the west far more intense) we are pulling out with our tails between our legs.

Let’s hope that our abject military and political failure in Afghanistan and the abysmal achievements of overthrowing Sadam and Gadhafi (Iraq and Libya now destined for years of bloody division, settling of scores and slaughter of innocents while Iran, Saudi and Israel fight proxy battles) prevent the west from considering any further military interventions in either Iran and Syria.

There are few certainties in politics or international affairs but the following is one of them: “The aims and objectives of external intervention in totalitarian Islamic countries will never be achieved, and instead intervention will make the situation more unstable and dangerous.”

Risking, then, online isolation, let me point to the popularity of the display of Ghanaian and English ‘designer’ coffins at January’s South Bank exhibition on death, and also to the growing trend for decorating coffins of loved ones with bespoke designs, graffiti, illustrations, words of affection and humour, even glued on newspaper cuttings and photographs of footballers and pin ups.

I’m all for this trend as it will make people think about the choice of coffin, rather than nod through what the funeral director suggests as the price of the coffin makes up a large part of the cost of the funeral.

I’m particularly exercised by this issue because the cross on the back of Bernard’s coffin was incongruously facing an almost exclusively atheist group of mourners throughout his humanist funeral.

On a range of costs you have at one end the elaborately built coffins much loved by some Ghanaians and the wonderful Crazy Coffins, to the plain cardboard coffins that will be supplied direct to the family from companies such as Greenfield Creations.

I believe that the involvement of bereaved loved ones, or those facing bereavement, in choosing an appropriate coffin (such an eco-friendly type if the departed was concerned with the environment) and decorating it with personal images and messages, can reduce the feeling of helplessness, anxiety and anguish that death inevitably causes.

Playing a part in personalising the coffin is a way of saying that you accept death and aren’t going to collapse into grief when confronted by it. So, I’ll risk telling my friends and fellow party goers that the next time I’m involved in a funeral I’m going to decorate the coffin.

It might clear the room, but at least I’m doing my bit to change our culture. (Probably why the last time you were invited to a party was five years ago – ed.)

Funerals will only be ‘successful’ if properly planned and that takes time and effort from those involved.  The funeral director, W Uden, did a good job, though commissioned by Bern’s sister Joy and his best friend Bill, so I can’t speak for them but everything was agreed and delivered according to plan.

They recommended an excellent humanist celebrant, Jeanne Rathbone, who put the ceremony in a humanist context, understood and related Bern’s positive characteristics and personality and outlined the key events in his life without diluting the tributes that followed. She was most sympathetic and respectful, especially when relating Joy’s reminiscences of their childhood together.

Jeanne also augmented the readings by reciting two appropriate poems, If I Should Go by Joyce Grenfell and How Long Is A Man’s Life? by Brian Patten.

West Norwood crem (see note at the end) doesn’t use the Wesley Music system for playing farewell tracks, so I recorded a CD  with the music for the ceremony.

The tracks were played absolutely on cue by the crematorium manager…Bernard came in to Space Intro/Fly Like An Eagle by the Steve Miller Band. My tribute – memories of our friendship and his unique qualities – ended by detailing some of the music we shared. This included Tom Waits, and so was played his tender, anguished version of Somewhere, from West Side Story.

Then Bill, a loyal and generous friend of Bernard, recalled two or three very humorous moments they shared when Bern stayed with him following his time in Frankfurt. We needed some laughter and Bill delivered.

Hilary, Bern’s partner for an intense period many years ago and who, like many others, has stayed loyal and affectionate, read most sympathetically The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. This was chosen by Maggie, Bern’s widow who came over from Frankfurt to attend.

Maggie was deeply affected by the funeral and hugely grateful to all those who attended. She designed the excellent order of ceremony leaflets, using some great photos of Bernard.

The track played during the time for quiet contemplation was Meadow of Delight and Sadness from John Barry’s lovely The Beyondness of Things.  And as we watched the curtains close around Bernard for his final journey, The Joker by the Steve Miller Band played, understood and appreciated by everyone who had cried tears of laughter when Bern told a joke or acted out a ridiculous monologue.

Virtually all came back to The Rosendale to share memories, catch up on old friendships and listen to a playlist to which various friends contributed. The staff were helpful, the food excellent and the music system worked well. More important, it was good to meet members of Bern’s family who attended and whose memories of Bernard were so touching to hear.

Bernard, I’m glad to say, had a good funeral. Several people said he would have approved. On his behalf, then, thanks to everyone concerned. Continue to remember him well.

West Norwood Cemetery is an excellent example of a Victorian metropolitan lawn cemetery and has the finest collection of sepulchral monuments in the capital, including a dedicated Greek Orthodox necropolis. Lambeth Council built the crematorium on the top of the hill from which there’s a great view of London. I recommend it as a peaceful and interesting stroll.

67%: Making sure family is not burdened financially by my care;
66%: Being comfortable and without pain;
61%: Being at peace spiritually;
60%: Making sure family is not burdened by tough decisions about my care;
60%: Having loved ones around me;
58%: Being able to pay for the care I need;
57%: Making sure my wishes for medical care are followed;
55%: Not feeling alone;
44%: Having doctors and nurses who will respect my cultural beliefs and values;
36%: Living as long as possible;
33%: Being at home;
32%: Having a close relationship with my doctor.

The Foundation, in summarising the findings, says that there’s “a disconnect between what Californians want (a natural death at home) and reality.” The various poll answers, available in the pdf, prove this conclusively.

What’s true for Californians is true for older people in this country too, and in most developed nations facing the same issues of increasing numbers of old people, the taboo around discussing dying and death, and medical advances which make prolonging life in hospital more likely than a natural death at home.

So, how to make the end of life experience less a ‘disconnect’ with what people want and more a positive, comfortable and comforting experience?

Well, encouraging ailing older people and the terminally ill to have a personal death plan would be a great step forward. It would enable the patient, their loved ones, their medical professionals and, if appropriate, their ministers of faith, to discuss openly and honestly the end of life experience the patient wants, and if at all possible, deliver these wishes.

We have created a holistic death plan that covers the medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and practical issues, even down to who looks after the pets. Less prosaic are considerations such as the aromas the patient wants to smell, music to hear, people to be present, where the patient wants to end their life and, of course, the level of medical intervention.

If the adoption of death plans became widespread, far more people would have the end of life experience they, and their loved ones, want.

To make it easy, there’s a simple to complete template in the Lifebox section of My Last Song. Once filled in, in can be securely stored, updated and accessed by selected loved ones.

The more people who have their death plans, the more seriously they will be taken by the medical profession.

Our long friendship started when we were in our mid-20s. He and his first wife became very good friends to my wife and I, both fairly new to London, and they soon introduced us to their circle of friends.  Harry and I were particularly close thanks to our love of jazz and contemporary music which we listened to for hours two or three evenings a week.

The  seven or eight years of friendships, parties, holidays, dinners, pubs and clubs were the best years of our lives, ending when the ‘set’ drifted apart as kids came on the scene or couples split up.

Harry was even then, among a pretty hard living group, the heaviest drinker and user of recreational drugs.  He was also prone to attacks of depression which he put down to his childhood with a violent alcoholic father. It made Harry difficult to be with at times, irrationally angry towards those who loved him the most and prone to self-harm.

Following the failure of his first marriage, Harry’s life went slowly downhill, mainly due to his depression and alcoholism, though he and I kept in touch as he moved around London and then many years in Germany.

He had a zest and energy for life, when on good form, and gave wonderful parties always with new circles of interesting and delightful friends, and the rump of former social circles. Whether I saw him at these parties or just for a mid-day chat, he was always drinking, and he smoked 40 or 50 cigarettes a day.

This drinking and smoking continued throughout an unsuccessful marriage (his third I think) to a long suffering, warm German woman, and ten years of unemployed misery in Frankfurt. Unsurprisingly his physical and mental health deteriorated there and at the fourth or fifth attempt he finally came back to live first with a friend in Surrey and then on his own in a flat in South London.

I was shocked when I saw him, as the ravages of the drink and cigarettes had aged him terribly. One of the few things he brought back from Germany was a list of illnesses including emphysema, osteoporosis, myopathy and pulmonary oedema. The depression was far worse, sapping him of a will to live, to do nothing more than drink and smoke.

By this time Harry had fallen out with his two sisters (his only family) and most of his friends…so he asked me if I would visit him once or twice a week to get some shopping and clean the flat. As I was only a mile away, and still liked the old rogue, I agreed.

His shopping list always started with 200 Mayfair Smooth and three large bottles of gin and three bottles of tonic, a bottle of port and two bottles of wine.  There was not much in the way of healthy food.

After I put away the shopping we usually chatted, listened to some music before I made my excuses,  his cigarette smoke making my eyes run and throat feel sore,  and unable to bear any longer the sound of accumulated phlegm gurgling in his throat.

Recently the amount of food he wanted decreased…he was losing weight, getting more and more depressed.  He sought medical help but then refused to go to hospital or GP appointments. I, and one or two other friends who saw him occasionally, told him he was drinking and smoking himself to death, to which he replied ‘Good, that’s my business not yours.’

Harry started going downhill more rapidly two or three weeks ago. I was very worried this Saturday when I visited him as he had lost a lot of weight and didn’t have the energy to get himself out of his easy chair. I told him I was going to take him to hospital or call an ambulance to get him admitted. He got very bad tempered and told me not to interfere. I said that I was going to come round tomorrow (Sunday) and come what may ensure he got to hospital.

I was too late. I opened the door to his flat at 12.15 yesterday and he was curled up on the floor, stone cold dead, his head resting on towels he had by his easy chair.

I called the police, and then the ‘emergency services’ took over…did an excellent job, contacted the coroner and organised for Harry to be taken by a local funeral director to the nearest mortuary. On the advice of the police I left his flat before the fd arrived.

The police found a few numbers on his mobile, and I had the numbers of other old friends, so yesterday afternoon and evening was spent telling people and discussing the tragedy that was Harry’s last few years. His funeral will be sparse but not completely lonely.

It’s likely that I’ll be involved in the funeral arrangements…Harry refused to discuss anything to do with his funeral or death, in effect a focus group of one who saw no point in My Last Song.

Even so, I’ll spend some time going through my memories of the music we used to listen to endlessly when in our 20s and 30s. There will be an appropriate last song for Harry, and those who attend the farewell will know why it’s been chosen.

*Not his real name. Those who know ‘Harry’ will know who this is about. I’ve also not named the wonderful people who shared parts of his life and were not always appreciated by Harry for their love and friendship.

It isn’t ‘up there’ in the sense that somewhere between the earth and space is a place where God looks down, angels flutter around and saved souls swan around feeling happy, though the more active somewhat bored…how do you do occupy yourself for ‘eternity’?

Space missions to planets and amazingly powerful telescopes haven’t come across heaven, and thanks to scientific advance we’re discovering the vast limitless expanse of space. Heaven has still to be found above us, and our spirits will have to travel very fast to reach it if it’s further than we’ve discovered so far.

I might be proved wrong and a camera on board a rocket heading for the sun might shortly send back  pictures of endless rolling hills, clear streams, clean streets, stately homes and chateaux, cake shops, choirs singing and angels plucking at harps, rows of well stocked vegetarian food stalls, sandy beaches, warm calm seas, England winning Test matches, but I doubt it.

God’s up there, Christians have been told for many hundreds of years, along with a neat hierachy of semi human helpers: cherubims, seraphims, angels and saints with special privileges such as front row seats to hear the choirs and quality time discussing serious issues with God. Jesus is up there, at His right hand, as he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

Paintings and frescos have depicted these Elysium scenes in wonderfully realistic works of art down the centuries, their creators having no doubt that the firmament they were depicting was real, God and his crew were above us, we were being judged from on high, heaven was waiting for us if we believed, and who in those days before science provided more empirical answers, wouldn’t?

For Muslims, paradise is also tangible as a bounteous bejewelled garden where, notoriously, vast numbers of virgins wait to give solace to martyrs as they arrive.

This is now considered a mistranslation of the original ancient Arabic description, and a good thing too when you think of the moral ambiguity.  But it shows that Islam like Judaism, Christianity and most religions, has created a place with physical properties where our souls, spirits or reconstituted bodies are summoned when we die.

I try to get my head round this, but can’t. I conclude, not with any pleasure, that heaven doesn’t exist. If I accept it’s a metaphysical place, it simply confirms that this definition of heaven is a device used by religions to avoid the inconvenient truth that it’s not there.

This metaphysical destination for our souls by definition has no tangible location, no pearly gates, walls, clouds to sit on. It’s a place that religions create to reassure us that when we die there is more to follow if we are good and obey a God who has not only created where we live but where we’ll go next if we pass whatever test, given final sacraments or are part of the elect. There are all sorts of obtuse rules for our entry to paradise, not surprising really, as it adds to its mystery.

The metaphysical definition of heaven has another problem for me. If heaven isn’t a physical entity, does it have a timespan? Put another way, if heaven doesn’t exist as a place, does it exist in time? When did this metaphysical heaven start to host spirits and souls? At what stage in our evolution did man have a soul? Were we only given souls when we understood the nature of our relationship with God, or when He started his relationship with us?

I don’t believe we started from Adam and Eve, so when during our evolution were we advanced enough in God’s eyes to qualify for entry to heaven? Was heaven rather lonely for the first few thousand years, and is it not uncomfortably overcrowded now?

Silly questions I know, for if it’s a metaphysical place; it’s neither empty nor full, it’s not a real place.

The more I think about it, the less chance I have of  finding heaven.

He decided to dig a bit deeper when the No 10 adviser said that loneliness is probably more dangerous to our health in retirement than smoking, to look at the research that underpinned that statement.

It is, as you’ll see if you clicked the link, pretty detailed and obtuse research which can be reduced to those with stronger social relationships had a 50 per cent increased likelihood of survival than those who lived more solitary lives.

Easton points out that research going back 30 years also showed that loneliness, or lack of social interaction, resulted in higher rates of mortality than expected.

These findings come under the heading of common sense. Humans have evolved as social creatures. Working and living together has enabled our survival and success. Being alone, not through choice but by circumstance we would rather avoid, makes us miserable, lethargic, demotivated and vulnerable.

He makes the point that if the evidence, not to mention our common sense understanding of our need for community and company, proves that loneliness is a ‘killer’, we should do more to prevent it.

Now whether it’s the job of the Government to try to make older people have more friends is doubtful. But they should give greater support to charities such as Contact the Elderly and Independent Age whose excellent schemes to reduce elderly isolation are underfunded.

They should also use the Big Society Network to create more intergenerational contact projects which will encourage young people to befriend older people and coach them to be more computer confident…and less lonely through use of the internet. The older people can impart their wisdom and knowledge to their younger friends who, in some cases, will be less likely to join gangs or participate in petty crime.

