WASPI Women - getting compensated

I agree. The silly demands for six years worth of compensation to effectively reverse the changes were always doomed. And once the government couldn’t satisfy the campaigners and get a PR win they may as well just say no across the board.

I am in the cohort of the worst hit and I think if WASPI had concentrated on us we would have got compensation, as it was it completely put of hand by people who saw £ signs and jumped on the bandwagon.

Yes, I believe that most of the women who insist they didnt know about the change in pension age, were not working.
Otherwise they would have been clued up or told of the change by their colleagues. Every Waspi aged woman that I knew, just carried on working longer.
Which makes me wonder what the others were living on anyway. Benefits? Husbands wages?
Would this have just stopped between 60 and 65?

"I did exactly that for almost 50 years and spent the first 35 years of my working life with my tax repaying WW2 debt - that finished eight years before I was born"

And yet you seem spectacularly oblivious /unaware that this generation has lower taxes, cheaper houses, generous defined benefit pension today's taxpayers can only dream of, higher benefit payments in real terms, NHS dentistry freely available etc.

Real wages gave been stagnant for 17 years and the waspi campaign still wants today's taxpayer to subside a retirement they'll never have.

Check your boomer privilege.

I guess there would be a tiny proportion of people who had already retired in 2011 and had budgeted savings through to when they expected to get their pension in 2015, but they then had to wait to 2017 instead. If they’d already left their job they might find it hard to get another. But I don’t have very much sympathy even there as the need for further changes was so widely discussed long before 2011 so anyone planning early retirement should have factored that into their plans.

One thing I’ve never understood is why the WASPI campaigners include all women born in the 50s and seem to be campaigning about all the changes. As far as I know the only ones significantly affected by the 2011 act were those born between April 53 and April 55. Everyone else had over 15 years of notice of the move to 65, and exactly the same notice as everyone else about the changes from 65 to 68. If they’d stuck to just that cohort and also only campaigned about the acceleration I might have had an iota of sympathy.

I certainly have no sympathy for people who chose not to engage in any news source or any discussion about current affairs and therefore claim they didn’t know about the 1995 changes. I would be disgusted if they were compensated.

I would love to explain this to me too!
whenever I read these threads I never understand what the financial hardship element is - surely once the age moved, you just retired later ?
or am I missing something key

My DM was older than the boomer cohort and lost out because when she was younger always made additional contributions to receive more state pension, and by the time she retired they pretty much equalised everything up regardless of additional contributions so she could have just kept her money years earlier. But never moaned about it, got on and enjoyed her retirement.

She didn't have years and years out of the workforce raising children as my mum and dad decided they could only afford me, and has also waited until their 30s to have a child. Seems like the generation that followed them didn't have the sense they were born with. When boomers say "Oh, there weren't as many opportunities for women then" no there weren't but there were even fewer for my mum, and my parents both came from very ordinary working class backgrounds and managed to do ok. My mum was even the main earner in her 40s and 50s.

I don’t really understand the furore around this either - women were given years of notice that the pension age would be pushed back. It was all over the news for a long time. So they had to work for longer ….welcome to our lives. Women had access to the information but seemingly buried their heads about it / chose to ignore it. I have little sympathy to be honest

Way to miss the point. That wasn’t a complaint, it was to illustrate the lunacy of the way the transition was designed. You seem to think that you’re the first generation ever to pay others’ pensions. I did exactly that for almost 50 years and spent the first 35 years of my working life with my tax repaying WW2 debt - that finished eight years before I was born.

I never expected or wanted any compensation, I don’t think most of us did but some acknowledgement that the 1953-55 cohort bore the brunt of the 2011 changes wouldn’t hurt you.

"I missed out on four months pension payments because I was born eight hours too late!"

I can understand why the current generation refer to "boomer entitlement" when people complain about missing out on four months of pension when the people paying your pension / possible compensation have to miss out on years of pension payments in comparison. That's if they get any state pension at all

That's on top of record taxes, austerity, mountains of student debt etc

But how were any younger cohorts hit any less hard?

