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-t...

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

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.

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



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.

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...

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.

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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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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.