We at My Last Song are encouraged that the issues facing older people are now being seriously considered, whether it be funding their care, understanding how they want to die, giving them the send-off  they want and helping them living longer, healthier and happier lives.

Why is this important? Just look at the demographics of this country (and indeed the US where the research was carried out)…the 70 year old plus group is the fastest growing with almost 7 million people aged 70 and over by 2015 in England alone. There will be far more than this in the US. Their needs must be taken seriously.

It is written in simple, positive prose and covers all aspects of Advance Care Planning including what is the most difficult aspect, ‘Opening the conversation’.  The tone for the leaflet is set in this telling phrase: ‘Not everyone will choose to engage in such a conversation and that is fine. However, talking and planning ahead means that your wishes are more likely to be known by others.’

I was particularly pleased that the leaflet covered wishes and preferences, and that these included some of the end of life experience defined in the My Last Song ‘death plan.’  Planning for your future care suggests where you want to be, who you want to be with, types of treatment, ‘how you like to do things,’ with examples such as sleeping with the light on or having a shower instead of a bath.

If you, or an ailing loved one,  want to have a ‘good death’ instead of a lonely, frightening end of life, then read Planning for your future care and act on its advice. To make the end of life experience as good as it can be,  fill in your own personal death plan, a template for which is available in the My Last Song Lifebox.

The wishes and preferences are more holistic, covering the music you want to hear; the smells you want surrounding you; the food and drink you wish to taste; the sensations you want your body to feel, such as caressing, massaging, stroking; what you want to see, such as a lovely view or your favourite photographs; how you want to look – clothes, make up, hair style; and ensuring the practical issues are resolved so you have no concerns.

By involving loved ones, doctors and if appropriate ministers of religion or spiritual advisers, having a death plan will go a considerable way to ensuring, if possible, the death is as comfortable and comforting as possible.

From the tweets and postings by The Natural Death Centre and Emembrance, the weekend was exceptionally good and I would like to thank and praise the Southbank Centre’s Artistic Director Jude Kelly for having the courage and vision for staging the event.

She summed up the audience’s gratitude when thanking Paul Gambaccini at the end of the event, for his was a most intelligent, informed, personal, amusing and insightful analysis of funeral music. He had researched copious lists in this country, Europe and north America. He used his encyclopaedic knowledge of all types of music to add pertinent anecdotes, not least that the original lyricist of My Way electrocuted himself changing a lightbulb while standing in his bath shortly before the release of Sinatra’s version, thus losing the huge royalties that would have boosted his bank account.

Paul felt no reason to hide his annoyance at Robbie Williams’ Angels being the third most played secular song at funerals. “It’s got nothing to do with death.” And he damned Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On with the faintest of praise.

What I, and most of the audience, appreciated were his personal choices that didn’t make the top ten. I’ve made them a specific fave five, and in the meantime will mention a most moving Johnny Cash tribute to a friend, Jim I Wore A Tie Today; the poetic, haunting Hope There’s Someone by the gifted Antony Hegarty, better known as Antony from Antony and the Johnsons; and Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Sand And Water, which was heard in total silence, Gambaccini’s explanation of its provenance and the sadness of the lyric demanding nothing less.

I also liked the way he interspersed the secular songs with the most popular hymn, The Lord’s My Shepherd, the most popular piece of classical music , the opening of Mozart’s Requiem and his personal favourite Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf.  As an aside, Gambaccini told us that when she was the castaway on Desert Island Discs the eight titles she chose were all her own recordings, the only time this had happened, not surprisingly.

The most popular comedy song was Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life from the Python film The Life Of Brian.

He knew when to ask for audience interaction – ‘what were the songs we wanted at our funerals?’, and I would like to finish by giving my thanks to those who suggested Ain’t No Sunshine, Misty Blue, Iron Maiden’s Hallowed Be Thy Name, Is That All There Is? And in particular the lady who came on stage and explained why a Sinatra song was her choice.

I didn’t catch the title of the song, but it was a cracker.  If anyone who was there can let me know I will be very grateful, and the song will appear on My Last Song so others can appreciate it too.

And the top ten secular funeral songs as researched, described and played by Paul Gambaccini:

My Way: Frank Sinatra

The Wind Beneath My Wings: Bette Midler

Angels: Robbie Williams

Time To Say Goodbye: Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman

Stairway To Heaven: Led Zepplin

My Heart Will Go On:  Celine Dion

I Will Always Love You: Whitney Houston

Goodbye My Lover: James Blunt

Candle In The Wind: Elton John

The Show Must Go On: Queen

Part of this will be Sandi Toksvig’s memorial lecture, which she trails with her trademark endearing and engaging wit here.

I’m also looking forward to Paul Gambaccini’s Desert Island Death Discs event, as it will look at the top funeral songs and what they tell us us about our attitudes to departing this world. Will he, I wonder, have gone through the 130 or so lists of farewell songs sent in by visitors to My Last Song?

The Natural Burial Ground’s funeral survey results have also been released, and have some interesting if rather partial findings. The survey has clearly and unsurprisingly been answered mainly by those in or close to the funeral business. What we liked about the results was the large percentages of people who go online to get information about funerals and who have written down or told relatives of their funeral wishes.

Sadly as these wishes are often misplaced or disregarded, such admirable intentions are a waste of time. Which is why people should store their funeral wishes and the vital information required by close loved ones immediately after the death in their own Lifebox.

High on the news agenda today was the story that data from the Office for National Statistics showed that dehydration or malnutrition was linked to 25 deaths every week last year. This is the shocking and depressing counterpoint to the admirable efforts others are making, often out of benevolent self interest, to encourage a change in how the British in particular look at death.

Depressingly it is still true that the vast majority of people don’t think about death and don’t talk about death until it is literally too late. And so the chances of having a good death are still remote as we pointed out earlier, with almost 70 per cent of people dying in hospitals or hospices even though over two thirds say they want to die at home.

My Last Song has supported the case for the terminally ill and the ailing elderly to have their own personal death plans, rather as mums-to-be have birth plans. This way the issues surrounding the end of life can be addressed in as calm a way as possible, with the involvement of loved ones, medical professionals and if appropriate, ministers of religion or other comforters.

After some research we created a holistic death plan template which covers emotional, physical, medical, practical and spiritual issues to make the end of life as comfortable and comforting as possible.

Funeral wishes, death plans and the raising of the public’s consciousness about death and dying are pointing in the right direction, but there’s still a long way to go.

At one stage it had the strapline: Because a good life deserves a good ending, and that’s still our view.

Since then there has been an increasingly rapid change of attitude, highlighted by two or three events which, though small themselves, are significant because of what they signal.

But before that, mention should be made of organisations which have worked hard to change society’s view of how we end our lives. Dying Matters, set up in 2009 by the National Council for Palliative Care, works tirelessly to deliver its aim to change public knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards death, dying and bereavement.

Dignity in Dying is hugely effective in educating the public in their rights to have a good death, including the option of an assisted death for the terminally ill.

The British Humanist Association has publicised the virtues of a humanist funeral for those who have no religious beliefs and the Institute of Civil Funerals have ensured that civil funerals, often a mix of religious and secular, are conducted to a high standard.

And no summary of changes to funerals would be complete without mentioning The Good Funeral Guide who recommends those funeral directors who are moving with the times, and whose criticisms of the Cooperative Funeralcare and Dignity chains are founded on their sometimes appalling failings in customer care standards.

What of the smaller events which confirm the trend towards taking control of the end of life is gaining momentum?

First, the blog posted by ‘grief specialist’ Kristie West entitled Can A Funeral Be Beautiful? This highlights the film, Remembering Josh Edmonds, a poignant tribute video of a 22 year-old’s life and extraordinarily personal funeral. Making this film was his family’s way of celebrating Josh’s life, something that would have been unheard of a few years ago when the only acceptable way of treating a young death would have been to emphasise the tragic grief of a life taken too early.

At the other end of life’s passage, the Chicago Tribune highlighted what they call ‘Dignity Therapy’ which takes the form of interviewing the dying patient to record their messages to their loved ones, transcribing it and then producing a leather bound ‘legacy document.’

In this country, a similar service is provided by A Giving Tribute, an excellent start up which deserves great success.

The ever growing popularity of green funerals and the ‘natural death’ movement also shows that people are discussing the end of life event they want rather than leaving it to the local funeral director.

More radical still is the Death Café, currently only in London, but planning to expand to other parts of the UK, where, in the words of their website, ‘strangers come together to discuss death and eat delicious food.’ I plan to attend the next Death Café day, and will hopefully add to the favourable reports.

Note too that the photographers specialising in funeral photography, something that would have been frowned up a few years ago.  Farewell Photos and Funeography deserve a mention.

As for My Last Song, the growing use of the Lifebox where people store their funeral wishes, life stories, details to help their loved ones cope following their deaths shows the idea is increasingly appealing as is the number of people visiting the page describing the benefits of having individual death plans to ensure, as much as possible, you can have a comfortable and comforting death.

So at last we are changing our attitude to death, dying and bereavement, influenced for too long by Queen Victoria’s lifelong despair at the death of Prince Albert, into something we should discuss and be in control of.

Our deaths should be just as important as the rest of our lives, and thought of like this, a good life will indeed have a good ending.

Entitled How Doctors Die, it is puts the case for non-intervention once death is inevitable.

It argues that advances in medical science and equipment combined with the professional requirements of doctors  to keep people alive as long as possible has increased the likelihood of futile intervention and unnecessary suffering.

Tellingly, he states that doctors themselves are horrified of the prospect of ending their lives in such circumstances and are choosing in ever increasing numbers to insist that their fellow physicians do not intervene if death is inevitable.

“They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen – that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).

“Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call ‘futile care’ being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs.

“All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery…I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, ‘Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.’ They mean it.”

My Last Song believes a good life deserves a good death, and that futile intervention and prolonging suffering is not a good death.

We also believe that we should be in charge of how we want to die, not leave it to our loved ones – which is unfair, or medical professionals – which is too random.

We have argued many times in the past that society should face up to death and dying in a more positive, emotion-free way than is currently the case, and that this will be more likely if people are encouraged to discuss how their own death should be managed.

We have created a holistic death plan template which includes medical, emotional, physical and spiritual issues to be agreed, as well as advice on things that need to be sorted before death to prevent stressful worries. 

Used properly, and involving the patient, their close loved ones, their medical professionals – and if appropriate a minister of religion, it will be a major step in achieving a comfortable, comforting death.

It’s the death that doctors want for themselves and that should be the norm for the rest of us.

It is appalling that such cruel attitudes still prevail, and difficult to know how to counter them apart from being more honest and planning for the inevitable death of a partner in a same sex relationship and how the funeral will be handled.

I would like to hear the experiences of others in similar situations and any advice they have.

“My first, and only, partner died six months ago. We were together nine years, but we unwisely delayed getting a civil partnership and he was only ‘out’ to his close family and a few mutual friends.

As a result, I had no rights when it came to his funeral. All the major decisions were made by his grieving mother, who told me that it would break her heart to have someone stand up and talk about her son being gay.

I was allowed to attend the funeral, and as the only person able to use a computer properly I was tasked with composing the eulogy as it was dictated by her family. However, I was not allowed to be mentioned in it, and at the funeral the mourners were hustled out of the church quickly by his family to avoid me talking to them.

There is no point trying to explain how psychologically mangled this has left me, I leave it to your imagination.

Suffice to say, those you think these attitudes are a thing of the past are horribly, horribly wrong.  It is no exaggeration to say that the two worst events in my life were, in order, his death and his funeral.”

He was a special adviser to the leader, Dame Shirley Porter. She had just taken me on as head of press and PR with a remit to get her as much favourable publicity as possible. Mine was the fourth such appointment in a year and Roger told me he didn’t think I’d last long but that he’d do all he could to help.

Well, I survived for two years and before I left we became close associates, if not friends. I admired his intelligence, honesty and witty barbed comments about Westminster’s elected members and his colleagues. I think he admired my tenacity and knowing when not to obey Dame Shirley, and definitely for organising a memorable Christmas party.

While at Westminster Council Roger met Paola, who also worked in the leader’s office, and whom he married a few years later.

I had left the council by then, and had since rarely contacted Roger. The last time was ten or so ago years when he spoke warmly about his young family – son Dominic and daughter Giulia – and his love of life in Gloucestershire. I remember him saying that Dom had slight learning difficulties and was a wonderful boy.

Roger then came to my attention following the dreadful circumstances of Dom’s tragic suicide in May last year.

Dom jumped from the top of a six storey building close to his school.  He was being bullied at school because he kissed another boy in a game of dare. While on the roof he texted 999 to get help…it didn’t arrive and he jumped.

Following his son’s death, Roger, at one time head of children’s services at Gloucestershire County Council, embarked on a campaign to prevent bullying, particularly homophobic bullying, in schools. He threw himself relentlessly into this mission and in November was named the gay rights charity Stonewall’s Hero of the Year.

Roger’s early life had not been easy, and the last months must have been terrible.

His mother died when he was only 11. He left school at 16 before studying at night school to get into Kings College Cambridge to read history then getting a degree in public policy and administration from the LSE.

A successful career in local government followed, and a happy family life which meant more to him that anything else.

Then, in the last two years, tragedy built on tragedy. His sister died a few months before Dominic’s suicide. And a few weeks ago his nephew died in Afghanistan, a death which must also have affected Roger, a pacifist.

Sometime during the afternoon of Monday, 28 November, Roger hanged himself. Yesterday was his funeral. 

The yellow roses on his coffin were later laid on Dominic’s grave.

I was in my early teens when his soul dance hit The In Crowd came out, and I loved its energy and clever hip rhymes. And I’m not the only one – someone chose it as a song they want played at their farewell.

As I moved from soul to jazz, pianist Ramsey Lewis did a soul jazz cover of The In Crowd which I played endlessly.

I didn’t know it but a year after The In Crowd Dobie Gray recorded Out On The Floor, which was to become one of the biggest tracks on the northern soul scene. Ten or so years later I first knew of this track, and since then I play it often, dancing with increasing stiffness to its many and steady beats per minute.

I didn’t really follow his career but was very pleased when the country influenced Drift Away, among these suggested funeral songs, became a hit in 1973. Indeed, in the 1970s Gray became that very rare thing – a commercially successful black country singer.

It’s worth listening to a ‘best of’ compilation to see what a fine country artist he was, with a great ear for the best songs in a genre that has more than its fair share of poor ones. Loving Arms and There’s a Honkey Tonk Angel are two of my particular favourites.

Like many soul singers he began by singing in church choirs in the south where his family were share croppers.

Unlike most of his contemporary R‘n’B singers he also had a relatively successful acting career, and also wrote songs for artists including Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, George Jones and Don Williams.

