A nasty little practice has begun spreading throughout England and Wales. It is nothing short of state-sponsored grave desecration. Some narrow-minded little jobsworth has decided that cemeteries are a deathtrap because of unstable headstones. Aided and abetted by the likes of RoSPA and the Health & Safety Executive, local authorities up and down the country have been conducting safety tests in our graveyards.

Despite claims that this is a burning issue, there isn’t actually a standard test for gravestone stability. If it were such a widespread problem then surely other EU countries would have a stability test. In fact, no other country but Germany has even thought it worthwhile coming up with a test.

The clipboard brigade that now runs our country has decided to adopt the German topple test which involves applying a 35kg load to a gravestone at a height of one metre. If the gravestone topples then it will be permanently laid down and a note will be applied to the gravestone to say that it has failed the topple test. The council will then claim to have made strenuous efforts to contact the owner of the grave. In the case of my own brother’s gravestone (above) they clearly hadn’t. When I went to visit his gravestone there was a note saying that the council (in this case Bath and North East Somerset) had tried to contact us. They hadn’t. And countless other surrounding gravestones had been laid over having failed the topple test.

And why is this being done when, since safety records began, there have been three alleged fatalities due to “unsafe” gravestones and 21 injuries? And in those cases it wasn’t clear why or how the accidents happened. Well, apparently very young children are at risk of being injured by insecure gravestones. If you know of any young kids who weigh more than 35kg and can topple a gravestone then I’d suggest you advise their parents to put them on a crash diet before their clogged arteries put them in the cemetery for good. Incidentally, is a cemetery the sort of place where young children should be playing?

Of course, the real reason for all this madness is the insurance industry and the modern scourge of risk assessment. People who need to justify their jobs in our overmanned local bureaucracies seem to spend their time looking for imaginary dangers that they perceive to lurk around every corner. They are the people driving this thoroughly nasty practice. I wonder what or who they will find to desecrate next.

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