WASPI Women - getting compensated

I'm not wanting to have a go at older women at all. It's a discussion forum and I've been discussing the issue - on this thread since it began and countless others.

I'll leave you to it now. I don't think anybody is going to change their viewpoint on the situation, especially now it's just degraded into aggression.

This.

My mum is in this cohort (being born in 1954) and even she is outraged with this and thinks its pure fucking nonsense.
Everyone but EVERYONE knew.

Eh? Well done for being an average person with average exposure to the media at the time?

Has the Ombudsman found that all of the men who were equally affected by the rise in their pension age did receive adequate official notice of the increase? Why hasn't there been a whisper from any groups about them?

Because a) they got a lot of notice, b) they had a maximum of one year delay and c) they got the same benefits like bus passes and free prescriptions at 65 although their pension was delayed by a few months.

You really do know fuck all about this, don’t you?

No, we've covered this clearly; I realise that the whole compensation demand is based on the 'lack of notice' premise, as that's the one where an 'in' was found - that's patently obvious. However, I remember an awful lot of complaints - especially in the earlier days - based on the actual changes, rather than the changeover.

Look at how much insistence and justification there's been on the many threads that we've had about this for years based on the fairness or otherwise of previous generations of women's financial circumstances and opportunities compared to those of later generations. None of that has been based merely on the notice period of the changeover.

Has the Ombudsman found that all of the men who were equally affected by the rise in their pension age did receive adequate official notice of the increase? Why hasn't there been a whisper from any groups about them? Especially considering that they tend to be the more vocal and demanding sex in most things.

She clearly has no idea about the WASPI issues. She’s just on this thread to have a go at older women.

Well, I'm very sorry to hear about your personal situation, you obviously felt the need to share it here. You did hear about the change though from an HCA colleague, so that's something.

But if you became a nurse and then found out while you were working you were not financially disadvantaged. In fact you benefited from being able to save into the NHS pension for longer so presumably had a higher retirement income. Yes you had to work longer, but I’m afraid that level of ignorance is not something that deserves much sympathy let alone compensation.

I am talking about the changes form 60 to 65. Not the 2nd change to 66

After my divorce, I had been a full time stay at home mother (not that this is any of your business). My ex was a Police officer, we had moved away from all my family because of his job and he worked shifts. I at that time did not have the qualifications to go to work and be able to afford child care. There was no free nursery care, no grandparents to help out. There were only child minders who used to have about 10 children around their feet at school time. I was totally on my own with my two children. Now I could have sat on my arse and lived on benefits but I didn't. I had a computer with dial up connection to the internet but couldn't afford that. I didn't even know how to use the dam thing. So I went to night classes (early evening) leaving my children who were 14 and 10 alone for about an hour. I then went to a government run scheme to learn how to use my PC. I then went to college to do a women into a WOT course, then ended up in hospital having a hysterectomy. My relatives came to stay at my house to look after my children. By the time I had recovered from that it was to late to start the 2nd part of my WOT course and was told to restart the following term. Then I ended up in hospital again this time a friend helped me out with the children. While I was in hospital I decided secretarial work really wasn't for me. So instead of finishing the WOT course I did a Health and social studies course with direct application to the local hospital and did 3 years training to become a nurse. So no I didn't have bloody time to read sodding newspapers. I couldn't afford internet until i was working and had never heard of flaming Facebook back then. Same with watching TV by the time I had done my assignments and household chores I was lucky to see any TV. I don't know why you don't believe me but I genuinely did not not know about the pension age changes. I was never sent a letter and social media was just starting to become a thing. It is part of most peoples lives now but back then it didn't exist. As I mentioned up thread it was an HCA at work mentioned it to a group of professional Nurses and none of us had heard anything about it!

Yes it was everywhere in the 90s. I said that in the post you quoted. Are you even bothering to read the posts you’re quoting and responding to?

Well done you. 👏

So we're going round and round in circles and it's all just about the notice, then? Even though it was everywhere in the 90s (and beyond) and very clear to anybody with any cursory interest in current affairs what was going to happen.

I was a very young adult at the time - so hardly the age to be that bothered about news about pensions - partly because it was decades away and, indeed, partly because I knew it would almost certainly change much more over the coming years; but I clearly remember all of the media coverage. It wasn't something that I had to research into - which, at my age then, I wouldn't have bothered to do - but it was screamed at us from every media angle. I'm astonished that people who were then much older and wiser than I was, and who were much closer to it being relevant in their lives, seemed to manage to miss all of it.

This is rubbish. They are asking for compensation over the way the information about the changes was badly handled, not the actual changes.