Dobie Gray was an intelligent, charming, dignified and talented artist whose voice has given pleasure to hundreds of thousands down the years.

He’ll be missed but his music will live on. We’ve chosen our favourite five Dobie Gray songs here.

Drift Away is a particularly appropriate farewell or funeral song, with this the last verse: “Thanks for the joy that you’ve given me,/I want you to know I believe in your song./Rhythm and rhyme and harmony,/You help me along, makin’ me strong.”

All the money and armaments in the world won’t change these facts.
So the quicker the West leaves the country to find its own solutions, the better, and also the more successful the solutions will be.

Let’s then study the map  as if we are sitting in Tehran and ruling Iran.

To the west is Iraq where western forces have twice invaded, the second time hunting down the leadership and putting them on trial resulting in their execution.

To the northwest is the border with Turkey, which seems to be militarily and politically closer to the west than ever before.

And further to the west sits an intransigent and militarily powerful Israel, determined to reduce Iran’s status in the region since its creation after the second world war.

Afghanistan is our eastern neighbour which the west invaded ten years ago in a panic reaction to the September 11 attacks.

On the other side of the Persian Gulf is the region’s dominant power, Saudi Arabia where Sunni Islam predominates. Historically opposed to Iran, where Shi’a Islam is the state religion, and a great supporter of the US, Saudi’s King Abdullah only last year urged the US to ‘cut the head off the snake’ or in other words, weaken Iran by a military strike.

We might then look further east at Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons and which, despite being a far more fertile breeding ground for Islamic terrorists than Afghanistan, is treated with great forbearance by the west.

Our eyes might also alight on North Korea, unpunished despite numerous military excursions and a deliberate policy of destabilising neighbouring countries. We will of course know the extent of Kim Jong-il’s nuclear arsenal.

We probably concluded several years ago that the best way to guarantee Iran’s peace was to have nuclear weapons. After all, wasn’t the possession of nuclear weapons what gave a divided world peace after the second world war? And don’t the US and UK still hold on to an albeit reduced nuclear capability to provide a deterrence?

Looked at like this, it is perfectly rational that Iran develops nuclear weapons, and equally unreasonable for the west to try to stop them. What’s good for the goose must surely be good for the gander.

Why doesn’t our government see the world from Iran’s point of view and discuss and reassure their nervous and fractious leaders that we don’t want a military conflict, that we value peaceful relations, increased trade, greater cultural ties and more strategic agreements?

Why don’t we let the Iranian government and people know we understand their history and rightful position in the region? Why don’t we encourage, support and value their role as a moderating influence in the predominantly Arab and often volatile middle east? In this context the issues of proliferation and nuclear control can be discussed calmly.

The answer is because Mr Hague and Mr Cameron have no idea of how to conduct a long-term, strategic foreign policy to ensure peaceful relations with countries they know little about.

There are few headlines to be garnered from discreet talks, opening new diplomatic channels and offers of targeted aid. Instead they seek the support from the tabloids when they expel diplomats, increase sanctions and before too long I fear, order our bombers to destroy Iranian targets.

Her thesis is that until we respect our elders, the pernicious cruelty towards old people will continue.

While I agree with her arguments I would like to make two observations.

The first is that these attitudes are far more prevalent in the indigenous, longer established population and much less in the families from Africa and Asia where the wisdom of age is much more valued and respected.

People from these continents are used to seeing their elders work hard, without the protection of a welfare state and pension schemes. In these cultures, a person is brought up and protected by the extended family, and as they get older they then look after those who’ve looked after them. 

There’s self interest and community interest at heart here, and it works well. Where this family/community protection is replaced by the state or other institutions, the appreciation of the human relationship is rapidly diluted. 

When transplanted into this country, such respect for older people remains for one or two generations. I know several African families very well, and respect for elders is a value that is instilled into the children. Any ageist remark or attitude is sometimes literally slapped down.

The second point is that we should value old people not just because they brought us up, but because they have so much to teach us. Again this is where communities from less developed countries can illuminate our failings.

Their idea of education was less through formal schooling and more from the passing down of wisdom, ideas, values and experience from generation to generation. The collective learning of old people was critical to the success or failure of a family, village or tribe.

In our more developed culture, old people may not play such an educational role, but their memories, life stories, achievements, attitudes make up micro social and family histories.

We should understand their worth and do all we can to keep them, because once lost they are lost forever.

This is why the Lifebox is such a useful service.  It’s an online secure area designed to enable personal histories to be uploaded and stored, then to be accessed by chosen younger family members.

It’s probable that many older people who will want a Lifebox will need the help of younger family members to populate it, and in doing so, the bonding between young and old will increase the mutual intergenerational respect.

This in turn will reduce our tendency, pointed out by Geraldine Bedell, to dismiss the value of our older family members.

It’s not necessary to repeat the evidence of journalists’ appalling and life ruining behaviour. But this must be stopped and in doing so the professional standards of the media might just be raised from its dire current level.

I doubt, though, whether those running our press and broadcast stations will let go of their front places in the race to the bottom in terms of crass, cheap, facile, immoral and unprincipled reporting, but at least a stop can be made to behaviour which can ruin lives just to scream ‘Exclusive!’  on a paper that will wrap tomorrow’s fish and chips. 

It’s imperative that Lord Leveson isn’t afraid that the media will bleat that restrictions will limit their role to investigate and bring to book politicians and public administrators.

He is too intelligent to fall for this spurious and dishonest argument. There’s no remote link between going through Steve Coogan’s dustbins looking for confirmation of an extra-marital affair and investigating political corruption.

The dreadful torment suffered by Milly Dowler’s parents when the NoW hacked her phone must not go unpunished because of an irrational fear that in future journalists will be unwilling to expose a Cabinet member putting the security of the country at risk.

The Leveson inquiry must ensure we have a media that will never again intrude into the lives of private individuals whose activities have no bearing whatsoever on the public good.

Indeed, if such pernicious activity is punished so severely so that it will not be contemplated, then the media might be encouraged to concentrate on more serious reporting. That will be a good thing for the health of our society, but I fear the moral rot has gone too far.

The star of The Good Life and To The Manor Born is president of a prisons charity which works to divert young people away from a life of crime.

She believes that teenagers and young adults would behave better if they spent more time with grandparents and other older people.

I hope she would like the idea of the Lifebox, the area in My Last Song where people can store and upload their digital memories so they are available for future generations. In effect it’s a digital time capsule.

The reason it should find favour with Ms Keith is that it is ideally suited to encourage younger members of the family to help older members use it. And in doing so, they will learn the lifestories and family history being imparted. This bonding might indeed make youngsters more law abiding. 

For in return, the young relatives will teach their grandparents and other older loved ones to use a computer with more confidence, the result being a unique and valued piece of family and social history which otherwise would be lost forever. The soft skills coaching of their elders will give youngsters a greater sense of purpose and self esteem.

If your family could benefit from all the features of the Lifebox, including drawing the generations closer together and older people being more computer literate, look no further than buying a Lifebox for the person whose memories should be safely stored, or for the youngster to show to his grandparents, ready to sit down and populate it every week or so.

And that, dear readers, is why there is now an irrevocable shift in the world’s economic order.

Those in the UK will be aware of the scores of thousands of jobs in the public sector, created by Labour and Conservative governments, which are not in the slightest bit productive. Many, but by no means all, are necessary to make our society run more smoothly, to help the disadvantaged, to regulate, to administer, to advise.

The private sector is also teeming with well paid overstaffed functions which produce little of value at one end of the scale, and hugely overpaid executives and directors at the other.

The service industries are particularly good at paying their staff a lot of money by providing services that might add value, but produce little that has a tangible long term worth.

In private and public sectors, the pay and conditions have been protected first by trade unions and later by the collective greed of workers and bosses scratching each others’ backs, unified by the shallow values of the baby boomers. Lots of people shouting ‘Me, Me, Me!’ soon becomes ‘Us, Us, Us!’.

Until only a short time ago, our pay increased every year, bonuses went up, pensions rose and our working life reduced.  As we live longer, our retirement extends and with it the time greater numbers of people are being paid for doing nothing.

We are now facing the consequences of an economy which has for decades been based on unproductive overpaid employment as our population grows increasingly old.

Meanwhile in countries such as India, China, Brazil, Vietnam, Korea, and increasingly in Africa and South America, vast and growing numbers of people have been working very hard from an early age until they expire making goods or harvesting food or extracting raw materials, all of which are sold for a profit. Their pay has been low, and kept low – talk of workers’ rights getting you imprisoned or laughed at.

In the UK, the increased income was used to borrow to buy property on the erroneous assumption that this would permanently gain in value. With our property as a safety net, we cheerfully got further in debt to buy more goods and foodstuffs, most of them made and grown by the millions upon millions of people in the by now fast developing world.

And so those countries grew richer as we got more in debt. That debt couldn’t be sustained once the property edifice started to shake and values dropped. Banks had huge books of toxic debt, interbank lending ceased and overstretched banks had to be bailed out by the government.

In many other developed states without a solid manufacturing base and without a well developed service sector, the situation is worse. In the southern European countries productivity per head is falling from a low figure, pensions are over generous, retirement age is in the 50s, working hours are low, unemployment high and tax payments a small proportion of what they should be.

Contradictions within the EU mean that a common currency is untenable; Germany will be able to make the financial rules, and enforce the austerity measures for a two tier Europe.

The electorates in these countries won’t like being told to accept reduced hand outs, pensions, to work longer and harder, but fundamental economic decisions won’t be influenced by the ballot box as much as by the markets and credit rating companies.

Funding the bail out of bankrupt economies are those countries in the developing world who have become very rich as money has flowed into their treasuries from the developed nations. China, India and the emerging economic countries will get us out of this mess, because it’s in their interest to do so, but the rules will be forever changed.

So the world is now one where in the west our lives are less influenced by democratic decisions than by the bond markets; Germany has gained economic and political hegemony in much of Europe, and countries such as China and India are more powerful than the UK, France, Italy, Spain and before long the US.

It was never supposed to be like this, but we had better realise that the old order, shaped by statesmen and industrialists after the second world war, has changed forever.

Rogers gave his view about  China’s huge donation of funds into the Euro bailout fund. He stressed that the proposed Euro crisis solution was a scam as all it did was to put back the time when the real issue has to be addressed. Most of the developed world, especially the US, are spending more than we earn.

Then Martin Sorrell came on to answer questions about WPP’s third quarter performance, growing nicely but reflecting a slow down. He was also asked to justify his rapidly increasing and huge remuneration. This on a day when research has revealed that pay for directors of the UK’s top businesses rose 50 per cent over the past year.

When asked whether companies should spend more or less on marketing in an economic downturn, Sorrell predicatably said they should spend more as clearly this means greater profits for WPP, the umbrella under which sits multi-national marketing giants including Ogilvy, Young and Rubicam, Chime Communications and TNS. For Sorrell to answer they should spend less on marketing would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

WPP’S marketing agencies are in business to increase the market of their clients. They have only one aim: to make people spend more, to buy their clients’ products and services. And as WPP’s inexorably increasing profits and growth prove, they are brilliant at it.

Herein, however, is the root of  the problem. Marketing companies have succeeded for many years now in making people think that the acquisition of something is more important than whether they can afford it.

This is unsurprising, for it would never enter the heads of well paid executives, creatives, planners, researchers working in WPP’s companies, rewarded for their success, that the majority of the people they are aiming at don’t have the money for the latest gadget, garment, gourmet experience… And so individuals, families, communities and indeed states where these marketing geniuses operate most effectively get further into debt.

One day, and that day is approaching faster than we care to think, the whole edifice will come tumbling down, and when it does, the millions we are paying ourselves will count for nothing.

On a micro level, families are finding it ever more difficult to pay for funerals of loved ones. If it helps at all, we give advice on how to reduce funeral costs. It’s not advice you’ll get from funeral directors such as Co-operative Funeralcare or Dignity Funerals.

Highly-placed sources in Sri Lanka have told Channel 4 News that both men visited Sri Lanka every year now for a decade. And every time Dr Fox has gone there, Mr Werritty’s been with him – even while on holiday. It is worth reading this piece from Channel 4 News to get some idea of how unprincipled both men have been in their support of, and benefit from, a most unpleasant Sri Lankan regime.

Fox and Werritty have also on several occasions been to the Middle East where lucrative arms deals are on offer through third parties (hello Mr Werritty) with rich and undemocratic states, often willing to use sophisticated weapons to kill their own people.

Little wonder that Fox wanted Werritty to be involved in discussions rather than civil servants who aren’t allowed to benefit personally from arms deals.

What is so repugnant about this is that the arms trade is about making and selling equipment that is brilliantly effective at killing people. Liam Fox, remember, is a medical doctor (as is his wife) so how he reconciles his medical ethics with the knowledge that the deals he (or his friend) will result in human death, the funerals of innocents and wholesale suffering only he will know in the dark hours of the night.

John Major’s government was destroyed by sleaze.  David Cameron must remove Dr Fox from his government as quickly as possible. We cannot afford to have such an unethical Minister of State for Defence as Liam Fox holding such a critical position that impinges on our security and place in the world.

The international element is the most important, in that it aims to campaign for pensions and greater provision for older people in the developing world. Alas, My Last Song can do nothing to support this goal.

But on a more individual level within the UK, US and other English speaking countries, I hope we can do something to ensure the wisdom, experience and values of each older person will remain after they die. 

This is not to assume that older people are about to die – thank heavens we are living longer and more healthy lives. But the older we get the more we must address our mortality.

And when doing, think about subscribing to a Lifebox into which you can put your memories, your wisdom, your achievements, your photographs…even your secrets. This will be secure so that only you, and after your death your chosen loved one(s), can open the Lifebox and access the information.

There is no such thing as eternal life, thank goodness. However, thanks to digital technology and perpetual storage on Cloud servers, your memories can live forever thanks to the Lifebox. And, as you are a member of the ‘Older’ community, these memories will include your nuggets of wisdom, experience and personal history that would otherwise be lost forever.

Some of the landlords of their care homes will take over the running of them. As for the others, well there are few organisations lining up to take these over and so the Government has made the statement that nobody currently in these homes will be made homeless. Any further details conspicuous by their absence.

The Government must be aware of the ever growing problems being stored up in the provision of care for the increasing older population. It’s a double whammy…more people are joining the age group of 80 plus, and more within this group are living longer.

There is no sign of the reversal of the social trend of families, particularly those of the vast majority ‘traditional’ English families, losing their cohesion. An interesting aside here is that most of the immigrant communities bring with them strong family values, not all of them virtuous as can be seen by the increase in honour killings within the more tightly knit groups, whilst the strength of family unit of the indigenous population weakens.

So who will provide the care that an increasingly large proportion of this increasingly large group of elderly people will require?

