News on 1950s women’s Pension

[Immaculatemisconception]

Women's state pension: Compensation closer for Waspi campaigners www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57900320

You keep posting the same thing, but continuing to do so isn’t going to get you the outcome you want.

Yes, to remind peeps what the The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has come up with.

So if doesn’t matter what the ombudsman says, and the conclusion is pretty lukewarm anyway. You’re not getting compensation. Get over it.

Wow!

@Iamthewombat

Posted this:

I assume that you are attempting to associate yourself with the WASPI campaign, which FYI is all about asking for compensation for getting the state pension later than they wanted

Well that clearly shows you have no idea what you're talking about. I have no idea why you're on this thread.

On the contrary. I know exactly what the WASPI campaigners want, and I’ve never seen an ill-conceived argument that I haven’t wanted to challenge.

which FYI is all about asking for compensation for getting the state pension later than they wanted

Why post this, if you know what you're talking about?

It wasn't too late for those women who claimed they didn't have enough notice that their pension age had changed. They could have done what the rest of us are doing and got a job and work until you receive your state pension.

These Waspis are an absolute joke. Its the men who got the short straw if anybody did. Their argument is nonsensical.

There is so much venom on this thread! All we needed( us women born in the 50’s) was the time to adjust our financial planning. I assumed correctly that my state pension would be paid at 60. I was told in my late 40’s that it had risen to 62 and a few months. I had no idea it had risen to 66 until I was in my late 50’s and registering on Government Gateway for the first time to check my national insurance contributions.
By then I was coming to the end I thought of a long career in teaching.
Mostly part time to raise a family so not a massive work pension.
I completely support same retirement ages for men and women.
To reiterate, all I needed was longer to plan for the increase.
I completely understand it had to rise

@ufucoffee

It wasn't too late for those women who claimed they didn't have enough notice that their pension age had changed. They could have done what the rest of us are doing and got a job and work until you receive your state pension.

Lots of them were working. The second change gave some women 2 years to their preferred retirement age of 60 that they had been saving and budgeting for. Hard during a two year period where you are already making up the shortage to suddenly find another 18 months money.

Personally I was fine but anyway I'm still working at weeks away from 68th birthday but lots of women just weren't and some had already retired with everything planned.

It was short notice for an event that people are told to start planning for in their 20s.

@Iamthewombat

I was earning £5 a week in 1968, by the time I retired from fulltime work I was on six figures. I'm still working, don't pay NI due to age but still pay tax as my pension/salary is over the personal allowance. So I've been working for 53 years, only benefit I ever got was family allowance/child benefit. I've been getting a pension for less than 3 years and I reckon I'm still well in credit.

As above, since you weren’t chucking in a job to “get your rent paid and all kinds of freebies”, you aren’t remotely in the same category as the previous poster who did.

No but I'm pretty sure there will be people thinking/saying I can't have contributed much if I was earning £5 a week. Obviously at that point I wasn't.

I was born in the 50's and affected by the issues being discussed on this thread. It has been a long drawn-out saga, and reading some of the submissions from badly affected Waspi women as evidence to the parliamentary select committee a few years ago was very humbling. Many women surviving on savings, and some even losing their houses.
Just like today, we all took different paths and I worked in a bank. I was able to get a bank mortgage in my own right as a single person in the early 70's and started contributing to the bank pension scheme as soon as I could. I have to say I knew all about the increases in state pension age, and thought that they were reasonable, given that we were given many years notice. However what was totally unreasonable was George Osborne's vindictive and cynical 2011 pensions act to increase still further the state pension age for this cohort of 1950's women. I fully appreciate that this is not what Waspi is contesting, but in my opinion this was the most unfair aspect of the whole debacle, as it gave women hardly any time at all to financially prepare for the extra delay.

I had a few years out of the workplace when I had my daughter and ended up being a single parent when she was a toddler. Got back to work and managed to get another job that came with a pension, which I started paying into.

