My sister is overweight since she developed a thyroid problem. I saw her at Christmas for the first time in 3 years, she's put on a lot of weight. Been on benefits for many years, as she gave up work to look after my grandmother who had Alzheimer's disease. Incidentally, the house she's frightened of walking outside of in the evenings and the pittance she actually gets is a fraction of what it would have kept nan to stay in a hospital. Really, I used to work in social care. I can tell you her care would have been upwards of £2500 a week, it's a fact that if all the home carers gave up today the country would go bankrupt overnight.
Now, nan died a couple of years ago. Who, exactly, is going to give a job to someone who hasn't worked for 20 years, when there's almost no work for people who were made redundant at Christmas? She can't drive so needs to get a bus into town, less than one an hour and they finish at 6:00, which limits her employment choices even further.
Now I imagine very few of you would have been able to cope with a week of the life she lived for 15 years, looking after nan 24 hours a day, no contact with friends and never being able to leave the house. Forget being able to go for a ride on your bike, or half an hour in the gym. Forget being able to walk to the corner shop.
But if I was to show you a picture of my sister and told you she was living on benefits you'd all say exactly the same things about her as you've said about this family.
You've no idea why these people are on benefits. You've no idea if that is what they actually said, thanks to the modern, sensationalist style of news reporting and our appetite for it.