Mixed feelings about WASPI victory

[Fauxflowersnoflowers]

Early 40s here, so this doesn't as such directly affect me, but I've been intrigued by the story about the WASPI campaign and done a bit of reading around it and I'm still confused.

The changes apparently were in the public sphere since as early as 1995 and could have been known about. Many women were aware and did take financial steps to address the changes. The current case seems to centre around whether they should have been personally informed, not was the change fair.

WASPI just said on Women's Hour that they don't object to the equalisation of the pension age, but then callers were objecting to having to work longer and not getting a good retirement, so the two arguments seem to contradiction each other

Also, it seems misunderstood that a compensation payment would be a full reinbursement of the "lost" pension, from my reading it's more likely to be a fixed amount to recognise the fact they should have received a letter. Although again, it appears many did, just not everyone, so who gets the compensation? All of them or just some?

I suppose the other question is how do we pay this? Public services are already stretched badly, childcare costs are crippling and there is a bit of a worry for me that the funds to pay this are going to come out of other areas that will just make the loves of younger women harder and push their pension ages even further back, maybe into their 70s.

Feel really conflicted about it. On one hand kudos to the women for getting this far, but in the other it feels like a really clear example of the importance of properly understanding your own finances and educating yourself about your pension planning.

Very few women had children that early even back then. According to The Telegraph the average age of first child in 1960 was 26 which rose to around 30 in the 1970s

I suppose being able to retire earlier than men would only be a ‘privilege’ if it paid more than full time work. Which is doubtful isn’t it? And women didn’t have the choice once the retirement age was lowered for them from 65 to 60 in 1940. They had to retire at 60 and could legally be sacked at that age, whether they wanted to work full time (and presumably earn more money than the pension) or not.
So yes, when you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression indeed, but not for the reason you seem to think.

No, not very few. As per my previous post, teenage pregnancies peaked during the later half of the 1960s.

Birth rates may have peaked in 1964 but it wouldn’t have been those born in the 60s and 50s (maybe the very early 50s if a 14 year old gave birth) that caused that.

It's very odd that there are women on this thread who did know, yet others are saying they didn't. There were two changes. I get the impression that a lot of people who said they knew knew about the first change, but didn't know about the second change, which was with much shorter notice and little publicity.

So do something-vote-get organised but that's a right dog in the manger attitude.

Exactly right ! It was the second change that scuppered my plans !

No it didn’t
Edit - ignore this graph it shows % not amount. Apologies.

I can answer that. I'd done 37 years in full time, full on Secondary school teaching and was deeply tired, unable to give my best to yet another curriculum change. Age had made a disability worse and I was unable to do my job as it needed to be done. Sufficient notice and I might have retrained into a different subject but I was already 60. Imagine an infant school teacher of 67?

I knew I needed to work a bit after retirement, so I did. Then Covid, so screwed.

That won't do. A phased change could have been accommodated but to be hundreds of pounds a month better off because you happen to be three months older is just wrong.

I didn’t say a large proportion, I said ‘good proportion’. And if you read this poster’s comment again you’ll find that she said the overall birth rate peaked in 1964. Teenage pregnancies continued to rise throughout the last part of the 1960s, so perfectly possible.

@Sharptonguedwoman

But surely you had your teacher's pension which is payable at 60 or after 55 you can even ask for it earlier with some deduction.

The average retirement age for teachers today is 59.

But someone would still lose out on the phased change! It would just be less people.

3.6 million women have been affected by this.
270,000 women have died while this charade has played out.
These women are your relatives and neighbours.
They deserve to have the compensation due to them, it is a pittance next to what they lost.
Stop punching down and place the blame on the politicians who put these women in this position.
And if you want better pensions for yourselves start fighting for them now.

it is a pittance next to what they lost.

The ombudsman found there was no direct financial loss in any of the sample cases

You really can’t complain about being that screwed if you have 37 years of a public sector pension to retire on…!!

I still dont get it. I completed university 17 years ago, im deeply tired and unable to give my best. I work in banking, constant IT changes and moves to incorporate artificial intelligence which I barely understand. Can i retire please? I cant retrain, i have a nursery age child and my fees are £90 per day. If i took a pay cut to retrain i would need to withdraw my child and then i couldnt attend the retraining as id have a childcare problem. Every generation has their struggles.

Didnt you get a teachers pension? If so then you will be better off than many your age.

Dont get me wrong, i have sympathy that people are tired and have worked for long years but it seems like people just feel thats the way it was so they deserve to retire early. The decision from the appeal seems to have been based on the communication rather than whether it was the right decision to move the age, so really i think anyone that gets compensation should count themselves lucky for anything because its us mugs working full time right now with housing, childcare, tax, general costs out of control who will be paying for it. The money could go to educate our children, help the nhs, employ more police but no, more cuts or more taxes or more borrowing which will eventually result in more cuts or more taxes anyway will be required to pay so now everyone else can suffer even more.

Thats good to hear.
However there have been some horrifying stories of the hardship some of the ladies faced, loss of mental and physical health and of course many have died so won’t see a penny of compensation

Wow, so the current taxpayer is going to be screwed for literally no financial loss. Sorry, is this April 1st?!

Im 54 too. I wont get my state pension until I'm 67. I've been paying in since working full time aged 17. Are you sure you are getting yours at 65?

These women should have been informed. But I can see where people might not agree with compensation being awarded. Younger generations aren't going to be able to live off of a state pension at all. In addition to that, the state retirement age is now much higher and people are expected to make their own provision in addition to state pension. But this wasn't an unusual expectation of its time and attitudes were different, and of course information wasn't as easily shared as it is nowadays.

That said, I fully expect the DWP to raise my state retirement age and that it'll be done by stealth/I won't be informed by letter.

Good on WASPI for seeking justice. I'm not sure they'll ever see the compensation though given the size of the bill.

I’ve found ignorance of pensions and pensions schemes to be fairly common as seen in this thread. I recently attended a pensions information session at work and some of the people literally had no idea when they could claim their pension and how much they would get based on their contributions and this was the first time they had tried to find out. Considering all the attendees were at least in their mid forties I found it astonishing and worrying they had so little interest in such an important part of their financial security

@Turtletumy

"They deserve to have the compensation due to them, it is a pittance next to what they lost."

Paid for by the taxes of women who are still in work but will be lucky to get a state pension at all or paid for by cuts in public services.

If there really is cash available for compensation then I personally would rather it is spent on education and mental health.

If there really is cash available for compensation then I personally would rather it is spent on education and mental health.

Then you can donate yours to a mental health charity. If by some miracle we do get compensation mine will go straight to my student son who needs it far more than I do. I’d rather he had it than leave it with the government who will undoubtedly waste it on some nonsense like Rwanda.

If there really is cash available for compensation then I personally would rather it is spent on education and mental health

But it doesn't work like that. I'm sure there are people who do not want their taxes used to subsidise other peoples children or to pay for the royal family or to pay for services they don't use.
The Ombudsman has examined all the evidence - mumsnet contributors have not. It's not fair to ignore an injustice just because we personally are not suffering the injustice. Where will that end - refuse to compensate the sub post masters because it will cost us a lot and we are not affected by it?

in the final analysis - we will all benefit by putting things right because governments will be less inclined to try it on again. Because I think we all know they will try.