I believe in solidarity with all women of all generations, unlike the some of the shameful posters on this very sad and bitter thread. My daughter has a child now, and she experiences many of the issues that I grappled with - once you are a mother it's still pretty tough. I chose to do something about it for my daughter - we moved house to help with childcare, we provided them with a house deposit when they married and I like to think I still can provide emotional support when things are getting her down.

Life's not fair - there are many injustices - I would like to think that right will out and the Waspi ladies get some recompense for their troubles - not everyone is educated and informed, and I do believe some genuinely didn't know - I had to inform a colleague who was absolutely shocked, she had no idea. As to the argument that the country is in dire straits economically, and can't pay compensation, that argument is always used by the Tories to avoid doing the right thing. NHS pay, other public sector pay freezes, etc. etc. but they can find the money to hive off lucrative contracts to their mates who have made millions out of Covid. Please don't fall for the Government's divide and rule strategy. They despise all of us.

It wasn't too late for those women who claimed they didn't have enough notice that their pension age had changed. They could have done what the rest of us are doing and got a job and work until you receive your state pension

And of course it’s so easy to find a job in your 50’s and 60’s. Especially with the assorted health issues that happen as you gat older. I read somewhere that a 1/4 of women have to give up their job due to the menopause which isn’t always about hot flushes.

The comments on this thread are just nasty and vindictive.

However what was totally unreasonable was George Osborne's vindictive and cynical 2011 pensions act to increase still further the state pension age for this cohort of 1950's women. I fully appreciate that this is not what Waspi is contesting

Eh? This is precisely what the WASPI campaign is about. They are complaining about the 2010 increase to their state pension ages - capped at 18 months, compared to their previous forecast pension age - which was enshrined in the 2011 Pensions Act.

Of course, what they really want is for their state pension age, and theirs alone, to be backdated to 60, at vast expense.

I’m no fan of George Osborne but how do you reach the conclusion that he personally conceived the 2011 Pensions Act in order to be vindictive to a particular group of women? You do know how legislation is drafted and enacted, right? Individual politicians don’t get to make up acts of parliament on a whim!

Life's not fair - there are many injustices - I would like to think that right will out and the Waspi ladies get some recompense for their troubles

Great. Who else do you think should get compensation for life being a bit unfair, and for having ‘troubles’? You can be sure that there are many candidates more deserving than the WASPI campaigners!

@ufucoffee, we didn’t have as long to change our plans as those who knew their retirement date say 30/40 years in advance.
Yes, thousands of us carried on working, myself in a part time less senior teaching post. How many of you would appreciate your lively 5 year olds taught every day by a 62 years + woman, however experienced she is after 41 years of teaching? That is assuming of course that she could find a school to employ her.
Yes of course I know there are other jobs. I’ve had a few of them since finishing teaching finally at 62 as like most I still had a mortgage to pay and the teachers pension ( due to mainly years of part time) is £450 a month.
I don’t ask for or expect compensation, life is full of unfair situations. I do expect people to understand the time scale which led to some women campaigning. And not make assumptions without knowing the facts.

@Knittingnanny I know all the facts. I'm not one of the women pretending I didn't know that I'd have to work longer before I got my pension.

[quote Knittingnanny]@ufucoffee, we didn’t have as long to change our plans as those who knew their retirement date say 30/40 years in advance.
Yes, thousands of us carried on working, myself in a part time less senior teaching post. How many of you would appreciate your lively 5 year olds taught every day by a 62 years + woman, however experienced she is after 41 years of teaching? That is assuming of course that she could find a school to employ her.
Yes of course I know there are other jobs. I’ve had a few of them since finishing teaching finally at 62 as like most I still had a mortgage to pay and the teachers pension ( due to mainly years of part time) is £450 a month.
I don’t ask for or expect compensation, life is full of unfair situations. I do expect people to understand the time scale which led to some women campaigning. And not make assumptions without knowing the facts.[/quote]
Are you seriously suggesting that 30-40 years is the minimum timeframe to adjust the state pension age?

