To think the back to 60 campaign is grabby

[Neaoll]

It's been known about for a long time that state pension ages would be equalised.

State pension is just unsustainable, it was never supposed to be something people claim for 20-30 years. Was for people that had a hard time so they didn't starve to death in their last few years. Now it's a top-up to the richest part of society. It should have been linked with life expectancy a long time ago.

I'm in my 40s and dont expect to ever get a state pension. I've been contributing to my private pension ever since I worked to support myself.

I thought back then and still do now that it should have been raised to 70.
Why? What are people so keen to race to the bottom in pension provision?

Supreme court next, then.

I think it is a sad reflection of society where each generation says the previous or current or future generation will have it better than they did. I support the current campaign as the women of the 1950s were let down by the Government and no amount of cries that they were told, makes it any better. There will always be people who are fortunate to have a private pension or have access to sufficient funds to finance their retirement but conversely there are people who struggle due to ill health or low paid jobs . The comment about getting a second career showed a complete lack of understanding about the difficulties you can face after a certain age, in getting employment.

Neaoll

WASPI are not grabby.

What is grabby is the government taking money from people who did not have time to make proper plans to counteract this theft. It affects women, the majority of whom were in low paid work, with no plans/opportunities to "just earn more". Many were sandwich carers or, even if they tried to get more work, were unemployable, purely because of their age. A 58 year old secretary is hardly likely to be able to secure all of a sudden a £50k+ career to meet the shortfall.

Imagine being in your late 50s, helping caring for a relative and possibly grandkids and working and then to be told you are going to be £40k+ worse off in retirement with no time to plan or make arrangements. They can't even get a full share of husbands pension anymore.

What job people did is irrelevant. It would be like me being told when I have 1 year left on my mortgage that I then have to have another 5 yrs whacked on top.

I put this in the same category as the changes the government made when they introduced fees to bring employment tribunals, which again disproportionately affected the most disadvantaged - unemployed or underemployed, on zero hours, part time workers, women etc.

Imagine the uproar there would be if the government had said "Hey, tell you what, seeing as men who were born in the 50s, on average, earn more over their lifetime than their female counterparts, we will increase their payments into state pension".

Don't fall for the tripe that there is no money. 5th biggest economy and a fecking Magic Money Tree when it suits.

The WASPI women are not grabbing, they are standing up for what is right. Its a bastard shame that where employment law is covered under EU law, pensions are not, otherwise this scandal would not be allowed to take place.

The money has to come from somewhere and why should struggling young families be supporting women who don't much fancy working.

I’m 66. I retired from nursing at 65. I have no children and have worked constantly for 49 years. I have never received money from the state until my pension began. For my entire working life I paid tax and NI, part of which supported young families, educated their children, paid their child benefit, funded their children’s healthcare, funded maternity benefits. Now I’m ok with all of this but those who say that as a pensioner I’m a parasite on society can piss off quite frankly.

It's not a race to the bottom. It's very obvious that people are living a lot longer and far healthier than when the pension age was first introduced. Not to mention population growth. Retiring at 60 for everyone has been unsustainable for a long time, it's not a difficult concept to grasp, something has to change

I’m not against a higher retirement age. What is stuck in my craw about all this is that there are very few living wage jobs available for us 50+ people (especially those not in the public sector) and we want to work!

If the government wants us to work longer which is fair enough, measures have to be put in place to ensure we can secure employment that will pay enough to allow us to be self sufficient.

For all you young people with great company pensions and jobs well done. Come back and let’s hear your experience of being made redundant after 50 and trying to find employment that sustains you.

I think the way it has been equalised does seem a bit unfair, but ultimately women can’t expect to retire at 60 when their life expectancy is 80+, it’s unrealistic.

There are lots of things unequal in our current society, and I agree that the younger generation are being shafted far more brutally than baby boomers.

A generation who had free university, cheap house prices and who have contributed significantly to climate change have no right to complain about not being able to retire 20+ years before their life expactancy

@AlexaAmbidextra

Same here and I was happy to pay it too. Plus you spent a lifetime of service looking after all of us.
Thank you

I went to university in the early 70s. No fees. I remember my year at a red brick university having equal numbers of male and female medics. It felt like a brave new world of equality of the sexes.
I find it so depressing that so many women of my age expected to be financially provided for by somebody else.
I am glad that the government is not having to fork out to some of the the older generation of baby boomers just because they are women.
I hope this is a step forward for equality and recognition that the younger generations should not have to support women who chose not to work.

I actually think politicians have a vested interest in inter generational disputes over pensions. It would suit them to reduce state pensions to being means tested and minimal

This.

Along with ill thought-out generalisations about Baby Boomers. No-one ever mentions the pensions holiday given to companies and turned it into a fight between those employees and those employed by the state/LAs/teachers cushy pensions:

theconversation.com/britains-great-pension-robbery-why-the-defined-benefits-gold-standard-is-a-luxury-of-the-past-100844

www.theguardian.com/money/2004/jul/10/pensions.jobsandmoney

I think the OP hasn’t got anything to do now that the Tory party conference is over.

