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Funny Business
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Members of a British family of four say they are too overweight to work and they want more benefits. Now that, my friends, is chutzpah.
The London Telegraph reports that 53-year-old Philip Chawner, his 57-year-old wife Audrey, along with daughters Emma, 19, and Samantha, 21, weigh a total of 1,162 pounds. That's more than a half ton. The parents haven't worked in 11 years, and the family currently collects nearly $31,000 a year in benefits. They claim their weight problem is hereditary—they do not choose to be this way—and the money coming in isn't enough to live on. "What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table," says Mr. Chawner. "It's not our fault we can't work. We deserve more." Well, apparently there is quite a bit of food making it to the table. The Telegraph says each member of the family consumes 3,000 calories a day. "We have cereal for breakfast, bacon butties for lunch, and microwave pies with mashed potato or chips for dinner," says the mother, who adds that healthy foods are "too expensive".
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Bacon Butties |
Bacon butties? Only the Brits could come up with a name like that. Turns out they're sandwiches.
The Telegraph details some of the exact benefits the family receives from the government:
Mom and Dad together: $1,000 a month in income support and incapacity benefit.
Mom only: $461 a month disability allowance for epilepsy and asthma, the result of being overweight.
Dad only: $100 a month for developing Type 2 diabetes--he was on a waiting list for a gastric band but a heart condition stopped that.
Samantha: $235 a month in "Jobseekers' Allowance".
Emma: $162 a month to help pay for her schooling as a hairdresser.
"I'm a student and don't have time to exercise," says Emma. "We all want to lose weight to stop the abuse we get in the street but we don't know how."
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