There may be a huge market here, but I don’t think there’s a business in the market. Residential care requires a lot of costs: spacious properties and their maintenance; specialist equipment and medical supplies and a large labour force.

The income? Local authorities won’t have the money unless given increased ring fenced grants from central government. And the governing party (or coalition) will be loathe to increase taxation to pay these costs until this becomes the only socially acceptable answer.

My guess is that within ten years we’ll see a two tier system for the care of our elderly. A private sector catering for those (or their families) with the funds to pay for a high quality level of residential care and a state funded sector of homes run by a decentralised arms length agency for the rest.

It was with this sort of problem in mind that we put some advice on funding care options onto My Last Song.  It will be prudent to read it and to act on it before it’s too late.

The passage of time, like death, is impossible to deny but is often overlooked.

Instead of a ‘good death’ with their loved ones by them, their emotional, physical and spiritual needs being met, they will be taken to a hospital where, quite often, a lonely, frightening and upsetting death awaits them.

My Last Song has produced an innovative and holistic ‘Death Plan’ template to encourage discussion about a person’s last days so that they have a ‘good death’.  The areas covered in the plan include medical treatment, physical comfort, emotional and spiritual needs and ways in which stress and fear can be reduced.

The questions are designed to involve the patient’s doctor, close family and friends and even professional advisers so that the person whose life is ending has no concerns about issues, such as their will or who looks after their pets, as the plan enables these topics to be addressed.

At the very least, death plans such as this enable death and dying to be talked about in an calm, unemotional and rational way. All too often talk of death is put off as it is too upsetting or awkward until it is too late.

At best, it means that the patient and loved ones are in control of the end of life experience, and the death is as comfortable, comforting and reassuring as possible.

The My Last Song death plan is easy to fill out, it can be edited at any time and stored securely in the Lifebox, along with all the other end of life information such as funeral wishes that close family members and the executor will need.

The Nato offensive in Libya, of which he was the major architect, shows little sign of success.

It’s costing the country many millions of pounds although a Government spokesman told us we shouldn’t worry because the money comes from a contingency budget for overseas wars.

If ever confirmation was needed that our rulers believe we are fools, this was it. The British people want these vast sums spent on education, hospitals, transport and investment which will improve our quality of life rather than on killing other people in countries which have nothing to do with our national security.

Such was Cameron’s enthusiasm to go to war with Gaddafi when it looked as if his forces were going to massacre the inhabitants of Benghazi that he persuaded Obama and Sarkozy to go from no flight zone to large scale military intervention in a matter of days.

The increased bombing has, of course, resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. And what, Mr Cameron, can justify the recent bombing of the compound of one of Gadaffi’s advisers whose family and servants are now dead or injured?

As a result of Cameron’s Libya policy we have neither the resources nor the international backing for further ‘liberal intervention’ (a dishonest phrase to describe scoring PR points by bombing the ‘bad guys’) in Syria, where Assad is repressing his opponents with dreadful cruelty, or anywhere else in the Middle East where the despots crush rebellion unimpeded by our impotence.

Our policy now is to wait for things to return to ‘normal’ in the Middle East, our influence reduced by our short term adventurism (sorry David, ‘liberal intervention’) in Libya.

In Afghanistan, more of our soldiers are being killed while it is obvious that the Afghans are still years away, if ever, from having a reliable army, honest police and effective security force.

The US are speeding up their withdrawal next year because President Obama realises that the Taliban have the unassailable advantage of living in Afghanistan and being supported by the people.

Not for the first time in history have the forces of a world power returned from that country with its tails between its legs.

The first lesson of military strategy is not to fight a war you can’t win. Cameron should have pulled out of Afghanistan as soon as he came to power, and on this he would have had the support of the populist media and the overwhelming majority of the country.

On the domestic front, 10 Downing Street must have the letter U stuck up in every room.

Andrew Lansley’s much needed reforms have been watered down after the health unions, led by the BMA, objected, followed by the chatterati unable to understand that their beloved NHS is in desperate need of surgery to stop the haemorrhaging of money and morale.

And now Ken Clarke’s sensible and cost saving reforms of sentencing have been abandoned even after being signed off by the Cabinet. I can’t see any rational reason for Cameron’s decision to reverse Clarke’s policy to reduce prison sentences, to lengthen the discounted time in prison if people plead guilty and to vary the sentences in rape, a universally repugnant crime, but committed with different degrees of harm and violence.

However, the Sun and Daily Mail came out against these ‘overly lenient’ reforms with all guns firing, saying the Tories had gone soft on law and order. And so our pusillanimous Prime Minister stamps his foot on the brake and does a 180 degree turn.

Indeed, if you read his speech you will see a reactionary ‘lock ‘em up and throw the key away’ Tory dinosaur wallowing in pre-historic slime.

Oh for a Prime Minister with courage, wisdom and leadership qualities.

Their message – that the world will be a better place when countries behave like theirs – is contradicted by their foreign policy actions.

No sooner had Prime Minister Cameron waved President Obama goodbye than  he announced the deployment of Apache helicopters in Libya.  

Our objective is clearly to get rid of President Gaddafi through military rather than political means…yes, killing the same ruler that we rehabilitated a couple of years ago as the newly found friend of the west.

The BBC this morning suggested that the helicopters were likely to be used in targeting Gaddifi as he sped nightly from local hospital to local hospital to avoid NATO attacks.

Apache helicopters are very efficient killing machines with their night vision optical targeting devises which guide large calibre bullets onto the target with unerring accuracy from long distances.  It’s likely that Gaddafi will be soon killed or decide to surrender.

However, if Cameron follows the new US doctrine of dealing with its enemies, Gaddifi won’t be given the opportunity to surrender.

It is clear that Osama Bin Laden was in no position to defend himself when he was shot in the face in front of his cowering family by the crack US Naval  Seal team, a murder and breach of international law watched live by the President and Secretary of State in Washington.

Bin Laden should have been brought out alive to answer for the wicked crimes he orchestrated. This would have justified the American’s uninvited encroachment into another state’s territory and given the world a message that if the US is going to act as an international policeman, then the criminals will end up in court rather than murdered without a trial, rather like the victims of corrupt police squads in Baltimore.

Bin Laden would also have been more useful alive than dead as it’s difficult to get information from corpses rotting on the sea floor.

Cameron and Obama will get away with breaking international law and ordering the murder of terrorists and rulers they have fallen out with as well as the loss of innocent lives as a result.

But David Cameron should understand that the British people don’t like bullies and hypocrites. Nor do we want millions of pounds spent fighting wars that don’t concern us. 

And when the news bulletins show the funerals of the young helicopter crew lost when an Appache is hit by a ground to air missile, we will ask why more British lives are being wasted in futile campaigns that only increase the animosity of those who don’t share our values.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox agrees that it’s legitimate to degrade the command and control and intelligence networks of the regime, which is code for bombing more of Libya’s roads, railways, food depots, factories and refineries.

So what started as a ‘no fly zone’ now looks like an increased war effort with the aim of killing Gaddafi and destroying Libya’s infrastructure.

Why is Sir David comfortable with this new doctrine that allows an alliance of external countries to go to war on the side of one of the protagonists in another country’s civil war in order to kill its leader and enable ‘regime change’? It would seem prima facie to break international law.

Does Liam Fox know who is likely to take over the running of a divided and tribal country if Gaddafi is killed? How can he be sure Libya won’t descend into greater chaos and bloodshed?

Don’t both of them recognise that Libyans who neither loathe Gaddafi nor are willing to die for the rebel cause are unlikely to view Nato with much goodwill when they suffer from the affects of destroyed infrastructure, lack of food, water, petrol and other essentials, and when, as Baroness Amos, the UN’s under-secretary for humanitarian relief, points out, far more of them will be killed.

Valerie Amos reflects public opinion in this county when she argues for a political rather than a military solution to Libya’s civil war.

We know what’s behind our intervention in Libya.  At a time when the government wants to reduce the military budget, fighting a war in the full view of  the media is a wonderful opportunity for our military leaders to say the UK needs to retain its ability to intervene in such conflicts for humanitarian reasons and to rid the world of dangerous despots.

To which the answer is ‘No, we can only afford a military force to defend our legitimate national interest, not go to war in countries that don’t threaten us.  Our intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has ended in failure so let’s not repeat our mistake in Libya.’

The voters should also say to Liam Fox that we aren’t prepared to support spending £3million a day to drop bombs to destroy a Libya’s intrastructure, kill its young soldiers and get rid of Col Gaddafi. What happens in Libya should be for Libyans to decide.

But the military and the Government won’t take much notice…they know only too well the rich pickings for the UK firms that will get the contracts to rebuild the infrastructure once a sort of peace has settled on Libya and to sell arms to re-equip the country’s forces with yet more deadly weapons.

As ever, the taxpayers will pay for the war while a few rich people will get much richer once it’s over.

I fully support the aims of Dying Matters, a broad coalition headed by the National Council for Palliative Care, to raise awareness of death, dying and bereavement. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise since My Last Song was established in the belief that more people would address their mortality on line, and use My Last Song to ‘Go out on a high note.’

I take heart in the increasing signs that society is more ready to address the subject of death in a positive way. This, I think, is because people are living longer and therefore most deaths don’t cause the terrible grieving such as Queen Victoria’s reaction to the early passing of her beloved Prince Albert.

So, does the ending of a long and fulfilled life mean that death is easier to address?  Is it also easier to accept given a medical diagnosis of a terminal illness that allows time to come to terms with a life that will end?

For many people the thought of discussing the end of life causes distress, anxiety and embarrassment, and they want to put it off. However, as Dying Matters understands, if you face the subject from a more informed and positive approach, the negatives are reduced.

My Last Song has produced an innovative and holistic ‘Death Plan’ template to encourage discussion about a person’s last days alive so that they have a ‘good death’.  The issues that are covered include medical treatment, physical comfort, emotional and spiritual needs and ways in which stress and fear can be reduced.

The questions are designed to involve the person’s doctor, close family and friends and even professional advisers so that the person whose life is ending has no concerns about issues, such as their will or who looks after their pets, that should have been resolved.

I hope that all those who support Dying Matters and who will use this week to raise awareness will also see the benefits of promoting personalised death plans as a way of reducing the fear of dying and increasing our control over how we end our lives.

Many people have also told me that they imagine what their funeral will be like because of the people who will attend and hear the tributes, listen to the last songs and swap stories and reminiscences.

These are probably the reasons why living funerals are becoming more popular here and in the US.

When speaking to comedian Arthur Smith, by chance a neighbour of mine, about My Last Song, he told me that his brother Richard, a respected doctor, had written a blog supporting the advantages of living funerals, not the least of which is the advanced planning means far flung loved ones can attend whereas they are unlikely to make the funeral at shorter notice.

A living funeral is the logical destination of the wish to have a farewell ceremony that is a celebration of your life, rather than the traditional grief-fest.

And why not have a ‘party of a lifetime’ to celebrate your life with the people whose lives have touched your life. You can thank them, remind them of their importance to you, swap memories and stories, share your achievements and hopes and, not least, be the centre of attention.

As the founder of My Last Song, I would also emphasise the importance of selecting the music that you’ve most enjoyed, and which has special significance.  The same attention should be paid to the food, the drink and the other details that will make this a party that people will never forget.

You should also organise someone to make a video of the party, or at the least take still photographs.  The video and images can then be put in your Lifebox to be accessed by loved ones in future years, so that your memory, and your memorable last party, can be enjoyed many times over.

Clearly you have to take your family with you, and some of the more traditional members might disapprove.  However, the advantages over and above people’s liking of a good party, include the fact that they won’t have to pay for a reception once you’ve died and also reducing the grief they might otherwise feel when faced with your demise.

After all, how much better to look back on someone’s life and remember the warmth and enjoyment of a final celebration than wish they had been able to share this once it’s too late.

Once the grim reaper has called, the party really is over.

It was written after several members of the coalition refused to be further drawn into what will be a long and expensive military engagement as the rebel forces, helped and probably armed by Nato, face stalemate in confronting Gaddafi’s better trained and equipped military.

Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy are trying to take the moral high ground on the day when their commanders first denied the Libyan Government’s claim that they had bombed Tripoli, only to admit it hours later when journalists told the world they had witnessed the bombings.

Their letter gives the impression that the Libyan people are at one against Gaddafi who is only staying in power by engaging in ‘medieval sieges’ of rebel held towns, ‘raining down shells and missiles on his own people’ who he is ‘mercilessly massacring’.

We know propaganda when we see it, just as we know that for several nights it was Nato bombs that were dropped from great heights.

We can also work out that a fair number of the Libyan people are not deserting Gaddafi and that his troops are more loyal than our leaders would have us believe.

It’s clear to all except these three ‘world leaders’ that the outcome of the Libyan conflict must be a sound political agreement, with the two sides negotiating a compromise. Yet this letter rules out any solution in which Gaddafi ‘plays a part in Libya’s future Government’ though several paragraphs later, and almost as an afterthought, the letter states that ‘it will be the people of Libya, not the UN, who choose their new constitution, elect their new leaders and write the next chapter in their history.’

The authors of the letter should contemplate that final clause, because in fact Libya hardly has a history.  It is an artificial construct as a sovereign nation state, having been loosely governed by the Ottoman Empire from the mid 16^th century and the Italians between 1911 and 1947. It’s made up of Arabs and Berbers, neither of which place loyalty to nation above that of village, tribe, clan or religion.

Historical fact is a minor inconvenience for our leaders, confident that the mass of Libyans are hungry for western style democracy, with ‘homes and hospitals…basic utilities and the institutions to underpin a prosperous and open society.’  And as they say, Nato members ‘will assist in rebuilding’ what they and Gaddafi have destroyed.

That, I’m afraid, rather gives the game away. A lot of western companies will get rich contracts once the final shells have landed and the bodies buried.

Among Ghanaians in general, and the Akan people in particular, one event that brings us together more than any other is bereavement. 

In rural Ghana where even now birthday and wedding celebrations are virtually unknown, funerals have always been a significant feature of our social life. However, as funerals are all about mourning rather than partying, I believe that we in Ghana have lost its meaning, replacing it with commercialisation and exhibitionism.    

Until quite recently, one significant aspect of Akan tradition was that mourning and feasting never went together. Today, however, when you attend a funeral you may be forgiven for thinking that it’s a big party with huge amounts of food on offer.

Video coverage has also become a familiar item on a funeral budget, which given the cost in what is still a relatively poor economy, makes little sense. 

Another well documented fashionable trend is the use of expensive coffins. They are now so costly that people are now deliberately destroying them after depositing them in the grave so they won’t be stolen!  

Until very recently, bereaved family members only wore rubber sandals on their feet as it was considered inappropriate to be mourning while in expensive clothes. These days, however, ladies’ funeral clothing in particular is more suitable as party outfits. 

