Ageism,ignorance, intolerance. class bias on mumsnet re Waspi women

This is exactly how Gen X and older Millennials remember life, btw.

I knew retirement ages for women had changed, and I was barely paying attention at the time to such things what with getting pocket money rather than wages. If I was aware, how uncommunicated could it have been? I'm not asking this to make a point, btw, I'm genuinely curious given that it somehow filtered down to me.

@YouHaveAnArse It was talked about in the press for ages. It was exactly like the state pension age changes. The formal changes had little notice, but it had been around as an idea for absolutely ages.
By the way most people in my generation did not go to university. Free university only really benefitted the middle class. Few working class kids went to university. At my school a tiny number stayed on past 16.

@owlpineapple I also left school at 16 and worked. I have never had any money from family or any financial help at all since I was 18, except for £800 in inheritance. I have earned every penny I have.
It is hard to be on your own, but you can't change that, so you have to make the best of it. But I think you fail to understand what life was like until the last 20 years. Before the internet getting information was hard. If you did not understand your pension, you could not google and find out information. My pension place would only give advice for people close to retirement. So I had no idea that paying into a private pension meant I would get less state pension.
I am not stupid. But if nobody tells you then you do not go looking for a book in the library about state pensions.

Exactly this. Education going from free to something that had to be paid for with barely any notice - certainly not enough for families to prepare financially for it. They didn't offer compensation, they just kept putting the costs up to the point that the next generation are struggling to even go at all.

Gen Z are less likely to retire at all, regardless of the state pension age. They'll be working beyond it because they'll still be paying private rents that the state pension will not cover, and have used tens of thousands of pounds that could have gone into a workplace pension contribution to pay off crippling student debt instead. If I was Gen Z and saw that this campaign was spearheaded by someone who wanted the extra money to fund their buy to let portfolio, I'd want to fucking riot. It's not exactly the most sympathetic case, is it?

I don't remember anyone using a coin slot in the 70s or 80s. We just went into radio rentals and paid.

@NutNutMum I think you have missed the point. I said neither my mother nor I had ever put 50p in the telly or eaten straight from the chip paper. I didn't say PAYG telly didn't exist.

When MNet was populated by us late boomers, in the old days, the quality of posts was exceptional.

Whilst I can't claim my OAP until I'm 66 and something, it's fine because I love work, made a seven figure fortune on property, married a very successful man and if it gets too bad here, we'll bugger off to our home in France having passed the bulk of our money to our children to avoid inheritance tax. Both are planning to relocate overseas.

I remember renting as television from Radio rentals in the 1970s and 80s but it didn't involve putting 50 pence in the TV. We just went in the shop and paid rent. You can rent TVs today.

@wombat15 In the 70s and 80s if you were poor, you could rent a TV that had a coin meter in. Most people rented a TV and paid a monthly cost, but by the 80s people were mainly buying TVs. But they were expensive, so the coin slot was for the poorest people.

50p in the TV? When was this?!

@ismu
The people on this thread who whine
"We will work till we're 80 and never buy a house"
if you don't like this, fight it, change it, improve it!!!

I've been fighting most of my adult life for this. I've sent a great many letters to MPs over the years (in fact I recently came across one I wrote in 2011 and another in 2012) and have had numerous meetings with them. On top of that I voted Remain. I voted Labour and watched the Tories get in again and again. What else can we do? I'm open to ideas if you actually have any.

@IntheoldendaysI have to agree on the way everyone under about 35 seems to think we are all absolutely loaded, whining brexiteers. Any other demographic of people sneered at like this would be up in arms, but apparently, we're all living in mortgage free houses muttering about young people and living the life of Riley.

The only ageism I've seen on this thread (granted, I can see a number of posts from one person have been deleted) have been from posts like yours, lumping a generation into one homogenous group, i.e. doing the very thing you accuse them of doing.

I'm under no illusion that all pensioners are mortgage free and loaded and would never claim anything of the kind. My mother's family were poor. My grandfather worked much of his life down the pit doing dreadful work and he came away with nothing much to show for it. There were many men like him in his mining village, some of whom were disabled from mining accidents and/or suffering from respiratory diseases, but still more fortunate than the many who lost their lives. Then the government pocketed nearly £5bn of surplus profits from the Miners Pension Scheme and it's taken until 2024 for any of this to be handed back to miners. Not all men (a phrase I never thought I'd use) were off advancing their careers at the expense of their wives. Neither my grandmother nor my mother (who is of WASPI age, never worked a day in her life) wanted to work and were more than happy to be dependent on their husbands, regardless of what toll it took on them.

Anyway, I digress. I vividly recall article after article in the 2010s bemoaning Millennials. We were the feckless generation, the 'avocado on toast' generation, the 'bank of mum and dad' generation. The entitled, lazy, financially irresponsible and tech-obsessed generation. And which generation was it that was doing the vast majority of this sneering?

