Family who are 'too fat to work' say £22,000 worth of benefits is not enough
A family of four with a combined weight of 83 stone say they are "too fat to work" and need more than the £22,000 they currently receive in benefits.

By Urmee Khan
Last Updated: 4:12PM GMT 17 Mar 2009
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Family who are 'too fat to work' say £22,000 worth of benefits is not enough
(L to R) Emma, Audrey, Philip and Sam Chawner Photo: CLOSER/

BERNARD ASHTON

Front cover of Closer: Family who are 'too fat to work' say £22,000 worth of benefits is not enough

Photo: CLOSER/ BERNARD ASHTON

Philip Chawner, 53, and his 57-year-old wife Audrey weigh 24st. Their daughter Emma, 19, weighs 17st, while her older sister Samantha, 21, weighs 18st.

The family from Blackburn claim £22,508 a year in benefits, equivalent to the take-home pay from a £30,000 salary.

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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.

Each week, Mr and Mrs Chawner, who have been married for 23 years, receive £177 in income support and incapacity benefit. Mrs Chawner is paid an extra £330-a-month disability allowance for epilepsy and asthma, both a result of being overweight.

Mr Chawner gets £71 a month after developing Type 2 diabetes because of his size. He was on a waiting list for a gastric band last year, but a heart condition made the operation unsuitable. Their daughter Samantha receives £84 in Jobseekers' Allowance each fortnight while Emma, who is training to be a hairdresser, gets £58 every two weeks under a hardship fund for low-income students.

Emma, said: "I'm a student and don't have time to exercise" she said "We all want to lose weight to stop the abuse we get in the street, but we don't know how."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5004431/Family-who-are-too-fat-to-work-say-22000-worth-of-benefits-is-not-enough.html

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Emma, said: "I'm a student and don't have time to exercise" she said "We all want to lose weight to stop the abuse we get in the street, but we don't know how."

I'll tell you how:

STOP EATING YOU FAT BASTARDS!

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"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."

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paid an extra £330-a-month disability allowance for epilepsy and asthma, both a result of being overweight.

enough to make me laugh. They deserve more ???
What for, what did they do to deserve more ?

When you see grossly overweight people - here, the UK and in the US, you wonder - even if they are wage earners - how do they manage to afford so much food to maintain their weight?

They didn't say how much cereal, how many bacon butties and how many pies and what size serve of mashed potatoes and chips they had for dinner.  That could be the clue.

It would be cheaper to eat tinned tuna, rice or pasta for dinner than meat pies & chips - just as filling, but a lot healthier.

There was a reference made to a man in his fifties today on the radio who became unemployed a few months ago - I think the benefits are about $220 a week and he was making a huge effort to find work and after fares, rent etc. he had $20 a week left for food and his staple diet was Aldi baked beans, breakfast, lunch & dinner.

He probably would have loved a bacon buttie or a pie & chips - although I bet he was a lot healthier than the 4 people above.

They should be forced to work as British Airways pilots, with imaginary problems like epilepsy, asthma and overweight that would make passengers very very happy. The selfish insurance companies, though, would probably resist the move by jacking premiums up but who cares, I don't use BA.  :)

mantra wrote on Mar 18^th, 2009 at 8:30am:

When you see grossly overweight people - here, the UK and in the US, you wonder - even if they are wage earners - how do they manage to afford so much food to maintain their weight? They didn't say how much cereal, how many bacon butties and how many pies and what size serve of mashed potatoes and chips they had for dinner.  That could be the clue. It would be cheaper to eat tinned tuna, rice or pasta for dinner than meat pies & chips - just as filling, but a lot healthier.

Crap food is cheap food. Eating healthy is actually much more expensive than eating bad.

I saw some study about the amount of calories per dollar you could get from junk food, and it was way better value.

In addition to my drug rehabilitation boot camp, I would have a fat person rehabilitation boot camp.

Sound off like you've got a pair lardass!

This is the difference between Americans and you english mother buggerers.. We just would make them work as we wouldn't cover their ass.

We don't care how much you weigh, but your responsible for whether or not you can keep it up.


They look fit to work to me.

Hell, just put those damn daughters up in the prostitution. I'd pay to get a round... I like big girls...

Yes - the yanks like "huge".  I saw a documentary once about all these blokes in the US who kept naked fat women prisoners in their bedrooms and just kept stuffing them full of food all day until they couldn't move, but just lay there like giant whales.

It was very sad and if the women started trying to help themselves - the blokes would get angry and dump them.

