Benefits: Too Fat To Work. Fucking really???

[Mountainygirl]

I just spotted this in the TV guide. Channel 5 have obviously hit on the perfect formula- bring everyone's two favourite folk devils ('fat people' and 'benefit scroungers') together, for a brand new series, which I am sure will be a balanced and fair portrayal of these people's lives....

TV seems over run with this shit atm. Everyone goes on about how sexist/racist telly was in the 70s, but honestly, in years to come, people will be totally gobsmacked about how in 2015, it was almost universally OK to rip the absolute shit out of poor people.

I think in relation to metabolic disorder many people know that it is often initiated by obesity, just gets people thinking 'well they did it to themselves'. Unlike the results of smoking and other addictions it's reversable. Although I don't think some people realise how hard it is. Especially when you can't exercise.

Did they really need to keep showing them eating?! Yeah we get it, they eat.

I'm really sad about Amy. I think she was right when she said it wasn't her fault. She was obese as a child, she had no influence over that. Now that obese child has turned into a morbidly obese adult.

Oh, dear, feeling rather sorry for Dawn's students if she thinks she is making a killer argument based on historical knowledge and expresses it the way she does here in front of them :-(

Sounds like an adolescent who has just read the Cliff Notes to Das Kapital and now knows all the answers to all the world's problems and above all why Mum and Dad are wrong, wrong, wrong.

But I expect she will just find a way to dismiss me, which will be 100% inaccurate but make her feel big and clever and Nana will cheer her on.

FYI for the non-history geeks amongst you, Carr didn't say what she claims, not at all. He was one of my lecturers at Cambridge, so I think I speak with a little more authority than 'hey, read this book I can cite badly and you will agree with me or you're a big, stupid, tory meany".

Obesity is a multifactored issue and TV never works well with multiple factors, it likes it simple, polemical and pre-digested.

So, apparently, it is with certain people and history. I think you'll find it's bit more complicated than that, to coin a phrase.

Flouncy, that is what I find offensive, the Government is not trying to demonise the vulnerable. In fact, on the obesity issue, there are teams of very caring and dedicated people trying to think of solutions and to help to educate people to prevent the problem from getting worse. These areas were deemed so important that their funding has been ring fenced from cuts. It's so sad that people on here think the 'Government' wants to harm the people.

Obesity is a multifactored issue

Indeed. Grays, I suspect that when the Daily Fail said "metabolic disease" they actually meant metabolic disease. Not metabolic syndrome/disorder, which is what you're referring to and affects 25% of the UK population. There is no chance whatsoever that a quarter of us would qualify for DLA!

The Fail has no qualms about juxtaposing loosely-related facts for the sake of its readers' loathing, and it wouldn't surprise me if this is how the DWP framed the story - as when it told the media about claimants receiving DLA for 'boils' and 'acne'.

Forgive me, i thought they were the same thing - not my area that.

There is no chance whatsoever that a quarter of us would qualify for DLA

It wouldn't work like that anyway. DLA isn't decided just upon the diagnosis.

No, no it isn't!

I'm becoming a self-taught expert on metabolic syndrome, as I'm developing it in consequence of other syndromes I've had for a long time. The bugger of it is there's nothing I can do about it except not get fatter. On a purely personal level, I'm siding with the experts who want to abolish it as a diagnosis for that reason! I've got too many fucking system failures already, I don't want another name to add to my list of errors

Sorry for digression.

Ah crap I'm sorry to hear that. Sorry for getting them mixed up as well didn't mean to offend or anything (if I did). IKWYM with the list of syndromes and disorders and stuff, I feel like I need a pocket book just to remember them all half the time

Flouncy, that is what I find offensive, the Government is not trying to demonise the vulnerable.

No, the media (and is anyone fool enough to believe we have free media?) are demonising 'Benefits Claimants'. And that's been expanded from 'people who falsely claim benefits they really shouldn't be entitled to' to 'anyone who claims any of my hard-earned taxes''.

Nonsense Flouncy. David Cameron started this before he was elected. He is the originator of the 'hard working families' vs 'scrounger' rhetoric.

yes he is, and the funny thing is that some 'hard working families' actually receive more from the state than 'benefit scroungers'. I wonder if we could make a documentary about that!!
I know because I am a 'hard working family'!

Arsenic I don't see your point? MY point is that the media is controlled by it's political liasons, and surely that's what you just said as well?

Oh sorry, completely misread (after marathon catch up while juggling small creatures). I thought you were making a different distinction.

For a non-profit public service broadcaster Four certainly know how to press the buttons to get publicity and viewers. I suppose this funds quality broadcasting that would not otherwise be made, like er, um, Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown, The Last Leg and Time Watch, but do the meanies justify the ends?

Just think, if the Conservatives have their way the BBC will be like that in a few years. Just with fewer viewers.

wtf is up with people on this thread?

I don't care and have never heard of this book everyone is banging on about, but feigning sympathy for students in case their teacher speaks to them as she writes on a web forum?

Get a grip!

why not try making your points without the snideness?

Channel 4 and Channel 5 seem to be going head to head about who can produce the most froth inducing programme about benefits in the run up to the election i however am smart enough to know these "people" featured are a minority and not all benefit claimants are like this others dont possess those brain cells unfortunately and will believe this churned out bollocks

Bet you're wishing this had gone in Chat now, OP!

I'm too stupid to turn on my TV. Can I get benefit help?

Not only do they believe it... but think about it - “reality” programmes are the “in” thing. That and the reality programme “The Kardashians”. People who have nothing better to do sit and watch reality telly. Sad.

Nothing has changed for the better in 4 years.

I just read through most of this before seeing the date

No Zombie warning! Thought it felt a bit familiar.

I'm livid at the morbidly obese people- the Mail says someone eats 20,000 calories a day! Who feeds them? How can they afford it?
£54m per year so they can stack up on KFC and Coke! Two loaves of bread, 24 eggs, two packs of bacon for breakfast? There are people in the world starving to death and they eat the same as 20 families each day! The feeders should be targeted, so that the obese can drag themselves round the shops themselves, at least they will get some exercise.
I am very left wing but in this case benefits should stop.

The BBC series Skint was an example of documentary making and dignity. It was around 2006 and starred Vernon and a few others who lived their lives on Big Issue and cashing on their most precious items. It was lovely. Channel 5 are worse than the daily mail.

Jani1313- revived this old thread- no doubt to have a laugh at those of us too busy to check dates.