Simply Smith

Council bosses in Greater Manchester have decided that corpses above this height (or is it length?) will be surcharged £50. This, because it takes longer to dig a grave that size. Not content with ripping off the living, big business (and that must include the Greater Manchester Council) is now ripping off the dead.

There is no mention, however, of the Greater Manchester Council offering a discount for deceased persons, say, shorter than 5ft 8ins or whatever. I suppose that would be stretching the bounds of insensitivity.

Perhaps we should add deathism and corpsist to the plethora of isms and ists that seem to proliferate in our contemporary Western culture.

While we're at it let's consider how this trend might affect our lives in other ways.

What about weightism? There must be a bureaucrat somewhere (probably in Brussels), at this very moment, considering how the larger passengers of aeroplanes, buses and trains can be surcharged for taking up more space, and using up more fuel, than other passengers.

How about those with excellent hearing and sight: perhaps for them the television licence should be more expensive. This should certainly highlight the notion of sensism.

And if you're rich, because you have so many of them, perhaps the price of a pound coin could be £2.50. The Chairmen of the high street banks would probably call this affluentist.

I understand, though, that some of these major high street banks are considering charging their customers for using the 'holes-in-the-walls' of rival banks.

This they are calling a disloyalty fee - what a corruption of the English language (George Orwell would have been proud of them)!

Every time you use someone else's cash machine your bank will charge you a pound, in addition to the fee for using the machine.

Perhaps it would be acceptable for customers of these banks to ask for an extra pound to be deposited in their accounts every time they use their own bank's cash machine - you could call this a loyalty fee (sounds much better doesn't it?).

Surely their plan to impose these fees is consumerist.

I feel that it's about time customers complained a lot more than they do.

All too often we are willing to let the big boys trample over us and indulge in what is blatant extortion. Between them the banks' profits last year were £20 billion (that's £2 with ten noughts after it). I can't even imagine that amount of money.

The more of us that write letters to the organ grinders, the more will these banks take notice, and don't take a brush off from the monkeys as an answer.

As far as Greater Manchester Council is concerned, the answer to this grave issue is in the hands of the local electorate.

I would advise that they put the final nail in the coffin of this iniquitous charge by burying under a mountain of voting papers at the next local elections any councillors who support it.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.