AIBU in thinking the government have made the correct decision not to blanket pay all WASPI women £3k? This goes against the Ombudsman recommendations to pay between £1k-3k to every WASPI women.

They sent letters twice a year. 1. Fill in this tax return. 2. Pay this much tax and NI
Leaflets were sometimes put in with the letters but nothing about changes in pension age. Obviously I found out and paid additional amount to NI and private pensions to compensate but if I wasn’t informed I’m sure thousands of other women weren’t either. A leaflet about changes in pension could easily have been included with the other stuff they sent.

So you cut yourself off from the UK and had no way of finding out what is going on but think they should have made a special effort to contact you.

Yes. If I’d crossed a river and driven 50 kms or so to a tourist area to find one…..

You could have read British newspapers.

How are you working that out? I suspect you're comparing the new state pension with the old state pension. Most people over 70 are on the old state pension which is considerably lower.

I didn’t live in Britain but still paid UK tax and NI contributions but the government of the day couldn’t be arsed informing me. Yet they managed to send me a UK tax return each year, a letter telling how much tax I owed etc.. No idea where I was supposed to see adverts as no British TV or radio.
As pp have said older women are an easy target

Do you think basic pension £11,500 is high though?

Age U.K. still say 2.5m in hardship due to the cut

@Sharptonguedwoman Even now (I'm 67) I'm staggered how many women I know who passed the financial reins over to their husbands and have rendered themselves vulnerable when said husbands get ill or die.
This means that some older women aren't financially savvy. I know a PhD engineer whose husband sorts the money.
This means the minutiae of pension payments can get lost. Also many women work part time, on and off jobs and things like NI payments don't always seem significant.
Let me introduce my SIL. Not a Waspi but could have been. She and DB bounce along the poverty line. SIL hasn't worked for decades as bringing up children then health issues.
SIL asked me how she could find out about her pension.
She had no mobile phone contract, smart phone, working email address, current driving licence or passport. She didn't know about Gov.UK and without paperwork etc I couldn't get her onto the website. My DB is working but won't help her as he thinks it isn't important.
This is how women fall through the pensions net.

But that is your SIL's choice to live her life that way. I know someone the same, she point blank refuses to ever use the internet, has never used the internet, and never will. I doubt if she even knows when she'll get her state pension.

The decision not to pay despite the recommendation of the Ombudsman is an example of ageism.

I have to say I agree with the decision. The government dont have the money to spend and I have to be honest and say unless women were living under a rock how did they not get the information.

A couple of weeks the news were interviewing an elderly person who had just lost her late husband's pension. He had brought a single annuity. She didnt seem to understand that it was lost when he passed. She even mentioned that he took the 'higher' amount as two options had been offered but she only now knew what they really meant when her partner passed away.

I am beyond livid, and have been since the day I found out I have to pay 7 more years of NI contributions, and in return, get 7 years less in state pension paid to me

The reason for 7 more years of NI contributions is that the generation above you was starting to live longer than it was historically. That's a good thing, no? Your own generation is expected to live even longer than that. You don't NEED the state pension to start at the age it was given a couple of generations previous. I just don't see the issue. Where exactly do you want the money to come from to cover for people's longer lives?

As someone born in the very early 1950s I have been thinking about this thread.
When we were young women the entire benefits system was based upon the model of a male head of household with his dependant wife and children. A hangover from when it was set up in the 1940s.
Women were infantilised but somewhat protected, as long as their marriage wasn't abusive.. The earlier retirement age for women was set on the premis that women are on average slightly younger than their husbands.
Change started in the late 1970s when women started to be treated as independent individuals. The reduced women's NI contributions (married women's stamp) were abolished, maternity rights and pay started etc.
Women born in the 1950s were caught up in a period of radical change.
Many things have fallen well for us, some things less so.
We cant have our cake and eat it.
I would rather retire at the same age as men and be treated as a fully independent human being and I WAS fully informed of the changes in the 1990s.
There were no in work benefits when we were younger, child care was difficult to find and Carers allowance wasn't paid to married women(as she would be at home in any case) but buying a home was more achievable, there were full grants for students etc.
I don't think we should be compensated. I think we have to accept that there have been great changes and roll with it.
I don't like the lack of understanding from some younger women though who are seeing us a pampered generation of boomers and have no empathy for some of the difficulties in the past. Very hard to LTB in 1970. Okay for middle class women in a happy marriage but life was very difficult for some women.

How can it be an example of agism by the current government when it was the tories thar raised the pension age? Scratches head

As someone born in the very early 1950s I have been thinking about this thread.
When we were young women the entire benefits system was based upon the model of a male head of household with his dependant wife and children. A hangover from when it was set up in the 1940s.
Women were infantilised but somewhat protected, as long as their marriage wasn't abusive.. The earlier retirement age for women was set on the premis that women are on average slightly younger than their husbands.
Change started in the late 1970s when women started to be treated as independent individuals. The reduced women's NI contributions (married women's stamp) were abolished, maternity rights and pay started etc.
Women born in the 1950s were caught up in a period of radical change.
Many things have fallen well for us, some things less so.
We cant have our cake and eat it.
I would rather retire at the same age as men and be treated as a fully independent human being and I WAS fully informed of the changes in the 1990s.
There were no in work benefits when we were younger, child care was difficult to find and Carers allowance wasn't paid to married women(as she would be at home in any case) but buying a home was more achievable, there were full grants for students etc.
I don't think we should be compensated. I think we have to accept that there have been great changes and roll with it.
I don't like the lack of understanding from some younger women though who are seeing us a pampered generation of boomers and have no empathy for some of the difficulties in the past. Very hard to LTB in 1970. Okay for middle class women in a happy marriage but life was very difficult for some women.

You’ve missed the point. Nobody would fall outside the cut off if it was, say 64. As it was the age range for eligibility was massive. You can see it here.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f02e640f0b62305b84929/spa-timetable.pdf

What about the 10%? (Although it would be almost impossible to identify them).

I meant how did the delay in notice about getting your pension later cause financial loss? I don't know whether it was financial loss, other than not getting the pension you expected. But people did make decisions based on receiving a pension at one age only to find out they weren't going to get it till later - for example, taking early retirement when DH retired, so they could downsize near their children, confident that their lump sum could cover the period till her pension kicked in, only to find it wasn't 5 years it had to cover, it was 11.[-

I don't agree that the transition was unfair. Moving the cut-offs just shifts the "unfairness" to the people that fall just outside the new cut off. I understand the personal disappointment, but people fall just short of stuff all the time, we can't all cry compensation.

What was wrong with it was that there was a wildly disparate range of eligibility ages dependent on date of birth. Obviously there has to be a cut off somewhere but choose an age for eligibility and then apply it to every woman in the WASPI category. Easier and cheaper to administer and it would have avoided some women getting the old, lower rate and some the new, higher one. The whole thing was an exercise in unfairness.

That 90% knew and had time to prepare.

why on earth should they get the best part of 10 billion?????

What exactly was wrong with the transition? Other than it not suiting everyone perfectly? I know you're salty about your 8 hours/3 months, but the cut off has to be somewhere - it's just luck of the draw. Compensation wouldn't change that.

I don’t think I should be compensated. I didn’t expect it. It’s not about the individual, it’s about the utter ballsup the government made with the 2011 changes. Hardly any notice and transition arrangements apparently concocted by a drunken sailor.