The family from Blackburn claim £22,508 a year in benefits, equivalent to the take-home pay from a £30,000 salary. The Chawners, haven’t worked in 11 years, claim their weight is a hereditary condition and the money they receive is insufficient to live on.
Mr Chawner said: “What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It’s not our fault we can’t work. We deserve more.”
The family claim to spend £50 a week on food and consume 3,000 calories each a day. The recommended maximum intake is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men.
“We have cereal for breakfast, bacon butties for lunch and microwave pies with mashed potato or chips for dinner,” Mrs Chawner told Closer magazine. “All that healthy food, like fruit and veg, is too expensive. We’re fat because it’s in our genes. Our whole family is overweight,” she added.
Found by Joe Carlson.
I always laugh when I see posters claiming that fat people can magically violate the first law of Thermodynamics.
#53 daavo wrote, “Do you say that we should put them out on the street? Let them beg?”
That’s the perfect solution. Put them on the street with a sign that reads…
“Can you spare a bacon butty so I don’t starve?”
–or–
“Will NOT work for food”
We shouldn’t allow hardships caused by true disabilities to be diminished by people with self-caused, reversible disabilities like obesity. I don’t entirely believe the article, but if it’s true, these people show no desire to remedy their conditions through actual effort. They only show a desire to get paid more benefits.
Ummm… strange that in every shop or supermarket I’ve ever been to, lettuce and tomatoes are cheaper than bacon – i.e. salad buttie cheaper than a bacon one!
Finally how about this simple solution. Pay out part of their benefits in the form of vegetable seeds and free rent of a garden/allotment. Growing their own vegetables will
a: relieve them om the ‘expensive healthy food’ problem.
b: save them not only money Pounds.
c: as as result of b: – enable them to grow up and stop scrounging off the many people who work their butt off for much less.
Should be rehoused immediately to a new council (housing association) house where the doors are not wider than 2’6″ (80cm).
They lie.
Fruit and veg is cheaper than processed crud IF they buy in season.
They have gotten used to eating that way that they don’t WANT to change.
As for work, that too is a lie. Again they just don’t WANT to.
Cursor_
Fusion/Nimby = thanks.
I figured out by myself why you can’t lose weight by eating ice cubes and frozen food –ie the calories used to heat the food to body tempt does not offset the calories consumed.
It took awhile but I notice in one of my cookbooks that “calories” for body temp were actually “kilo calories” while for the calories for food were just calories. Bits and bytes sort of confusion possible there.
I love stories about people who “can’t lose weight” but everyone starves to death without food and there were no fat prison camp inmates.
“It can be done.”
# 66 bobbo said, “I love stories about people who “can’t lose weight” but everyone starves to death without food and there were no fat prison camp inmates.”
You’re on a roll today with the truisms.
#66 Bobbo -
In America, we call a kilocalorie a Calorie. Note the capital C. It used to be common to talk about BIG calories and small calories. I think we started talking about Calories simply as a convenience since there is no really simple non-metric equivalent. Most of the world, however, refers to the more scientifically correct kcal or even kilo joules. (N.B. For the family in the article, I believe the correct term is “killer calories.”)
Looks to me like they are still getting plenty to eat.
While a *predilection* for obesity is surely genetic, the *expression* of that predilection is under the individual’s control. Simply eat less, exercise more.
These people are poster children for the inevitable end result of the “nanny state”, which you Britons have perfected, and which we in the States are working diligently towards.
At some point the government will have taken 100% from the productive, only to find that it is still not enough to support the slothful and incapable.
God help us.
@daavo: it is not necessary to *hate* fat people in order to disapprove of obesity being a qualification for government benefits.
This is a straw-man argument. Unlike quadriplegia or mental retardation, obesity is a reversible condition subject to the discipline of self-control.
I know whereof I speak; I am obese, and struggle daily to reduce my weight. I’d be ashamed to haul my fat ass to the government to claim disability based upon my lack of self-discipline.
Evidently shame is an emotion in very short supply.
The bizarre background on this story is that one of the daughters went on X-Factor to audition with a really bad Celine Dionne song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1j73o8lric&feature=related
Completely destroyed but then came back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVB8XYBAftM&feature=related
“My singing teacher says I’m halfway there” what?!