I need more money

I think we’ve all thought that at one time or another, haven’t we?

Laura Ripley is thinking it right now:

A 25-year-old unemployed woman who was given an £8,000 operation to help her lose 16 stone is complaining because, as well as her weight loss, her benefits have been reduced.
Laura Ripley, who has never worked, was given the operation on the NHS to help her slim down from 38 to 22 stone.

But the 25-year-old, who receives £600 a month in benefits, is unhappy because as a result of losing weight she can no longer claim disability allowance amounting to an extra £340 a month.
This, she says, means she cannot afford to eat healthily – causing her to pile the weight back on.

It’s not the first time that we’ve heard how difficult it is to eat healthily. Who could forget Coventry lard-arse Leanne Salt and her admission that she fed her 8-month old triplets on McDonalds because she was “too busy” to feed them decent food?

But we dealt with Leanne’s case back in April. Let’s return to Laura’s plight:

Without my disability allowance I’m left with just £210 incapacity benefit which I get because of my depression, and £100 income support I receive every two weeks and out of that I have to give them back £70 towards the cost of the £500-a-month flat I’m living in.

Heartbreaking, isn’t it? Depressingly, I find myself having to pay the total cost of my house myself, and in a bewildering step, the Government seem to take money from me each month, rather than giving it to me. Surely some mistake. And yet I still manage to eat an apple a day. So why can’t Laura?

‘I eat Tesco’s chocolate bars and packets of Space Invaders crisps, sometimes four of each a day’, says Laura, who spends seven hours a day watching TV.
People ask why I don’t snack on an apple – they’re cheap, but emotionally I don’t always feel like an apple.

Ah. Emotionally, I think if you shoved a whole apple in your fat mouth, you might find that you couldn’t eat as many of those Tesco’s chocolate bars and packets of Space Invaders crisps. And, as an added benefit, you wouldn’t be able to make utterly stupid statements like “emotionally not always feeling like an apple” and that would probably piss a lot fewer people off.

You might actually get some sympathy. But then again…

Since the extra allowance stopped Laura has put on a stone in just three weeks and claims she is being treated unfairly.
‘It’s heartbreaking that after all my hard work losing this weight someone’s come along and ruined it..I only want an extra £100 a month, that’s all’

Just an extra £100 a month? Why didn’t you say so earlier?
Here’s a quick thought – why don’t you go and get a job instead of sitting on your arse all day and stuffing your face with junk food, you lazy, sponging, fat cow.

Sorry, emotionally I just had to say that.