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.

McCloud is nothing to with the right to work longer. In local government you can work up until 75 and it has been that way for a long long time.

@Godesstobe

But I cannot understand why so many younger women seem to think my generation lived the life of Riley. Some things were better then for women, many things were worse. Some things are better now for women, some things are worse.

I think some younger people are just riled by the older ones claiming they had it worse, and implying that the younger people are to blame for their own situations, i.e. the old trope of "can't afford a house because they have a mobile phone and subscribe to netflix" - completely oblivious to the ever widening chasm between wages and house prices - as if £25 on a phone and a tenner on Netflix would be the difference between being able to buy a house or not when you're on minimum wage and paying £800 per month rent for a tiny one bedroom flat!

People are going to hit back when they perceive to be unfairly attacked. So it's entirely expected that younger women fight back when they're being bombarded with sob stories about how older women claim to be so hard done by, despite owning their own homes, having occupational pension schemes, many having benefitted from windfalls from demutualisations, privatisations and endowment polices, younger retirement ages, better gold plated public sector pensions, etc etc.

I think older women need to be more open minded and realistic about the problems faced by the young if they're going to start to fight against the rhetoric of the "oldies pulling up the drawbridge behind them".

What if the label didn’t list the ingredients?

It wasn’t “in the news” and we didn’t “all get letters”
no one is saying the retirement age shouldn’t be equal. It’s about the mishandling of the roll out.

@taxguru I am older although not old enough to be a WASP. House prices and rents have soared because of well off people buying and renting out houses.
And the Conservative government encouraged that with their economic policies.
It was wrong. Houses should not be an investment vehicle. They should be homes.

@FloFlowers4me you are talking about a minority there. Yes I consider those things. I am myself disabled but can and do work, I'm not expecting to be able to live off state pension. Granted I have (mostly decent) mental capacity that unfortunately will decline due to my condition. So I plan for it because honestly, no one is going to step in and make everything ok. There are people that don't have as much capacity and that does impact on their lives and ability to retain information and manage their own finances. That is as prevalent today as it ever was. There still aren't sufficient safety nets for those people by the way. But this isn't what's being discussed here or really relevant to the fact that the overwhelming majority of people who take no responsibility for themselves have the means to do so.

I'm 52 and can't imagine retiring at 60 unless I was in a physical job. I remember being quite surprised that my cousin and his wife and my sister in law all retired at 60 - all employed in public sector roles.

Someone mentioned teaching - well you might "retire" from a full time teaching job and work as a school inspector, for example. There are lots of other roles you can transition to that are less physically (and mentally) demanding.

Nowadays we get regular letters about our state pensions and what we can expect to receive, but I am guessing that wasn't the case when the Coalition government changed the rules.

That’s the whole point!!!

Do you seriously think that people would read it?

How would you pay the enormous costs of designing it, printing it, posting it, maintaining a database of people to send it to, etc etc.

Though, perhaps, there could be something put up online that people could access themselves if they wanted to, given the majority of people now have the internet.

But realistically, ALL the information is out in the public domain. Not just mainstream media, but accessible via the home screen of the Gov.UK website, for financial things, via websites like Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert.

I think people need to start taking personal responsibility, especially now that most of us can access unlimited information free from our smart phones or laptops.

Funny how it wasn't so much of a problem before the internet, when information was actually harder to come by as you'd actively have to buy newspapers, go to the library, watch the news in cinemas etc.

Sometimes, it does seem the technology has made us lazy in us expecting to be spoon fed everything.

You can also guarantee mega complaints, if say, Youtube, Twitter, TikTok etc were forced to put on "public information" adverts that you couldn't skip or ignore between posts/podcasts, etc, which would be the logical way for government to broadcast messages about such changes!

@enchantedsquirrelwood I felt totally fine at 52 and felt like you. I will be working until at least 67. But now at 59 I struggle at work. I really no longer give a shit about work, any kind of work. I am not that well paid and now get patronised by young people who all think they know better than the grey haired old woman.
And health can change so quickly. A friend had a stroke at 59.

Personal responsibility is always the cry of the conservative. Anything bad happens to you, it is your own fault for not preparing for it i.e. being rich. Government shafts you? Your own fault as you should never rely on the government.

That happened throughout Labour's 13 years in power too!

It's not a party political thing.

Brown printed billions to prop up the banks and housing market to perpetuate the house price inflation, aided and abetted by pumping the country full of money via tax credits which also fuelled house cost inflation.

I will have paid an additional 6 years NI towards my state pension by the time I retire, and as I had to continue working have also paid more tax as well as being able to contribute to the economy. I may receive a minuscule amount of compensation, but I’ve certainly for paid that already.
Increasing womens pension age has saved the government £180+ billion. The compensation being proposed will cost a fraction of that.

It depends on your contributions. If you were working part time then yes but if you were working full time you would have probably made SERPS contributions( state 2nd pension abolished under the new pension). Some older people are getting more than the new state pension as they have serps contributions.
Under the old pension system state workers, teachers etc only get a reduced pension as their serps contributions had been paid into their occupational pensions.

Last week at work my Headteacher suggested I think about retiring in July as it’d be “lovely to spend time with the grandchildren”. By the same token she doesn’t think new mums who teach in my school need to work only 4 days because they can put the kids in nursery.
What she really means is she thinks I’m too old, too expensive and she wants rid of me,

It WAS all over the news, on TV, in newspapers, in the personal finance pages of women's magazines, on the internet, etc etc.

Waspis were holding protests, which were also all over the news.

People must have been living under a rock not to take notice of what was changing.

The ruling is simply about the government not writing individually to people. It's not about whether the changes were unfair or not.

A VERY small number of women were affected by not being able to change things that would have benefitted them. A group wouldn't have been able to make changes whether they knew or not. A much higher number knew about the changes and either made changes or didn't. The latter groups are not relevant to the recent ruling.

@taxguru Yes Gordon Brown helped to prop up house prices, but the policy changes were enacted by the Conservatives. The Conservatives deregulated the mortgage market so buy to let mortgages and 100% mortgages became possible. They sold off council housing and abolished rent controls and introduced short term tenancies making becoming a landlord more attractive.

Everyone's pension age has been increased though. Should we all receive compensation?

@taxguru You are talking about the equalisation of pension age, not the increased roll out.

The compensation isn't for the changes themselves. It's for the element of poor communication of the changes. Big difference.

Anyway whatever anyone personally thinks, the courts have ruled otherwise based on the law.
Thankfully the law does not depend on the ill informed rubbish posted on this thread.

Same. My sympathy is very limited as well. My pension age is steadily creeping up and l will be working waaaay longer than these women. I won’t be getting any compensation. Plus from my experience l will have worked more hours per week than them anyway. Im in my mid 40’s and by my calculations in the next 5 years or so l will overtake how many working hours my mum did

I knew all about it. Despite not being affected by it

I know what I'm talking about! I'm a Waspi woman myself and run an accountancy practice and have seen, first hand, the consequences of the changes as they affect many of my clients. I'm well aware of the finer points and detail of the all the changes as it's part of my job to know!

The ruling is ALL about communication of the changes, not the changes themselves!