It goes without saying that this is absolutely ridiculous. It sounds like Britain's welfare model is even worse than ours. But I don't doubt there are people like that living here who are already getting paid by the government to do nothing (with other people's money, may I add) but keep wanting more and more. It's one of the main contributing factors to the decline in our society. We are an entitlement society and each new generation expects more and more from the government for doing less and less. And then they see that someone else is getting more then them so they want more too. No one wants to work for a living, no one is prepared to do the hard work to make it in life and they expect those who are willing to work to give up a percentage of their pay so that the government can hand it out to lazy bums who doing nothing in life and contribute nothing to society. Abolish welfare. It's an unfair system, it's destroyed our society, it promotes laziness and destroys the value of hard work. Get rid of it.

I don't know where the extra hundred quid a week is coming from, the figures they supply in the article, add up to 17,708 pounds, which still should be enough to live on, just. If they are actually getting 432 quid a week, and not the 340 that the individual figures add up to, then that is a reasonable living wage for many working families, so the lazy fat bastards should be forever grateful for being looked after.

The problem is that people think that they should not necessarily have to work, to still have holidays, and nice cars, and nice houses, when benefits should be enough, not to just live stupidly, but only modestly, no more than that.

What is probably more pertinent is how much the fat bastards are costing their health system?
Probably four or five times what they receive in benefits!

They could send them to somalia as aid workers, where they could either work, and lose the lard, or be lunch for a couple of starving tribes. ;D ;D

As far as all the crap about being genetically fat, I don't believe it, never have, never will.
Genetically stupid? yep! genetically ugly? sure, but fat? nah! just greedy, lazy, sloths, and to even think about what JP and Mantra were talking about, well it would put me off food just thinking about it, uuurrrggggghhhh yuck!!
JP, you are a mighty sick twist.

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As far as all the crap about being genetically fat, I don't believe it, never have, never will.

I'm sure there are genetic traits that make some people more prone to putting on weight, but I wouldn't think it's the only factor in becoming obese.
With a few changes in their lifestyle, you'd think those fatties could get down to a reasonable weight, but who knows how hard it may be for them to make the necessary changes? With enough work, a woman can practically turn her boobs into pecs too.

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Crap food is cheap food. Eating healthy is actually much more expensive than eating bad.

Generalisations are wrong. Most people like that could improve their diet and save money at the same time by introducing rice to their diet. Meat pies are fairly expensive by comparison. I'm not sure what bacon butties are, but they would be similar - highly processed, high in calories, low in essential nutrients and relatively expensive. They are not paying for sustenance, they are paying for the convenience of microwave meals and the gluttony of potato chips. The fact that they eat the same thing every day should tell you something - they are lazy and totally lacking in imagination or motivation. Their diet would make most people feel ill after a few days. It is killing them. They are too stupid to figure out what to do about it.


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I saw some study about the amount of calories per dollar you could get from junk food, and it was way better value.

Sure, if you compare cheap junk food with expensive fresh food. Do you think they buy potatoes, peel them, chop them up and fry or mash them? No. They buy bags of pre cut, pre oiled potato chips for the oven and powdered potato mash. Just like real potato, only more expensive, higher GI and lower in nutrients.

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Sure, if you compare cheap junk food with expensive fresh food. Do you think they buy potatoes, peel them, chop them up and fry or mash them? No. They buy bags of pre cut, pre oiled potato chips for the oven and powdered potato mash. Just like real potato, only more expensive, higher GI and lower in nutrients.

Some people only have the ability to prepare food that is already pre-cooked and just needs heating up.  Fresh foods are much cheaper than pre-cooked processed foods and taste a lot better but many don't believe that. Maybe it would be worthwhile, and in the long run more cost effective, for this family to be put under the care of a dietician.  

There are hundreds of thousands of families like this, which when you compare them to the million or so children who die each day from starvation is quite sickening.  Maybe governments need to get tough - issue food stamps instead of cash and those with gluttony problems would be forced to learn the value of food as a sustenance, not an addiction.

I believe that fatsos like that are great asset for developed countries because they create quiet a few jobs in food industry, social welfare industry, medical industry and media industry, probably somewhere else as well.
Also they have created reasonable information flow on this site and internet in general and made us all feel so good about ourselves when we compared them and us.

IMHO, they should be given medal each.  8-)

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Some people only have the ability to prepare food that is already pre-cooked and just needs heating up.

You mean like incredibly lazy and stupid people? If they have a genuine disability that prevents them from boiling pasta or rice and renders them incapable of using anything other than a microwave then I am happy for them to be helped out via our taxes. But these people are just lazy.

It is no more difficult to steam veges in a microwave than to heat frozen food. It just takes a little bit more effort to turn steamed veges into a meal that tastes good.