It is now common for bodies to be kept in the mortuary for six months or longer to enable dilapidated homes to be renovated or sometimes new ones built before the burial.  

Previously the body would be buried as soon as possible and the funeral held at a later date.  Now dead bodies stay in the mortuary for as long as it takes people to raise funds for a ‘grand funeral’.  

The high cost of funerals is mainly due to our brothers and sisters living outside the country.  Most of them are usually constrained from visiting home as regularly as they want due to their limited finances.  Yet in their attempt to impress some spend lavishly on funerals with borrowed money which on their return, they try to recoup by organising parties under the guise of funerals. 

And the irony is that we do not really care much about the final resting place of the dead.  Cemeteries in Ghana are often neglected, with weeds growing among the graves. 

It would be better if the huge sums of money spent on funerals could be used to improve the final resting place of our loved ones.  

It’s time our traditional rulers, politicians and religious leaders waged war against expensive funerals because it is destroying our society.

In 1867, Quaker Social Action (now known as QSA) was set up in the East End of London as a result of the appalling poverty affecting the working class in that area.

Some 144 years later, the levels of poverty have, thank goodness, declined, but poverty still exists in the East End as it does in many parts of the country. And the recent recession, increasing unemployment and public sector cuts are making the situation worse for a lot of families.

Last year, to meet a growing concern, QSA launched Down To Earth, a project that addresses what I’ll call for shorthand, ‘funeral poverty.’ The project helps people living on low incomes to have the funeral they want at a price they can afford.

As their website explains, “when someone close to us dies, money is often the last thing on our minds.” In 2008 the average cost of a funeral was £7,000, and for families facing financial disadvantage and low income, finding that amount of money can be the first step in a downward spiral of financial difficulty and debt.

It can also cause a great deal of family strife and individual anxiety, at a time when people face extreme distress and anguish.

The Down To Earth project deserves much credit and support for addressing a very real issue that’s all too often ignored, along with everything else to do with our demise.

It may not be a particularly popular or attractive good cause, but consider its main purpose…’to help bereaved people to plan a funeral that honours and celebrates the life of the person who has died, but which will not have a negative effect on their own financial future.’

Hopefully Dying Matters will use its increasingly high profile to support Down To Earth, and also visitors to My Last Song, which has chosen QSA as its April Charity of the Month, will see the benefits of leaving a legacy so that their deaths will mean that the funerals of others need not cause distress and hardship but can be a fitting end of life event for those less fortunate.

His hugely underwhelming answer: “For people to get on and do better.”

This low point in an appalling interview was almost matched by his statement that by encouraging the people to take action, Labour will get the Government to change its policy “like it did when it dropped its idea to sell the forests.”

The ‘people’ did not get the Government to do a u-turn on this rather silly and marginal policy.  It was a small minority of the middle class who made a lot of noise, as Miliband knows.

With such an uncharismatic and hopeless leader, the Labour Party is likely to be in opposition for many years to come, and as someone who until the Iraq invasion was a Labour supporter, this disappoints me.

I’m also very disappointed that David Cameron is a warmonger. He was the NATO leader who first wanted a no-fly zone over Libya which within days resulted in the Allied air force being the air support arm of the rebels, and hugely destructive NATO missiles raining down on various Libyan targets.

He might think that if enough damage is done to Libya’s armed forces, they will refuse to fight for Gaddifi’s cause and NATO’s military action will have achieved its goal.

But as he observes the burning shells of the Libyan tanks, picked off in a sort of NATO turkey shoot, he should consider the terrible deaths of the Libyan tank crews, burnt alive in seconds if they survive the hundreds of pieces of red hot shrapnel screaming around their turrets. These, Mr Cameron, are someone’s sons, husbands, fathers, brothers.

And does he really think that no innocent civilians will be harmed by the ‘smart’ missiles fired from miles away to destroy compounds in built up areas of Tripoli?

At best the damage will be mental scars, at worst the explosive force and heat that burns the flesh off people, destroys the vital organs and causes the slow and painful deaths of men, women and children who live close to the targets of these vile weapons.  These, Mr Cameron, are families, just like yours.

As they suffer, they won’t be reassured by the knowledge that the destruction of their lives has the backing of the UN, or that your policy is to ‘save the lives of Libyans’. Their lives will be sheer agony and uncomprehending horror for which you are in large part responsible.

Yes, Mr Cameron, you probably will force Colonel Gaddifi from power, but at a completely unacceptable cost.

And of course you won’t be shamed by the opposition, because Ed Miliband supports your policy.

It’s not an Alternative Vote we should be wanting when we go to the ballot box in May, but an alternative political philosophy.

When I see innocent people suffer whether at the hands of their rulers, victims of natural disasters, or subject to discrimination and bullying I donate to emergency appeals, support societal change and confront bullies.

But I still cannot see any justification for the west’s military intervention in Libya. Indeed I find it very odd that only a few months after we’re being fed the line that President Gaddafi had reinvented himself as one of the Middle East’s good guys, we are expected to support military action clearly designed to remove him from power.

Why no negotiation with Gaddafi and his diplomats before the precipitous rush into military action? It was that notable opponent of appeasement, Winston Churchill, who said that ‘jaw, jaw is better than war, war.’ There wasn’t much talking to Gaddafi before the war planes went in.

Without little idea of the consequences the west has intervened in a civil war.

It hasn’t started too well. A US jet crash landed in the desert, some Libyan rebels went to rescue the crew and were shot at injured by another US plane.

The inability to distinguish between friend and foe dooms any military action to failure.

The rebels are currently the group on whose side we are intervening, but what happens when they take revenge on the communities and tribes that are loyal to Gaddafi?  Our forces will be in a state of confusion because the political goals of the various governments taking part in this fiasco are ill defined and incoherent.

Why also does the west seem to be so keen to kill innocent Muslims? Images of Libyans killed and maimed by western armed forces, families grief stricken at mass funerals, will without doubt radicalise Muslims in all parts of the world, and we know the terrible consequences of that.

I have a horrible feeling that the western leaders have not learnt from recent mistakes. Libya, like Afghanistan, is a cauldron of factions and tribes whose loyalty is far less to a national leader than to local or provincial government.

The lessons from our failure in Iraq have also been ignored. We have no exit strategy and no plans on how to deal with the power vacuum caused by Gaddifi’s overthrow, and these were overlooked in our haste to destroy Saddam Hussain.

Do our leaders know their history? Libya, created as a country less than 100 years ago, is really the sticking together of two different areas, one with its roots in Greek history, the other with Roman antecedents and 500 kilometres of desert in between. Our intervention might well result in two countries where there is now one, presumably not a regionally destablising outcome we favour.

Am I missing something? If so, please let me know.

Although she wasn’t a member of My Last Song, she may as well have been. And she would have appreciated the Lifebox facility.

She had planned her funeral to the last detail. She wanted to be late for it, so this was an instruction. She wanted it to be interdenominational, so this too was an instruction.

The service included a recital of the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo and a trumpet solo of Amazing Grace, played by Taylor’s grandson Rhys.

She had the final performance she wanted, but only because she (and her family) had planned it beforehand.

Which is the reason she would have enjoyed visiting My Last Song, which helps and encourages people to plan their funerals as well as other end of life decisions.

Liz Taylor would also have taken advantage of the Lifebox and used it to store specially recorded videos – and one can imagine how good these would have been; readings – similarly dramatic; her life story; and even her secrets – and I bet there are still some she’s taken to the grave with her.

So if you know of anyone who would like to follow in her footsteps, go out in style and be remembered for years to come, you know where to point them.

And who knows, Liz Taylor might have visited My Last Song…we have been getting lots of traffic from California recently.

After listening to some of my favourite numbers, I realised just how appropriate many of his songs were to mark the end of someone’s life. So I spent most of the night playing his songs, listing them, re-ordering them, adding to and amending my choices and when finalised, writing cameo descriptions of their unique appeal and qualities as farewell songs.

The next morning, hardly a word had to be changed when I added the article to My Last Song – called simply Farewell Songs From Neil Diamond.

Now, four months later, I have played every track in the list, and I want you to enjoy the beauty and power of some of these songs. Self indulgent, yes, but please share this indulgence with me by listening to the following by clicking the YouTube clips in the article.

Stones
A haunting, poetic song of recalled love and yearning made more beautiful by the sumptuous arrangement.  Stones marked Diamond’s arrival as a writer of original, complex and exceptionally moving songs, using metaphor and imagery with a confidence that would make him one of the outstanding artists of his generation.

If You Go Away
Originally by Jacques Brel, this is one of the most endearing love songs ever written. Diamond clearly recognised its emotional power and delivers an unforgettably touching, sensitive version.

Play Me
In the most lovely, sensitive couplets Diamond reveals to his lover the extent to which he depends on her for his very existence. ‘You are the sun, I am the moon, You are the words, I am the tune…Play me.’ And if ever a melody was written that matched a song’s sentiments, Diamond achieves it here.

Dear Father
Diamond wrote the score for the film Jonathan Livingstone Seagull including this heart rending tour de force. Symphonic in structure, much of it is instrumental and epic in its aural power and pastoral beauty. ‘Dear Father, we dream while we may,’ is the description of so many lives unfulfilled but no less special.

I’ve Been This Way Before
A particularly appropriate farewell song with Diamond extracting every last drop of emotion. In adding layer upon layer of sound, power and sentiment, Diamond proves he’s the master of poignant sadness. It articulates intense grief, yet also can be read as promising hope and release.

Dry Your Eyes
You get the feeling that Diamond is seeing the crowded church swaying to the swirling rhythms, tears swelling in every eye, the haunting French horns used to scintillating effect as the song comes to an end. ‘And if you can’t recall the reason, can you hear the people sing? Right through the lightening and the thunder to the dark side of the moon, To that distant falling angel that descended much too soon. And come dry your eyes.’ Dry Your Eyes is an almost shameless manipulation of our raw emotions.

Be
Poetry of the highest order, ‘Be as a page that aches for a word, Which speaks on a theme that is timeless, While the one God will make for your day. Sing as a song in search of a voice that is silent, And the one God will make for your way.’ The magnificent arrangement builds into an intense climax, before a gentle closing. The closest Diamond has come to writing a hymn.

Hello Again
Diamond here expresses the grief of parting from a loved one…it hurts so much nothing can disguise it. Unbearable sadness, perfectly expressed.

I Am I Said
Poetic, enigmatic, intense, and emotional with a brilliant arrangement and memorable melody. I Am I Said excites and disturbs in equal measure. His dramatic delivery ensures we share his vulnerability.
Well, if you have got this far, and if you have played some of these tracks I thank you and hope you share my enthusiasm for and love of Neil Diamond’s songs.

As you can gather, they mean a huge amount to me. And, in the right setting, they might mean a lot to others as well.

These findings were picked up by the Dying Matters Coalition which, knowing the interests of the tabloid news desks (and probably its members also), headlined the piece they wrote on their website: ‘Most men would like to die having sex’.

Why let the facts get in the way of a good story…only one in five men said they would like to spend their final moments engaging in a spot of hanky panky.

More important than the imprecise description of research statistics is the good work the Dying Matters Coalition is doing in getting death talked about.  In this case, the vital issue of where people want to die instead of hospitals which is where most people will experience a possibly lonely and frightening end.

Dying Matters put this item on their Facebook page which resulted in some interesting comments. One woman said she could understand why ‘some blokes would want to go while they’re coming’.

Another reminded us of Peter Sellers’ comment on having a heart attack while making love to Britt Ekland: ‘I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.’

So well done Marie Curie and Dying Matters. Your efforts have resulted in a witty discussion about sex and death…the final taboos are gradually being defeated, and that can only be a good thing.

I had the idea for the website because I knew that as music is so important in people’s lives they would want this reflected in their deaths. And so the musical choices for their last songs would have to be wider than the fairly limited and often inappropriate dozen or so funeral hymns.

Not that there’s anything wrong with hymns chosen for funerals. They can be perfect in the right context, as a contributor to the site has pointed out with great conviction.

I was, therefore, delighted to read a review in the Guardian by the excellent Tim Ashton of a CD of Liszt’s funeral music.

As he says in his review, the music results from the composer’s confrontations with mortality. The album includes Three Funeral Odes of 1866, ferocious laments for Liszt’s son Daniel who died in 1859 and his elder daughter Blandine who was taken from him in 1862.

I have also recently come across the ultimate compilation of classical funeral music, courtesy of Virgin Classics.

It’s called Funeral Music, a simple title which hardly describes the glorious pieces from composers including Samuel Barber, Mozart, Verdi, Beethoven, Faure, Bach and Mahler.

Love and death are two huge inspirations for the creative mind, and nothing better illustrates this that the wonderful music that has been written when ‘confronting mortality’.

So please consider this when choosing the music for the final farewell. Or when simply wanting to hear profound, glorious and memorable music.

Yet according to the Office For National Statistics 69 per cent of people in England and Wales died in hospitals and hospices in 2009. And think tank Demos believes that by 2030, just one in ten people will die at home, the rest dying in hospitals and care homes.

I believes that personalised death plans will enable people to be more likely to have the death they want rather than the frightening and lonely end of life experienced in many hospitals. The sort of treatment old and dying people can expect in NHS hospitals was graphically shown on Dispatches earlier this week, confirmation of the Health Service Ombudsman’s criticism of how the NHS deals with the elderly.

The main cause of this often appalling standard of treatment of the dyings is that they don’t have a voice because death is so rarely discussed. Despite the best endeavours of Dying Matters, death is still a taboo subject and therefore the dying haven’t been consulted on how they wish their final days to be spent.

Yet if ailing elderly people and those with terminal illness were encouraged to fill in a death plan, it would mean the involvement of family members and family doctors who would then know what end of life experience the dying person wanted.

Dr Chris Browne, contributing editor of the health section of My Last Song, agrees: “As a GP I believe that death plans should be encouraged as they can empower the patient and their families to take greater control of the end of life experience.  This won’t happen without people’s wishes being discussed, evaluated, written down and then acted upon by family members and medical professionals.”

The death plan template within the Lifebox section of My Last Song covers much more than medical decisions. The headings enable the dying person to be as comfortable in mind and body as possible when their final moments arrive.

These headings allows people to state where they want to die, the level of medical intervention they want, who they want to visit them when they are dying, who should be there, what they want to hear, (music, poetry, prayers), what they want to smell (incense, scented candles, oils, flowers), how they want to be touched (hands held, caressed, gently massaged), and importantly and often overlooked, being clear of worries (knowing their loved ones and pets are cared for, their estate is in order, their will is up to date).

After all, pregnant mothers-to-be are encouraged to create a birth plan so that they are confident that giving birth will be as positive an experience as possible. The same should be achieved if death plans were more widely used.