If you’re going to involve yourself in the discussion, you could at least get your facts right.

Then, of course, if the government did pay compensation to effectively reverse the changes for them, that then kicks the can down to the next generation, who then become the first to effectively lose out from the changes and so demand compensation, and if they get it, then the next after them...

Yes, it’s sad that even young women see old women as worthless. Oh the irony!

House prices carry a lot of heavy lifting in the endless navel gazing about how younger people have the hardest lives ever.
Subsidised childcare, flexible working, generous maternity leave and pay, paternity leave, equal opportunities, home and hybrid working, UC, workplace pensions etc are brushed aside.
Earlier generations had much shorter maternity leave, crap maternity pay, no flexible working, no paternity leave, no WFH, patchy pensions etc but lower house prices (with no fixed rates and interest rates of up to 15% at one point).
The struggles of today's young families are not unique, they are just different.

But how do you think that the 1953-55 cohort bore a massive brunt that somehow hasn't become the new norm for everybody born ever since?

The link I posted explains it quite clearly.

Of course it's always been the way that younger people pay for the pensions of older people; and then the next generations of younger people pay their pensions when they get old. This is the only way the system can reasonably work, and it will work this way right up to the last generation who end up paying for their elders' pensions but who are also the first generation never to get a state pension themselves.

But how do you think that the 1953-55 cohort bore a massive brunt that somehow hasn't become the new norm for everybody born ever since?

It's not an outrageous scandal that devastates one group of people in history through to disgusting (non-)actions by the government - such as Windrush, Infected Blood, Post Office and others which everybody agrees must never be allowed to happen again; it was a carefully considered change to the nation's economic policy, based on the simple figures, as we see all the time - which invariably means that one group will be the first (of many) to lose out under the new rules.

"Check your millennial fact"

I am not a millennial

I can and do recognise how stealth taxes, trickle down economics means that I can recognise that for millennials onwards many people will never be able to afford any houses, never mind buy a house and raise multiple kids on one wage.

But you keep stewing over your four months of missed pensions payments.

I agree . I absolutely remember many conversations at work from those of us who had our pension ages increased. The conclusion being that we would now have to work for longer, not that we would have to make other financial plans, unless we were still planning on retiring at 60 I suppose. I did in fact retire a couple of years before my 66th birthday, but I did that in the full knowledge that I wasn’t going to get my state pension at that point. Maybe if you weren’t working you were less aware ? But it really was everywhere at the time, I even remember my then teenage daughters commenting that they’d have to work longer.
I do feel a bit uneasy at the thought of getting compensation for something I really did know about, as did many of my colleagues.

I would save your breath @BIossomtoes they don't want to know.
Nothing you or anyone else can say will shift the conviction that younger people are the most disadvantaged generation ever in the history of the world. The issues faced by earlier generations count for nothing because theirs are worse.
And I am laughing at the assertion by a couple of pps that they would be absolutely fine with being told two years before they retired that they had to work another six years. Of course they would.
Also laughing at the apparent recklessness of assuming you will retire at published state retirement age without carrying out extensive checks that nothing has changed. As if.
FWIW, I don't think WASPI women should be compensated because their hardship has basically been and gone and £3000 or whatever will do nothing to alleviate a problem that occurred years ago. Plus the country can't afford it.
However this dies not excuse the ignorance, spite and sheer unpleasantness on this thread, but it is ever thus on threads that suggest previous generations had their struggles too.

We're ALL dying slowly - women and men - including a baby who was born yesterday; that's how life goes.

The WASPI women seem to somehow think that they're far more special than everybody else, including all future generations (of both sexes) who will not receive a state pension any earlier than 67 and, being honest and realising which way the wind is blowing, before too long never at all.

It's interesting how they always look back and compare themselves to the women who lived before them in bemoaning how hard done-by they believe themselves to be, rather than to all of the women who will come after them - many of whom will also have to pay a graduate tax for decades (Angela Madden has two degrees, that she is rightly proud of - but how much did she have to pay in tuition fees and additional taxes afterwards for them?) and may not even get a state pension themselves, ever.

Lower taxes - basic rate income tax was 33% with 9% NI when I started work. Basic rate taxpayers were paying the same % as today’s high rate.
Cheaper houses - if you could get a mortgage with only one income taken into account
Generous pension - many schemes were closed to women
Higher than what benefits?
Free dentistry is a fat lot of use when there are no NHS dentists

Most of us were working during the last 17 years when wages were stagnant and many, if not most, of us are still taxpayers.

Check your millennial facts.