Also, most of the 50-70 generation I know, who are almost all working class have paid off their mortgages, fly abroad 3 x a year and spend money endlessly on crap they don’t need.

MIL is a prime example of this, and will complain bitterly, and without irony, that the 4 years of state pension she will miss has stopped her re-doing her favourite forgein trip across America (4 weeks) 😱. She also couldn’t give a toss about climate change, and spunk’s her money on plastic shit, toiletries and all manner of terrible things. Why should she get to retire at 60, whilst I work to 75?

it's not a difficult concept to grasp, something has to change
Great patronising response. I am not having difficulty "grasping" anything - I am disagreeing with you. Just because people are (on average) living longer doesn't mean we have to ensure provisions are kept to the equivalent of 1950s levels. We have moved on in every other area, why do we have to consign older people to a longer life but one of poverty? How is that progress?

It should have been linked with life expectancy a long time ago.

Life expectancy is just a guess based on people who've already lived and died.

And anyway current thinking is it's coming down.

I hope this is a step forward for equality and recognition that the younger generations should not have to support women who chose not to work

I hope this is step forward to equal pay.

Why should she get to retire at 60, whilst I work to 75?

Because she had a reasonable right to expect to, given the circumstances at the time.

I agree 100% with @mrsmuddlepies

Far too many women here are blaming other people and 'the system' rather than themselves for the situation they (or their mums) find themselves in.

There is a thing called Personal Responsibility. You make yourself aware of what is going on in the world. You make plans and counter-plans. if you don't, then don't blame other people.

I am irate at the derogatory comments here aimed at professional women who have some occupational pensions OR carried on working longer. People have different abilities and earning capacities throughout their lives. if you can only do some kind of physical work, you have had decades to plan for the years when you might need to stop and could have tried to re-train.

There is no logical reason for anyone to retire at 60. Years ago when the retirement age was 65, men could expect to live for 5 years. My own father had to retire at 65 and hated it and became depressed when retirement was forced on him. But that was the law then. He wanted to carry on till at least 70 or 75 because he loved his job.

60 is young and most women have 25 years o f life ahead. It is incredibly selfish to expect younger people to pay taxes to allow you the luxury of not working for those years ahead.

Every piece of evidence shows that retirement is bad for health - both physical and mental . A huge number of people decline physically and mentally after retirement. So retirement at 60 should not be some goal to achieve- quite the opposite.

The truth is that a lot of people- men and women- hate their jobs. They want to leave and take their pensions as soon as they can.

A reasonable right to expect to live off the state for 30 years whilst the younger generation have to pay for basics like education? No, I wouldn’t call that reasonable

mrsmuddlepies you are another well educated woman judging the not so privileged by your own yardstick.

There are plenty of young people claiming benefits that they aren't entitled to or don't need. Plenty of young people who wouldn't even consider a manual trade so would rather pretend to be looking for a job whilst claiming benefits. Let's deal with that first before penalizing those who at least made a huge effort to work.

Life expectancy is just a guess based on people who've already lived and died.

^^Quote of the day LOL!

I think you need to do a very basic course in stats.

The truth is that a lot of people- men and women- hate their jobs. They want to leave and take their pensions as soon as they can

What's wrong with that, and surely the point should be making work more palatable. For everyone.

The problem is that we have moved to a low tax society. It’s impossible to have social stability and a safety net with low rates of income and corporation tax.

We’ve blown all the money from North Sea oil since the 1970s on tax cuts for the more affluent. Never mind that in the same time frame we’ve sold off the family silver and hitched the nation’s economy to gambling and speculation.

Contrast that with Norway’s approach- build two sovereign wealth funds. Each of these are worth a trillion dollars by themselves. That means they now worth around £200k per Norwegian citizen per fund, so £400k total.

So it’s a total nonsense that the old age pension was always going to be unsustainable. Just years of bad decision making from a broken political system.

Do I believe that men and women should receive their state pension at the same age? Absolutely!

However, the huge leap in age for some women was too much. I was born in 1954. I was originally notified (can't remember when without searching through paperwork) that my retirement age had changed to 62 and 4 months. I had no problem with that. Then it changed (and I can find no trace of being informed as in the case of the first increase, I had applied for a pension prediction) to 65 and 5 months. I have just started to receive my pension. Can you imagine the outcry if a certain group of men had been told they would have to wait over five extra years to get their pension? There is no way on God's green earth that would have been accepted, but women just have to put up with it.

I know I personally have been fortunate. I was made redundant at 59, the company closed. I had a private pension (worked since I was 16 with no breaks as I have no children) and sadly my Dad died at the same time so I got some money from the sale of his house which meant didn't need to work. However, many of my friends of a similar age are really struggling, especially those who have been widowed.

Many posters on here have absolutely no idea what the workplace has been like for women my age. Small example - In the 1970's I was working in local government and was the lowest paid employee. I took on a lot of extra work and luckily I had a good boss who applied for a wage increase for me. It was turned down because it meant I would have been earning more than the lowest paid man. Can you even conceive of that happening now?

Many posters on here have absolutely no idea what the workplace has been like for women my age no they really don't.

And i agree wholeheartedly about tax! We pay far too little.