On Sunday, David Cameron announced that the government was discussing with its allies the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Libyan aircraft killing Libyan protesters.

Thankfully this now seems less likely to be imposed because of the growing realisation that any Western military intervention will:

• Unite the country behind Gaddafi:
• Present Gaddafi with the PR opportunity to show it’s western powers that want him overthrown;
• Provide Muslim extremists throughout the world with proof that the West is at war with Islam;
• Risk the lives of British airmen;
• Cost a lot of money.

This country must return to the doctrine that our military should only be used to protect our national interest or to enforce a UN resolution against nations that break international law by invading another country.

Our soldiers should not be dying in Afghanistan so that girls might get a decent education or banditry might decrease. All we are doing is propping up an unpopular and corrupt regime in Kabul and the quicker we pull out the better. The Taliban won’t be defeated because they are more representative of the diverse and ungovernable peoples of Afghanistan than a distrusted and discredited administration.

As the temptation to intervene in Libya recedes, now is the time to press ahead with reshaping our armed forces.

We don’t need the weapons to fight wars in far off countries which don’t threaten our security. We don’t need the arsenal that assumes conflict with hostile nations, for we are part of what is now an interdependent world where any potentially adversarial nation will lose everything by attempting military action against another nation.

We need a military that has the intelligence and equipment to defend us from terrorists and to join international peacekeeping forces at a realistically modest level.

So when the generals, admirals and air vice-marshals argue that the situation in Libya demonstrates that the cuts to the military budget are wrong, the Government should say that on the contrary, it proves that we shouldn’t plan to intervene in other countries’ internal issues but instead concentrate on our national security.

This will cost far less money, and more importantly, far less loss of life, whether innocent civilians or that of our own servicemen, far too many of whom have been killed not to protect their country, but in pursuit of confused and misguided foreign policy.

To intervene in another country to affect regime change is against international law. Shooting down the aircraft of another country is an act of war. It will lead to more deaths, more funerals of loved ones here and in Libya.

Haven’t we learnt from our doomed intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan that we should not interfere in the affairs of other countries?

Because of the strategic importance of the middle east and the arab countries of North Africa, the world’s media are covering the story in droves. And as a consequence, western populations are seeing the brutal murders of peaceful protesters by tyrannical dictators such as Mubarak and Gaddafi. Understandably, the public’s sympathy are with these innocent people.

Playing to the public gallery, David Cameron thinks that his popularity will increase if he flexes some military muscle and imposes a no-flight zone.

Think again, please Mr Cameron. Explain what gives you the right to judge good and evil on the international stage.

The North Korean regime is starving its people to death. Mr Mugabe killed and tortured his opponents for over a decade, and people are still being beaten up by his thugs. The Burmese junta is a wicked and cruel dictatorship that has killed thousands of people who want democracy in their country.  These are just some of the countries in which rulers are cruel and despotic beyond imagination, and beyond the coverage of the world’s media.

I’m afraid to say that Mr Cameron’s desire for military intervention is to bolster his popularity, and it frightens me.  He must resist taking measures that are illegal to placate media pressure and uninformed public opinion.  It’s called leadership, Mr Cameron, just as much as is the image of a strong man ordering fighter aircraft to shoot down other aircraft.

Similarly it was media pressure that forced the British government to go to the huge cost and effort of rescuing and evacuating British workers in Libya. Surely this is the responsibility of their employers, the oil companies making huge profits by extracting this valuable commodity from the Libyan desert.

Surely they can afford to have planes on standby to evacuate their workers when, as their risk assessment experts will have recognised, the regimes in Tripoli, Cairo, Tunis and, dare one say it, Riyadh, begin to topple.  Or are they too busy looking at ways to avoid paying tax to the UK government?

I doubt very much they will be handed the bill for the military planes and vessels used to evacuate their staff, so they win both ways. Lots of profit, not much tax to pay and when things go wrong, the bill is paid for by the taxpayer.

Just because the Sun and the Daily Mail cry out for action is no reason to break international law, engage in deadly military activities and cost the country millions of pounds it can’t afford. We would do better for the government to take on tax avoiding corporates rather than dictatorships in foreign parts.

I felt unable to call on this resort last night as the programme I wanted to watch was Dispatches on Channel 4 which featured three people close to death who filmed the treatment they were given by the NHS.

I tried to watch it on my PC, but the broadband connection was playing up, so I only watched a little but what I saw was shocking, and this has been confirmed by comments, particularly those on the Dying Matters facebook page.

NHS end of life treatment is appalling, but this is to a large extent due to the client base having such low expectations and failing to demand better service.

Contrast it to the facilities and level of treatment provided to expectant mothers.

Mothers-to-be are given lots of advice, midwives and pre-natal specialists encourage questions, maternity wards are colourful, pleasant, uplifting places and individual birth plans are discussed. There’s a sense of well-being and an openness in facing the forthcoming event.

Death is as inevitable as the birth, but it’s treated very differently. Of course, one doesn’t expect medical staff to approach the end of a life with cheerful smiles. There needs to be a much more sympathetic and careful approach.

But as the Dispatches programme proved, sympathy and understanding are often sadly lacking when NHS staff deal with the dying, and it’s mainly due to the fact that families of the very elderly don’t address the forthcoming death.

Until people are able to look a doctor or nurse in the eye and say ‘I want to discuss how you will treat my loved one at the end of their life’ things will change hardly at all. While we continue to ignore death, find it uncomfortable to address, postpone the distress or just hand the consequences to others, we shouldn’t complain too much if the quality of its medical care management falls below our expectations.

I’ve gone on about it before, but a major step to improve this situation will be the acceptance of personal death plans which will involve the ailing patient, close loved ones and the appropriate medical professionals.

The My Last Song death plan is a holistic model, covering more than medical treatment but also the mental, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient so that at the end of life the dying person is in a state of comfort, peace, contentment and happiness.

There may or may not be a journey then embarked on, but if there is, it’s a good place from where to start.

“Why,” he asked, “would anyone want to visit a website that makes you think about deaths and funerals?”

“Because if you don’t think about it until it’s too late, it really is too late,” I answered.  ”Death is inevitable so plan for it in advance. My Last Song helps and supports people to plan so that things are better when the dreadful time comes.”

How so?  If your loved ones don’t have the information needed for a death certificate, how are they going to get it when you’re dead?

If family members don’t know your funeral wishes, how can they avoid the stress of wondering what you would have wanted? Some families tear themselves apart when arguing over the type – and cost – of the funeral.

Planning a funeral in advance can save a lot of money. You can take out an inflation proofed funeral plan, or you can think about what part of the arrangements you really need, which can be done by the family, and where costs can be reduced.

And, planned properly, the funeral can be a positive, celebratory and unique event that becomes a treasured memory. Unfortunately, all too often, funerals are rushed, inappropriate services that don’t match the lifestyle or views of the departed. In many ways a traditional funeral is a Victorian religious ritual completely out of place in the 21^st century.

You may even see the benefits of planning a farewell event before the death, so that family, friends, ex-colleagues, neighbours old and new can get together for a party at which you are the centre of attraction, giving your final messages.

Or you can ensure the reception is the sort of event you want to be remembered by…music, dancing, speeches, jokes, great food and drink.

It couldn’t be easier to organise. All the information is available on the website, and then you store in your Lifebox your wishes, the music you want played, the ceremony you want…as well as the other personal details your next of kin and executors will need. Simple…and crucial.

We only have one life, and only one death. My Last Song can’t help to make life memorable, but it can make the ending rather special.

When I read it I thought it summed up the emotional reasons to have a Lifebox, available via My Last Song.

The Lifebox can make someone  ‘live on’ by storing photographs, specially recorded videos and audio messages, scanned documents and uniquely drafted personal information such as life history, details of friends and family, achievements, interests, hobbies and favourite activities including most enjoyed films, plays, holidays, cars, music…the list is as long or short as befits the individual life that is being memorised online.

The ‘saved’ life is not open for all to see if stored in the Lifebox as it can only be opened by the people who have been given the access details by the Lifebox owner. Those granted permission to access the content of the Lifebox would be close family members who, when wanting to remember more clearly their departed loved one, can then play the specially recorded messages and read the letters and share the thoughts that will remind them of the life, personality and unique qualities of their loved one.

Those close relatives will, hopefully, feel less sad, the loss being easier to bear if this information is left for them to access when needed.

They will also admire the foresight of the relative for using the Lifebox not just to store such wonderfully unique memories and personal information to hand on to future generations, but the vital information required by close family members and executors to deal with the probate issues and funeral arrangements.

This type of memorisation, using a safe secure online storage space, adds so much more to the ‘family tree’ information usually limited to dates of birth, marriage and death, names of partner(s) and children, with a few other details added if someone has the time to do the research on the life of the family member thus recorded.

All these are compelling reasons to get a Lifebox, but none as much as the fact that it gives you digital immortality in the hearts and minds of your loved ones.

Today presenter Evan Davies suggested to Dr Julie Rugg who chairs the cemetery research group at the University of York that natural burial grounds offered the solution as they had enough capacity, were outside built up areas and were environmentally friendly.

Dr Rugg replied that natural burial grounds were difficult and expensive to reach particularly for older relatives.  She had come across people in London who needed to use five buses to visit the graves of their loved ones situated in these often remote locations.

She has a point, although such issues haven’t stopped the 30 per cent year on year rise in the number of people being buried in natural woodland sites.

Rosie Inman-Cook, who runs the Association of Natural Burial Grounds, believes the 240 natural burial grounds in the UK “should meet the demand for the foreseeable future.”

Even so, we should take seriously Dr Rugg’s opinion. While from the viewpoint of the reasonably fit and affluent, natural burial has many environmental advantages, to a less well off old person getting to a woodland burial to attend the interment and thereafter visiting the location, presents real disadvantages.

Dr Rugg’s suggested solution was the reuse of the space already taken by a body in our urban cemeteries after it had been there for about 100 years.

While I can see the sense of this, my main worry is the loss of the wonderful gravestones that are such a pleasure when walking in the impressive civic graveyards that our Victorian forebears situated in what was then the outer areas of our towns and cities.

I also think people will not want to bury their loved ones in a space that was previously occupied by an earlier grave.

It seems to me that our age will see its dead being put in fields and woods where they enhance the environment and where there is less pressure on space.

This will present problems, but these can be overcome if families and friends help those more disadvantaged to get to natural burial sites. Maybe that is something that the Big Society can address.

The ombudsman, Ann Abraham, said the patients whose cases she reviewed suffered unnecessary pain, neglect and distress.

Her review is even more chilling when one bears in mind the huge increase in the number of older people the NHS will be treating in the years ahead. Those who are 70 and older are the fastest growing section of the population and in 2015 will measure well over seven million in England alone.

It is a sad fact that many old people who are admitted to hospital then die there, against their wishes and those of their loved ones.

This desire not to end one’s life in hospital will be made stronger by the growing belief that the standard of medical care will not be of the expected level, highlighted by today’s findings.

So it is even more essential then to address the uncomfortable issues about end of life treatment, care levels and, yes, death.

People are entitled to a ‘good death’, not a lonely, frightening and sad ending.

Which is why I’m such a strong advocate of the introduction of personalised death plans. These will encourage the ailing, their close family members and their doctors to address issues such as the level of medical intervention and where they wish to die.

The death plan provided by My Last Song also includes decisions such as who the dying patient wants to be present, the spiritual needs of the patient and the issues that will, as much as possible, ensure a ‘good death’, such as the music or readings they want to hear, the aromas they want to smell, the way they want to be touched and the comforting mental state of knowing their affairs are in order, their loved ones, pets, possessions etc have been properly dealt with and their funeral wishes will be carried out.

Until our society takes a much more proactive and responsible attitude to dying, death and the way in which our elderly are treated when in hospital or indeed other places in which they receive care, we will continue to read reports of unacceptable yet avoidable cases of their poor medical treatment and unnecessary suffering.

Death plans must become more commonly accepted ways in which we take control of our ‘end of life’ experience, for the benefit of the old, their families and those whose task it is to provide treatment, care and comfort.

Three German quality car manufacturers, Mercedes, BMW and Audi, are exempt from this criticism as they have decided to use a numbering system that allows you to know where a particular model fits into the range.  Sensible and logical…unlike the silliness that Porche faces with cars called Boxster which is a dreadfully confused mix of what might be a noun or a verb but is neither, Cayenne, which is a red pepper, and something called the Panamera, another non-word.

The other German manufacturer to get into trouble with names is VW. Golf and Polo were fine as they are international sports, though what makes polo less impressive or expensive than golf is not clear.  Then, in a curious denial of logic, they introduced a smaller hatch back and instead of staying with male dominated and ‘clubby’ sports – Tennis or Squash would have completed the sporty triumverate – they called the wretched car Rabbit.

Peugeot epitomises Gallic logic with its numbering system. If it starts with a 1 it’s small, 2 is a bit bigger and so on until you get to the top of the range which has a 5 at the beginning.

But what’s this? They have now introduced a range called the Tepee, one of which is the Expert Tepee Long.  Which ever way you order these three words, it’s nonsense.

But it’s the Japanese car makers that have the biggest problem with names as their models have to be translated from a rather specific language – Japanese – to words that can be pronounced, if not understood, in those countries where they have their biggest markets. So the sequence of the letters of many models has a Western linguistic feel, but are meaningless. Hence the Toyota Avensis, Prius, Aygo and Auris.

Hopefully the next Toyota recall will be to add some letters to these names to make proper words.

Which brings me to the Mitsubishi Starion.  The story goes that back in the 1980s the top guys at Mitsubishi were very pleased with the UK success of the small hatchback called the Colt. They decided to launch a larger saloon, and a meeting was held in London at which the UK marketing team was asked to present a name for this vehicle to their Japanese bosses.

“We propose,” they said, “to call the model the Stallion because as the Colt is a small horse, so the Stallion is a large and powerful horse. Our customers who want a bigger and more powerful car will want to buy a Stallion.”  There was a pregnant pause…then to everyone’s delight, the Mitsubishi main man smiled a big smile. “Ah yes,” he said, “I agree. It’s very good.  We will call the new car…the Starion!”

The most interesting part of this rather amusing story is the comments on the paper’s website. Most contributors thought this was funny and many suggested suitable secular songs which they wanted for their funerals.

Earlier this month, on the west coast of the US rather than the south coast of the UK, a ‘pop culture’ journalist posted a blog on the songs he wanted played at his funeral.

At the time of writing, 105 comments had been posted with the most diverse, quirky, in some case shocking, selections of songs. And these have been ‘liked’ (and occasionally ‘disliked’) often by ten or more people.

And in my email inbox today somebody asked how they could contribute the five songs they wanted to be remembered by. When this selection comes through it will be the 74^th contribution.