Because they had more notice. The first change was fair enough, there was plenty of notice and it was well publicised, most women received letters. The 2011 Act hit a two year cohort of women who were at that point very close to retirement age - or thought they were. This explains it very clearly.

https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/publications/womens-state-pension-age-our-findings-department-work-and-pensions-communication/background-relating-changes-state-pension-age-women

Agreed. I have to work until I’m 68, and it may go up again, that’s just life.

How is £1000 compensation per WASPI going to help?

So the law changed in 1995 and it was brought in in 2011. They had 16 years to make adjustments. What is the issue? I’m failing to understand.

I have a letter telling me that I would have to wait over almost six years longer than anticipated before I could claim my state pension. I had two years and a few months' notice of this. Please explain to me how I could budget to cover this shortfall

Its not a "shortfall". Its a delay. Most people simply continued to work, my mother included. I don't have a lot of sympathy because i'll have to work for longer, earning less in real terms but paying more for housing & other costs.... and my tax/NI is paying your pension.

"See men set the pension ages at 65 for men and 60 for woman, this was due to it being the norm for men to be older by a few years than their wives. This in turn led to the men setting the ages realising that the woman would need to be at home when the men retired - so they could take care of the men - and being a few years younger needed them to retire at an earlier age to be simultaneous"

Why bother with facts when you can resort to disinformation and misandry instead...

As a pp said, it was women who campaigned for earlier retirement age for women

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_White_(campaigner)

Of course they aren’t going to compensate a group of marginalised people. Old women are disadvantaged through being women and being old. They are seen as worthless, hence not worth paying compensation to. Anyway they will go away soon because they are all slowly dying.

I’m disgusted that Labour changed their policy on this but they are such a weak government and have changed their minds on several things.

Plenty of free access to news articles about the issue toohttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13834281.amp

All over facebook too

The Guardian is just one of many articles. It was all over the news generally.

You never had access to a TV or radio either? It was massive news, covered prominently and incessantly right across the media - which, of course, meant that people would tend to discuss it with others in their workplaces and other conversations.

How did you find out when there was a new Prime Minister; or changes to tax thresholds and allowances; or new/amended legislation such as toughened mandatory requirements for use of seat belts, child car seats etc.; or about the poll tax coming in and going out again......?

If anybody knew that they had no source whatsoever for keeping up with current national affairs, other than to hope they might receive a letter or phone/write to somebody, it's even more astonishing that they would assume that nothing had changed and make plans based on the last thing they'd heard, many years previously.

But how were any younger cohorts hit any less hard?

I understand if that cohort knew what was coming - it had surely been obviously inevitable for years anyway, ever since the Equal Pay Act - and had hoped to sneak through and benefit from it being phased in more slowly; but once the change gained pace and became a more sudden climb rather than the hoped-for plateau just for them, they simply joined all of the generations of women to come in future (along with the men) at the same point of that climb.

Err sorry I never read 'The Guardian'. In fact I stopped buying newspapers after my divorce. Raising two kids on my own it wasn't on my list of priorities! Money was very tight! I never got a letter about my pension changes. The 1st I or my colleagues (all nurses) heard about it was from a HCA who had read something in 'The Sun' and I would never had read that rubbish paper even if I could have afforded it!

@Daisymay8 The information was in all the mass media, endlessly talked about: newspapers, tv, radio. Just a quick online search of old artivcles related to the issue turns up 100's, here's one of many www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/09/state-pension-inequality-cost-women-20000-campaign

Why have governments spent time and money on a review if they weren’t going to abide by its findings? Why did Labour politicians back the waspi women when they were in opposition, but not now? I am a waspi woman, and I sure won’t send it back if ever they decide to compensate me, but I strongly suspect that pigs will fly before that ever happens.

The only group of people less sympathetic than the WASPI women are those people who got rightfully caught out over the IR35 loan charge rules.