Eideard

Holy smoke!

A council is proposing to save money – and combat global warming – by heating a leisure centre and swimming pool using heat generated by the crematorium next door.

Redditch council in Worcestershire says it can save £14,500 a year by warming its new Abbey Stadium sports centre with heat from the crematorium’s incinerators that would otherwise be lost.

The council, which says it is the first project of its kind in the UK, is holding briefings later this week with faith groups, funeral directors and members of the public to discuss the scheme.

But some local people are concerned. Simon Thomas, of Thomas Brothers funeral directors, said: “I don’t know how comfortable people would feel about the swimming pool being heated due to the death of a loved one, I think it’s a bit strange and eerie.”

Council leader Carole Gandy defended the plans, saying it would save money and energy. “I’d much rather use the energy rather than just see it going out of the chimney and heating the sky. It will make absolutely no difference to the people who are using the crematorium for services…I think it will save the authority money and, in the long-term, save energy which is what we’re all being told we should do.”

Be careful about all that common sense stuff, Ms. Gandy. It will get you in trouble every time.

Undertakers in the Austrian capital say they’re planning to use a crematorium to help heat their new headquarters.

Bestattung Wien spokesman Juergen Sild says cremation requires generating very high temperatures and that the idea, in times of environmental awareness, is to put the excess energy created to good use instead of letting it go to waste.

Sild added Friday that the headquarters, to be situated next to the crematorium and due to be completed next year, would also be warmed with gas.

Well, you need a backup when there aren’t sufficient cremations to keep the place toasty.

The family of an obese woman whose body was ‘too fat’ to be cremated is suing a French crematorium for discrimination.

Danielle Pelabarrere, 63, who weighed 22-stone, died of a heart attack in Merignac, near Bordeaux on Saturday.

When her husband Andre booked her coffin into the local crematorium however, he was told it was two inches too wide to fit into the incinerator. The family also tried crematoriums in neighbouring French towns, but none were able to help.

Only Toulouse, which is 100 miles away, said it had an incinerator large enough to take the three-feet wide coffin. Mr Pelabarrere is now demanding compensation from the crematorium “for its inability to meet our needs.”

“It is an outrage. She was mocked for her size in life, and now she is being mocked in death,” he said.

Jean-Claude Oruezabal, the Merignac crematorium manager, denied discrimination. “We accept people and coffins of any size in principle, but in this case it just wont fit and there is nothing we can do”, he said.

I must admit that being a grillin’ and chillin’ kinda guy, at first I thought they were worried about fire spreading to the rest of the building from a fat flare-up.

But, suing because the chosen casket doesn’t fit into the furnace is absurd. They could have put her into the oven in a shroud – or a little judicious squeezing into a narrower casket. I’m willing to bet none of these alternatives were acceptable to the family. Which makes their lawsuit even more ridiculous.