Google ‘funeral songs’ and you’ll find pages of websites with lists of suggested tracks, though with the same ten or so tracks often appearing.

My Last Song appears on page 2, which we hope to improve on, but you get my drift…this interest in personal choices of music to mark your ending is growing in popularity.  I’m frequently interviewed on local radio stations to discuss ‘funeral music’ presumably because the editors and presenters know funeral songs interest their audiences.

What does this prove? I rather agree with Charles Cowling, author of the Good Funeral Guide, who believes that the baby boomer generation are now addressing their mortality and are redefining death culture as they redefined youth culture in the 1960s.

Not for them the dreary, dull and depressing traditional funerals with a couple of Victorian songs expressing religious sentiments when they have few if any religious beliefs.

No, increasingly this group want to be remembered by a positive, celebratory and personal ceremony. All Things Bright and Beautiful is out, What A Wonderful World is in.

So I think the future is looking bright for the increasing number of companies, some of them joined in a loose alliance known as the Farewell Innovators, positioned to give this market what it needs, not what rather traditional and inflexible funeral directors, think is right for it.

Why, though, do so many of them also want to tell me about what they ate for breakfast or bought at the supermarket or what their kids are doing? I’m not interested.

Why waste their time writing trivia, unless it’s a smokescreen hiding a darker, more unpleasant side of their lives.

It made me wonder what sort of Facebook page Hitler would have had.  It probably would have been fairly light on his work activities and containing quite a bit of trivia such as how much he loves children, walking his dogs, staying at his Bavarian estate, how he’s getting on with Eva Braun. No doubt a  few of his paintings.

He probably would have let us know the early career successes. ‘Invaded Czechoslovakia today…went remarkably well.’

Then a few weeks later: ‘Invaded Poland today, think it’s annoyed Britain…oh well, who cares.’

I expect lots of Germans would want to be his friends and like his posts.

Hitler’s facebook page could have saved a lot of lives if he had been honest. ‘Decided to start a republic that will rule the world for a thousand years. Part of the deal is to exterminate Jews, gays, gypsies and the disabled. Rest of the world will be subjugated to German rule. Now off to draw up detailed project chart with Goering.’

It wouldn’t have been long before a group ‘Stop Hitler before it’s too late!’ was up and running.  They might have been taken seriously. I would have signed the online petition.

For the Government, the worst sort of anger – rational, well-informed, articulate, reasoned – and the worst sort of public – middle class, vocal and reasonable.

It shouldn’t have taken many focus groups or polling exercises to show that this was always going to be an unpopular proposal. It’s not clear what the political or economic advantages are to changing the management of our forests and woodlands.

The great British public, or rather the small but affluent and articulate elite that can afford the time and cost of driving deep into the countryside, enjoy strolling around the woodlands with children and dogs in tow.  They are aware that if organisations other than the Forestry Commission are responsible for the management of the woodlands, their pleasures will be at a higher cost and a reduced quality.

And while Jack and Josephine Upwardly-Mobile are happy to pocket bank bonuses and run PR businesses for ever greater profit, they don’t want commercial companies making money by chopping down the trees their Golden Retrievers pee against.

No, they and their ilk have a nice experience and now very much admire the way their playgrounds are managed by the Forestry Commission, the National Trust or English Heritage.  How dare the Government want to change this arrangement!

Neither Caroline Spellman nor Jim Paice, the government ministers saddled with the unhappy task of ‘selling’ the sell off of forests to this disapproving cohort have sounded very convincing.

La Spellman put forward a view she possibly thought would play well with this audience that local groups and charities should take over the management of their neighbouring forests from the large, impersonal Forestry Commission, under the localism element of the Big Society.

No they shouldn’t. Running a forest is a complex task and beyond the ability of a hard pressed local council or a group of well meaning local people who form a charity on the basis that they are more responsive to local need.

When questioned in the media, by unremittingly hostile interviewers, Spellman and Paice soon seek refuge in the ‘but nothing will change’ stance. To which the obvious response is why change it.

Like most of the country, including those who rarely if ever venture into the woods, I like the two words ‘Forestry Commission’. It sums up a body of experts, boffins, public administrators and a workforce motivated by love of trees, muddy boots, rare plants and furry animals and whose sense of commercialism doesn’t go further than selling nobbly carvings and bird feeding kits to kids called Rupert and Annabelle.

Leave well alone Mr Cameron.

Just ten seconds of a John Barry score could tell you all you needed to know about the movie. The melodies and arrangements added excitement, atmosphere, mystery and interest to every film he wrote for.

Such was his ability to create aural moods and sound pictures that at times listening was more enjoyable than watching.

Commenting on his death, British film composer David Arnold said that James Bond wouldn’t have been half as cool without John Barry holding his hand, as good an epitaph as you can get.

I already had a couple of favourites, Goldfinger and Born Free. In 1964 I was a country boy visiting relatives in London when they took me to see Goldfinger in a huge and glamourous cinema. The introduction music and graphics made me tingle. It summoned up the swinging 60s and I still recall it vividly.

Born Free? Well, a lovely piece of music to go with a marvellous film. John Barry’s score suited the script so well.

But choosing the other three pieces was incredibily difficult because he had written so many wonderfully evocative, haunting, thrilling melodies, each with an emotional appeal that would be suitable for the farewell event.

You will have to go to the article to see which three selections made up the five, and I hope you think they are good choices. I’m tempted to reallocate my time this week to listen to more of his filmscores, certain that I’ll hear melodies and arrangements that will fill me with joy and pleasure.

Paradoxical then that John Barry’s death confirmed to me the wonderful variety of music from all genres from which farewell pieces can be selected.

So, don’t put up with the limited and clichéd choices put in front of you by funeral directors, funeral planners and well meaning relatives.

Let your soul and imagination soar…recall the music that changed your life…spend time going through the My Last Song music pages…and whatever you do, make sure you go out on the right note.

A top ten list was compiled earlier this month by US funeral guru Brian Burkhardt. And heading the chart was London based My Last Song followed by The Good Funeral Guide, run out of Birmingham.

The other places were taken by US websites.

I was surprised that My Last Song had been awarded the number one slot.

In the past two years there’s been a big increase in the number of funeral websites. They are particularly popular in the US, so for My Last Song to be chosen as the best in the world by an American funeral expert is quite an honour.

Charles Cowling, who started his website in 2009 to promote his book The Good Funeral Guide, is equally pleased. “There’s a lot of global ideas-swapping around the topic of funeral customs and how they are evolving, especially in the English speaking world. This is a flattering accolade.”

What is it about funeral information that makes it so web-friendly?

First is that while people are reluctant to talk to their friends and family about their mortality and the funeral they want, a website is emotionally neutral and gives positive advice. It’s not going to cry or ask to be left money.

Second, the huge increase in ‘silver surfers’ means that more older people are accessing the internet to find relevant information.

Third is type of information being offered by websites that appeal to the ageing baby boomers.  Fifty years ago this group redefined youth culture. Now they are challenging funeral traditions. They want funerals that match their lifestyles, their beliefs, their achievements and their interests and websites like My Last Song give them the information, for instance music choices, they like.

As Charles Cowling emphasises, “This demographic is simply not going to accept a dreary traditional ‘cut and paste’ farewell event to mark their lives. They will want colourful, celebratory and upbeat funerals.” And funeral websites are meeting their needs.

Funeral planning and advice might be a niche market, but the demographics suggest it will be very big in a few years time.

I was convinced My Last Song would be a success when I analysed the population figures. “According to the Office of National Statistics, there will be almost 7 million people aged 70 and over in 2015 in England alone.  In 2020 this rises to 8 million.

The other interesting statistic is that there were less than half a million deaths registered in the UK in 2009 and that between 1999 and 2009, death rates fell by more than a quarter. So people are living longer which means they will be our customers for longer, visiting the websites more often, buying funeral plans, writing and editing their wills, wanting more information about age related illnesses, care options, and how to enjoy a longer and more active older age.

My Last Song has in-depth advice on all these issues, and expects to monetise the website within two or three years with affiliate agreements, sponsored pages and click throughs to companies wanting to reach this demographic.

I’m also planning to launch a US version of the site in 2012 and now looking for collaborators across the Atlantic.

There are more people in the US, they spend more per head on their funerals and they love music, which is an important driver for visitors to My Last Song.

Cowling’s business model is more simple. He uses his website as a first port of call for anyone needing to plan a funeral and find a good funeral director. It also carries updates to his book.

He has a listing of outstanding funeral directors UK-wide to which he is constantly adding.  “People increasingly want unique funerals for unique

The Good Funeral Guide website also carries a lively and provocative blog which enjoys a world-wide readership.

There are lots of jokes about the funeral business being a dying industry, but for these two UK companies, there’s a lot to look forward to.

The previous Government, aware of the growing need to address the issues, launched an End of Life Care strategy in July 2008. The strategy is supported by National End of Life Care Programme and £286 million of Government money.

It’s informative to visit the website and look at the vast amount of work that is being done as part of the programme. The work, the goodwill, the case studies, the references to publications would be commendable if there was a clear focus on what the programme wants to achieve: high quality, person-centred care for all adults at the end of life and enabling more people nearing end of life to choose where they die.

However, the Programme has grown like topsy and the more it grows, the further it is from achieving these aims.

It is a good example of the wasteful cost and confusion of trying to find a top down solution to what is the most individual of any health care situation – caring for a dying person.

So far the mixture of academics, care workers, medical professionals, think tank researchers and other well meaning individuals have not found the solution and they never will.

The present government recognises that inflexible, bureaucratic, centrally imposed and expensive solutions to society’s complex problems are doomed to failure. It is redefining the state’s relationship with civil society by reducing the role and cost of the state and hoping to increase personal and community responsibility and participation.

The success or failure of this experiment will define society’s progress for the first half of the 21st century.

As far as the end of life care is concerned, delivering a good death requires more emotional capital to be invested than currently the case and less money than currently anticipated.

Planning a ‘good death’ must involve family, friends and appropriate medical professionals. Coming together to address the subject of death and dying will necessarily overcome the still common fear of discussing the subject until it is literally too late.

There is not a great deal of point spending large amounts of money on end of life care as death can’t be defeated only delayed. Of course, the pain, suffering and fear can be managed and reduced but this shouldn’t be expensive.

If GPs and palliative care specialists insisted that patients completed a personal death plan, and if family members felt comfortable in encouraging older loved ones to fill in their plans, a good death would be a far more likely outcome than anything that will emerge from the current hotchpotch of case studies and models coming out of the National End of Life Care Programme.

Important players in changing attitudes will be the excellent hospice movement and the Dying Matters Coalition which, if properly funded, could lead the move to rid our society of the taboo surrounding death and dying. If people talk about death and plan for it – their own or that of an ailing loved one, or in the case of the medical profession a patient – the more likely will be a ‘good death’ instead of a lonely and impersonal passing.

Currently just a small dot on the radar is the ‘soul midwives‘ movement which is a voluntary group of women who want to give spiritual, physical and existential comfort to the dying.  It will be interesting to see if this becomes a growing movement or whether friends and family will be able to administer the same kind of holistic end of life care.

But the survey doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know, and in reality highlights the Co-op’s attempt to catch up.  In short the survey of 2000 people and 850 of its funeral companies confirms that more people now want a celebration of their life, colourful events, secular songs, bespoke coffins, green funerals and personal input from mourners.

The Co-op have involved the country’s leading funeral historian, Dr Julian Litten, to opine that the funerals of Princess Diana and Jade Goody have changed the public’s view of how funerals can be delivered.

I think Dr Litten is wrong about this.  The British public can decide for themselves that a religious ritual isn’t appropriate for someone who had no religious beliefs and that as paying customers they will have the send off they want rather than a ‘choose one from three options’ offered by many funeral directors.

Similarly, there wasn’t much that was environmentally friendly about Princess Di’s and Jade Goody’s funerals, yet the demand for green funerals has risen hugely in the last 15 years as people become more concerned about the environmentally damaging aspects of traditional funerals.

No, organisations like the Co-operative Funeralcare have been slow to understand the change in demand whereas innovators such as My Last Song, One Life ceremonies, the green burial movement, suppliers of bespoke coffins and authors of guides such as The Good Funeral Guide have understood the requirements of the now ageing baby boomers and are meeting their needs.

The number of humanist officiants is increasing to meet the demands of atheists for humanist funerals, and I would like to commend the effort put in by one in particular, Simon Allen, who’s contribution to My Last Song has been invaluable.

The funeral industry is on the verge of a big change in how it operates, and this change is driven by consumer demand. Funeral directors are, inevitably, traditional and slow to change although there are notable exceptions.

But they must recognise that many new customers will be from the generation who, when in their teens redefined youth culture. During the next years of their lives they expected to get what they wanted and that’s going to be true for how their end of life (or their older relatives)  is treated.

The one statistic that is still disappointing if not surprising is that 55 per cent of respondents hadn’t discussed their funerals with family and friends.  Death and funerals are still taboo subjects, but the trend I suspect is for this to be reducing, helped by the growing number of online sources of support and information.

I will again plug the Lifebox facility of My Last Song which encourages and enables people to plan their own bespoke funeral event and store those plans and wishes safely for their loved ones to access.  In practice filling in the funeral wishes checklist and the individual death plan will mean discussing the options with close family members.

When death and funerals are more commonly discussed, the numbers of celebratory, colourful and individual ceremonies requested will increase…whether the larger traditional funeral companies are well placed to deliver them efficiently is questionable.

I must say I was surprised when Google Alerts, true to its name, alerted me to the fact that My Last Song was the number one funeral website slot.

In the past two years there’s been a big increase in the number of funeral and bereavement websites and blogs, particularly in the US, so for My Last Song to be chosen as the best funeral website in the world by an American funeral expert is quite an honour.

Second placed website, The Good Funeral Guide, was started in 2009 by Charles Cowling, author of the Guide.

Charles, who is at the centre of the new-era funeral blogging and tweeting community, confirms the growing trend for online funeral information. “There’s a lot of global ideas-swapping around the topic of evolving funeral customs, especially in the English speaking world.”

It seems likely that the growing interest in end of life websites is because the baby boomer generation is now facing their mortality. As Charles puts it: “These are the people who reinvented youth culture. Just watch them reinvent death culture.”

This generation will want their funerals to reflect their views and lifestyles instead of the often dreary traditional event, built around a religious ritual out of place in an increasingly secular 21st century.

Another reason for the increased use of funeral planning and funeral information websites is the desire to save money.

Funeral costs are rising fast, and the customer is often getting a bad deal because the funeral industry knows they are dealing with people unable or unwilling to discuss money when organising a loved one’s funeral.

As Charles Cowling says, “There are many ways of saving money when planning a funeral and negotiating with the funeral directors. The Good Funeral Guide and My Last Song have lots of advice on how to save money and also have a better, more appropriate funeral.”