I worked from the age of 16, university wasn't on the cards because there was no way I could have afforded it despite desperately wanting to go. I tried to get onto apprenticeships but by that point the numbers had already dwindled significantly and most were aimed at men. I struggled to advance my career because most jobs expected you to have a degree. And I was, in fact, asked if I was planning on becoming pregnant at more than one job interview. I had no bank of mum and dad because my dad died, and I was never given a penny by my mother. So in my late 20s I decided to do a part time degree in the hope of increasing my earning potential. As of last year I'm a graduate in her mid 30s with years of transferrable experience behind her, but have yet to acquire a graduate job because I'm up against thousands of applicants competing for the meagre number of graduate positions available, despite the supposed demand for people with skills and knowledge in the subject I studied.

So no, I don't feel that I'm being ageist, ignorant, intolerant or possessing a class bias for feeling this was the correct decision. As for the claims of misogyny, is it not misogynistic to suggest that women are incapable of understanding changes to their pension?

Not hard to look up 🙄

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1967181/coin-operated-tvs

https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishTV/comments/11vynzy/skytvcoinbox/

Well, there weren’t any 50ps to put in the telly when I was growing up , and a 10/- note would have been hard to stuff in , and the equivalent of a days wages for a teenager.

But TVs were very expensive, most people we knew rented them from Reduffusion, and we didn’t have colour for ages and ages (really expensive!)

Fish and Chips were cheap however, and whilst they were wrapped in newspaper there was a layer of waxed paper type stuff next to the good.

Well I'm 64 and don't ever remember putting 50p in the telly or eating out of the chip paper. Neither does my mother and we were born in 1936 and 1960.

Interesting views on this thread. DH and I are 63 and 64. Still working full time in stressful professional jobs.

DH's parents retired at 52 (CEGB) on a stupendous package (1982) and 57 (teacher) on an enhanced package due to redundancy when the middle school system was restructured (1997).

You obviously don't remember having your Tv on the never never and eating fish and chips in the paper. Not that long ago, showing yourself up now are you a millennial.

Yes I'm a millennial. The changes to pensions happened in 1995 and 2011. I remember those years and no we weren't putting 50p in the TV and no my mum didn't only get access to news through the fish and chip paper.

You obviously don't remember having your Tv on the never never and eating fish and chips in the paper. Not that long ago, showing yourself up now are you a millennial.

A lot of women who had part time jobs and looked after their kids, the closest they got to newspapers and magazines were in the fish and chip wrapping. I know my mother a Waspi woman hardly ever had 2 minutes to put 50p in the TV and watch the news.

Oh come on. The oldest WASPI women are 75 now, not 100. The Pension Act came in in 2011!

Yeah I think it's fair. And actually I'm 45 years old, started work at 16 so will be working for 52 years. WHY should you expect to retire earlier than everyone else or expect us to pay you off? What exactly makes you special?

A lot of women who had part time jobs and looked after their kids, the closest they got to newspapers and magazines were in the fish and chip wrapping.

I know my mother a Waspi woman hardly ever had 2 minutes to put 50p in the TV and watch the news. 🙄

Because if I'd have had to retire at 60, the employer would not have invested in professional qualifications if I'd had only 14 years to run.

I have some sympathy but, ultimately, Waspi women were still able to retire at an earlier age than women now and 60 was/is very young to retire so most of them could have continued to work if they were really struggling financially. Also, the country has no money and paying billions out for this would have been ridiculous. Surely the choice was to keep working (as the rest of us have to do) if the finances didn’t allow retirement at 60? Unpleasant but no worse than their children and grandchildren will have to do and not worth bankrupting the country for it. Irrelevant if it affects women or men to be honest.

Take a look at the Generational Accounts 2011 statistics posted up thread and it might help you to understand just why younger generations are so cross.
There is literally proof that yes, the nations finances are skewed (and not just a bit... Massively) in favour of the older generation

To me, this is a clear case of Labour backtracking on promises, and thinking that they can get away with it because, well, 'it's only older women so who cares?'.

I'm sorry but I just find these arguments so frustrating. The facts show that financial policies have been heavily skewed towards older people for decades.

We have 4 million children living in poverty, we have old people sat on the side of the road for hours after a fall, we have people living in cramped and squalid HMOs. There are so many awful injustices right now that it really rankles when older women in this thread (many of whom are financially fine) try to claim they're somehow at the bottom of the pile. Out of touch much?

I think it shows a generational divide that didn't use to exist. It's due to the fact that many over 60 are much better off financially than younger generations. That wasn't the case 30 years ago. If you add in the fact that they were more likely to vote for Brexit and than younger prices the backlash was inevitable.

As I recall it was 1995 that the pension age was increased for Women. It was widely discussed in the news, newspapers, magazines. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that these women didn't know about it, and if they did they had any amount of opportunity to look into some form of pension/savings scheme.