I don’t understand why anybody would retire without first checking their state pension age, but let’s say that you are born in December 1953. You are 56 when the 2010 change, accelerating the increase to your state pension age by a maximum of 18 months, is announced. Your previous state pension age was 63 years and 9 months. The 2011 pensions act increases that to 65 years and 3 months. An 18 month delay.

If you find this out at age 56, why wouldn’t you decide to keep working until you are 65, rather than 63? You had plenty of time to plan, and in fact your ‘plan’ should have simply been “just keep working for another 18 months if you are reliant on the state pension to live comfortably”.

If you had already called it a day before you found out about the 2010 acceleration, ie at the age of 56, you clearly thought that you had enough money to fund yourself from the date you gave up work up to your prior retirement age of 63 years and 9 months, i.e. at least seven years. Explain to me why having to wait an extra 18 months, until you were 65 and 3 months old, for your state pension would impoverish you if you had successfully bankrolled yourself through at least seven years of not working.

Even if, and this is unlikely, you had given up work before 2010 AND had carefully budgeted to see yourself through the exact number of months to your previous retirement age (under the 1995 rules) of 63 years and 9 months, AND you managed to stay blissfully unaware of a story that was reported everywhere in 2010 so couldn’t plan a different way of earning money for those 18 months, AND you got a rude awakening aged 63 and 9 months when the pension didn’t arrive, why couldn’t you find a job then, to see you through those 18 months? Before anyone tells me that it’s impossible for women in their sixties to find jobs: lots of women in their sixties are working now, and many younger women will need to work until they are 66/67/68/69, so it can’t be impossible, can it?

So you’ll have to excuse me for thinking that the WASPI women don’t have a leg to stand on.

@Knittingnanny

There is so much venom on this thread! All we needed( us women born in the 50’s) was the time to adjust our financial planning. I assumed correctly that my state pension would be paid at 60. I was told in my late 40’s that it had risen to 62 and a few months. I had no idea it had risen to 66 until I was in my late 50’s and registering on Government Gateway for the first time to check my national insurance contributions. By then I was coming to the end I thought of a long career in teaching. Mostly part time to raise a family so not a massive work pension. I completely support same retirement ages for men and women. To reiterate, all I needed was longer to plan for the increase. I completely understand it had to rise

Great post @Knittingnanny

I did say in my post that I continued working until recently ( 2 years before the state pension arrives) and adjusted my retirement until I was financially ok to finish work. So yes I did check before I retired. The point I was making was that the time scale was reduced.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

It wasn't too late for those women who claimed they didn't have enough notice that their pension age had changed. They could have done what the rest of us are doing and got a job and work until you receive your state pension

And of course it’s so easy to find a job in your 50’s and 60’s. Especially with the assorted health issues that happen as you gat older. I read somewhere that a 1/4 of women have to give up their job due to the menopause which isn’t always about hot flushes.

The comments on this thread are just nasty and vindictive.

I had ovarian cancer when I was 59. I’ve not been well since then. When you’re young and healthy, it’s so easy to talk about getting jobs. When you’re older and decrepit, it’s a bit more difficult.

Wow, only read up to Tuesday, but the one thing which stands out is that there isn't much sisterhood on this thread! 🤷‍♀️

Lots of point-scoring though 🙄

@Immaculatemisconception, thank you.

Agitating for more money for yourself, at the expense of younger women, is not sisterhood.

@Thisbastardcomputer

What a complete bunch of bitches you all are to the boomer generation, who are probably your own mothers. Things are different for each generation and do you not think you'll benefit through inheritance from the property they were able to buy, albeit at massive interest rates.

This!

Yes, thousands of us carried on working, myself in a part time less senior teaching post. How many of you would appreciate your lively 5 year olds taught every day by a 62 years + woman, however experienced she is after 41 years of teaching? That is assuming of course that she could find a school to employ her.

What exactly do you think will happen when the pension age hits 68? People male & female will carry on working in the roles they are in.