A number of organisations wanting to change how funerals are handled have formed a loose alliance called the Farewell Innovators. These include a photographer specialising in funeral photography and a company producing bespoke memorial books of photographs.

Also involved are those who offer eco-friendly funerals and a more personal, often more celebratory approach, to the final goodbye.

All use the new technology so I hope that next year, these new companies feature in lists of the top websites.

The funeral planning advice articles on the website are increasingly popular and thus valuable to a company with a lot of funeral businesses around the country.

The discussion got off to a good start and my proposal seemed to be acceptable.

And then the managing director showed me the print off of the article called Cutting Funeral Costs.

“If we advertise on your website you’ll have to take off this page,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Because it means my companies won’t be making as much money. I don’t want families to pay less for a funeral.”

In fairness, he said that he didn’t have targets for his funeral businesses and his funeral directors were told not to force up the price the families wanted to pay.

He said advice on costs was discussed with the family, to ensure that “mum had the funeral they would want her to have…”

He didn’t think visitors to My Last Song needed to know how they could reduce the costs of the funeral so the deal would only be done if the advice was removed.

I thanked him for seeing me and caught the next train back to London.

The company, which has a large market share, should be aware that the industry will change radically in the next few years.  Customers will be better informed and new businesses will challenge the established way of selling funeral services.

Take coffins. Eco-friendly materials are becoming increasingly popular, and while funeral directors are making these choices available, companies such as Greenfield Creations in Essex and The Coffin Company soon to launch in the north east, sell direct to customers wanting cheaper and more sustainable coffins.

And flowers. Funeral flowers are extremely expensive and also bad for the environment as they require heat and artificial light. Yes, the tradition of marking a death with flowers goes back thousands of years but that doesn’t mean a family in the 21st century shouldn’t want to save on this part of the funeral package, or instead donate the money to a good cause.

I appreciate the point made by the managing director that a family ‘at grief’ need a sympathetic service rather than a ‘we can do a great cut price job for your mum’ approach.

But what is unacceptable is his view that the customer should not be given the information to be a more informed client before the ‘at need’ engagement with the funeral director.

Only in a business as ‘traditional’ as the funeral business could such an unfair approach to the customer be defended in 2010.

With more businesses and organisations wanting to change how we deal with death, dying and funerals, this approach won’t last much longer, I hope.

I got in touch to bring My Last Song to their attention and before long, YourFuneralGuy, had put My Last Song at the top of the list of funeral websites for 2010, with The Good Funeral Guide, author Charles Cowling, ‘in at number two’.

Someone then commented that My Last Song was the best funeral website in the world because it had the facility for people to put their wishes in the Lifebox for loved ones to fulfil (though I can’t find this comment).

Another US fellow traveller is Gail Rubin, whose Family Plot blog is excellent, as is the Modern Mourner, the website of Shirley Tatum.

Shirley has sent My Last Song her five favourite farewell tracks, and splendid songs for a funeral they are too.

There is no doubting that funeral music is of great interest…many visitors to My Last Song look for funeral hymns, secular funeral music, advice on classical music suitable for funerals and the five farewell tracks that now more than 70 people have contributed.

There is also no doubt that websites that advise people on how to get good value from their funeral director (or funeral  home as they’re called in the US), how to have the most appropriate send off, how to address their final days and then how to come to terms with the loss will get more and more traffic as the populations of the UK and the US get older.

The people within this demographic, 60 onwards, will also be increasingly those who are from the baby boomer generation, defined by the US Census Bureau as born between 1946 and 1964. These are people who will redefine aging and the end of life experience as they redefined youth culture back in the 60′s.

They are internet savvy. They use social media. They get information from websites.  Many will want to leave this world in a style that is unique and celebratory.

In the UK, a number of organisations who cater for this market have grouped together under the title of Farewell Innovators. A Facebook page has been created and a first meeting is being organised.

I would expect a similar informal association to exist, or to be set up fairly soon, in the US, and then for the farewell innovators both sides of the Atlantic to swap notes, opinions and be mutually supportive.

There’s a lot of people out there who need what we are offering them…the understanding that death is part of life, that it should be planned for, that as we are unique in life so our partings should acknowledge and celebrate our individuality, and that our parting, while a sad and mournful experience for our loved ones, should enable them to continue with their lives stronger in the knowledge that we have had the ending we wished for.

And I hope that includes playing their last songs, music that is meaningful and memorable.

It seems to this observer that the divisions between rich and poor get greater for those in older age.

The older rich can buy a satisfactory standard of living, can call on friends and family willing, if not happy, to help them.

The older poor are all too often isolated, lonely, confused and fearful and as a result live in increasingly desperate conditions.

An earlier blog described the baby boomers who were now planing for a better quality end of life experience as ‘superior seniors’. This definition now seems all too apt as it implies superiority and inferiority, or in this context, haves and have nots.

The blog also warned that the Big Society would ignore ‘superior seniors’ at its peril, pointing out that vociferous baby boomers, used to getting what they wanted, would complain loudly if excluded from Cameron’s ‘big tent’.

But who hears the voice of those less fortunate senior citizens who missed out on the baby boomers’ boom times and whose later years are spent alone, poor and without any influence?

This is where Age UK  must ensure its campaign against poverty in retirement is successful by publicising the plight of the large number of society’s impoverished senior members.

If the Big Society is to succeed, the poor elderly must be included, but this will present the Government with a major problem. The Big Society’s mission is to create a fairer country in which we all feel a sense of belonging without the impedence of complex legislation and bureaucratic administration.

But with two million of those in retirement not having enough money to cover basic food and fuel bills, let alone enjoy retirement, this will be a major redistribution of wealth requiring more than community self-help and middle class goodwill.

As those who stand to benefit - the isolated and poor elderly - have the least powerful voice and are easiest to ignore, their membership of the Big Society is by no means certain.

Those aware of the scale of the problems faced by the poor elderly must ensure they aren’t excluded from the coalition’s vision of how our society will be improved.

And you baby boomers, now affluent, influential and articulate, should remember that in your youth you campaigned for a fairer and more just society.

You now have just as important a cause to support and that is reducing the shocking and scandalous divide between the rich and poor older members of our socity.

You didn’t look away when you were teenagers…don’t ignore the suffering of your contemporaries now.

It is the belated recognition that the baby boomer generation born in the two decades following the end of the second world war is now reaching the latter years of their lives and that their end of life expectations will need to be met.

It’s becoming rather un-PC to call them old, or elderly, not least because they don’t think they are. Indeed, with more people living to 100, those in their 60s and 70s aren’t really old any more.

More acceptable terms are elders, which has a ring of wisdom attached to it, and seniors which connotes greater experience.

Unlike the generations before them, this group – let’s call them superior seniors – will take more control of their end of life experiences. Baby boomers have been criticised for being the ‘me, me, me’ generation who get what they want.  This attitude isn’t going to change as baby boomers become superior seniors.

They will want better health care so they lead longer and healthier lives. They will want to be independent as long as possible, and when looked after will expect a higher standard of service from care providers.

When the end of their lives is approaching, they will want to be involved in the decisions previously taken by family members or their doctors about how much medical intervention they want to receive and where they want to die.

And when they die, they will want their lives to be remembered positively and uniquely with a high quality farewell ceremony or service.

Superior seniors will have learned from the end of life experiences of their parents’ generation and not been impressed by poor quality care delivery, hardly reassured by the NHS end of life medical care lottery and disappointed by anonymous, dreary send offs.

We are at a point when the future tense is changing to the present…time is passing, years are being added to the ages of the baby boomers. If not old, they are no longer young.

The farewell innovators are those companies and organisations who want to give this increasingly large market (by 2015 there will be well over ten million people aged 65 or older) a better farewell experience.

Central to this approach is the move towards a ‘good death’, the achieving of which is the purpose of the Dying Matters Coalition. It means the ailing patients, their families and their doctors have to address dying and death openly and positively to make the end of life experience as comfortable as possible. The My Last Song death plan is an holistic approach to organising a comfortable death.

While all this signals the retreat of the pervasive Anglo Saxon death taboo, superior seniors and the farewell innovators who wish to provide services for them should not be complacent.

Death is sad, upsetting, worrying and uncomfortable to discuss. It is often easier to ignore, but if not addressed, superior seniors can hardly complain if the end of life decisions are made by their families or health professionals, not always for the reasons they would have chosen.

As this government puts an inclusive, collaborative and mutually supportive Big Society at the top of its agenda, it must do more to encourage better living standards and the delivery of a ‘good’ death for the increasingly large numbers of superior seniors who will not expect to be left out of the tent.

The issue about end of life medical treatment is as topical in the US as it is in this country.

In both societies, neither ailing older people nor their younger family members are comfortable talking about death. It’s therefore surrounded by fear of the unknown, and as nobody likes to talk of what they are afraid about, so the taboo about addressing death continues.

Usually late in the patient’s life, he or she will say that ‘I don’t want to be hooked up to lots of machines,’ or ‘I want it to happen quickly.’

How this view is communicated to the health professionals providing end of life treatment is again the subject of confusion and reluctance to address the issue. The patient’s life is therefore often unnecessarily prolonged, the family’s anguish stretches out and the medical staff are not certain how to proceed.

A simple form of words can change this, and the acronym AND is really very simple.

Research in the States has shown that the phrase Do Not Resuscitate is not used by many families because it is a negative and sounds scary, whereas Allow Natural Death (AND) connotes a positive, it implies permission.

It also gains plus points because it uses the word Natural, as in Natural Childbirth and Natural foods.

What starts in the US quickly cross the ‘pond’, and because part of My Last Song’s mission is to encourage people to address their later life decisions before it’s too late, we think AND should be adopted in the UK.

It will give impetus to the Dying Matters coalition’s goal of changing attitudes towards death, dying and bereavement and make it more likely that the patient, the patient’s family and the family GP will discuss the chosen end of life treatment.

My Last Song has created a Death Plan template, within the Lifebox, which makes it easier for people to make the decisions that will result in a ‘good death’. The old and terminally ill will be more in control of the end of life experience they want.

It will encourage families and GPs to talk about death and to plan for it thus reducing the fear of the unknown.

We only die once and, if possible, it should be the experience we want it to be.

He starts by saying that successful people have a simple recipe for happiness – the pursuit of meaningful goals.

Life, he says, is a journey. If we know where we’re heading, it’s so much easier to take the directions that will take us there. It’s all too common to drift along without a clear destination but it’s never too late to pinpoint where we want to be and take action.

He gives four tips.

Tip One – Focus on What You Want!

Come up with a list of five things you’d like to happen in your life if a genie gave you five wishes.

As well as writing them down, share at least one with a friend or family member. They may even be able to help.

Tip Two – ‘Big Yourself Up!’

As a senior citizen you’re going to have more successes and achievements than most…write down as many as you can.

Experiences may include challenges that seemed problematic at the time, but that you managed to overcome. Once you’ve done that, have fun brainstorming how you could use them going forwards.

Tip Three – How to deal with your challenges

The conscious mind is poor at solving our challenges, plus it struggles with the concept of delegation.

Whatever the issue, write it down. Your subconscious mind will gladly accept the task and then work on a solution in the background. You’ll be busy doing something else and the solution will pop into your head.

Tip Four– Enlist the services of a life coach

Not surprisingly, Paul recommends employing someone who is an expert in helping you explore what you really want, and removing the barriers. It can be incredibly empowering to share one’s dreams (and issues) with a fellow human being. He says family can be judgemental, and so a life coach is the fellow human you need (and will pay for, of course).

I hope I don’t come across as too cynical. I asked Paul to contribute the article and I think it’s good.

More importantly, it has shown a large gap in the advice carried on My Last Song, and that is information aimed at the newly retired and active retired on how to make this period of their lives as successful, fulfilling and happy as possible.

Further contributions to meet this aim welcomed. The autumn of our years should be mellow, warm and fruitful.

Reverend Ratcliff, minister at St John’s Church of England (Continuing), South Wimbledon and editor of the English Churchman, opposes the growing trend where the minister allows families to read poems and tributes, “thus becoming little more than a Master of Ceremonies.”

Reverend Ratcliff argues that “It is quite inappropriate to produce a ‘Princess Diana style’ modern funeral… The service is predominantly the worship of God and so needs to be led by a minister of God.”

According to Reverend Ratcliff, the place for members of the family to address other family and friends is at the reception that follows the funeral, not during the service.

He says that many of the mourners, lacking any knowledge of the Bible, will want the funeral to be “light and jolly”.

This, he says, “is a challenge, not an excuse to dumb down funeral services.”

To ensure the congregation understand the solemn nature of the service, “the minister should take the whole service himself without allowing family and friends to present poems and eulogies. It is his job and he should not hand it over to those who are not qualified.”

Reverend Ratcliff’s views fly in the face of the growing trend to mix secular elements with religious content at the request of the family.

This is known as a mix’n’match funeral, or the Modern British Funeral, and was institutionalised by the funeral of Princess Diana in September 1997.

Watched by millions around the world, the service included tributes read by both Diana’s sisters and a controversial address by her brother, Lord Spencer. Elton John played a re-worked version of Candle in the Wind.

The service was lead by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey.

Reverend Ratcliff also believes burial is preferable to cremation, saying: “the language of being buried and raised with Christ is so beautifully illustrated at the grave and this leaves a lasting impression of a wonderful and sure hope.”

The Lifebox can also be given as a gift, and as Christmas approaches, it could be the answer for those people looking for a very unusual, original and useful present.

Ten reasons why the Lifebox is a great gift:

1. Easy to buy…just fill in the form online by visiting My Last Song.
2. Flexible prices: £12 for a year; £100 for ten years; £150 for permanent possession.
3. Fast, easy and free to send to all parts of the world – attach the gift certificate to an email and it’s delivered instantly.
4. Will be valued and used for years to come – the owner can upload their photos, videos, specially recorded messages, unique personal details, life stories so their lives and memories will never be forgotten.
5. Ideal for all ages, and will bring different generations together to recall and record personal and family memories.
6. Secure and safe…only trusted keyholders can access the Lifebox but only when permission is confirmed. Content can’t be edited or deleted.
7. Exclusive discounts from leading retailers available within the Special Offer section of the Lifebox means it can be used to save money.
8. You can put a personal message in the gift certificate you give to the person to whom you are giving the Lifebox.
9. Option to donate to Carers UK charity Christmas appeal, so the certificate becomes a sort of charity Christmas card.
10. Unique, original and very useful…the promise of digital immortality.

So dear readers of this blog, if you have a Christmas present problem, the Lifebox could well be the answer.  And think of the time, stress and hassle you’ve saved. Go to My Last Song, and if it’s not one of the easiest transactions you’ve ever made on line, let me know and I’ll try to make it even simpler.