AIBU in thinking the government have made the correct decision not to blanket pay all WASPI women £3k? This goes against the Ombudsman recommendations to pay between £1k-3k to every WASPI women.

[caringcarer]

At the time it was in every newspaper for weeks, in the radio and on the TV news a lot of coverage via the media. Most women of this age agree they knew about pension age changes. At the time it was huge. I fail to understand how any women could not have known unless they lived off grid. No individual letters were sent out to the women who would be affected. The Ombudsman's recommendation was that a blanket payment of between £1k-3k be paid to all WASPI women. Labour have just announced no money will be paid out at all. It would have cost the taxpayer up to £10.5 billion pounds on top of the huge amount of my ney it has cost to review it for several years. It is money that the government just don't have. Assuming lessons have been learned and any future changes will see DWP send out letters to any individuals who it will directly affect. The only worry is that it sets a precedent of ignoring what the Ombudsman's recommendations.

I was - or rather it was dressed up as resigned (under duress) and that was in the 80's

It still happens today but doesn't mean it is routine.

Oh yes, the economy would be fantastic if the Tories were still in power. 😂

But you said it never happened in the 80s. 🤷‍♀️

I said it didn't routinely happen. That is not the same as saying it never happened.

Well, I"m older than your mother, and I cannot recall a time when washboards and cooking over an open fire were anywhere near mainstream. My mother did both, but she was born in the 1920s, and was among the rural poor.

Laundry was more time-consuming in the 50s, with a single purpose washing machine and a separate wringer or a spin dryer. There were no microwaves, not everyone had a fridge, deep freezes were very rare. There were no supermarkets, although more traders delivered. But it wasn't quite as dire as you suggest.

I agree with this.

As someone just a bit younger than the WASPIs I know this was common knowledge and discussed by people of my age and people older than us.

Anyone who chose to never chat to people, listen to radio, TV, or read papers ever, are unlikely to be the people who would have done anything different if they had known.

Who said it’d be fantastic? 🤷‍♀️
But no one credible is saying that the budget hasn’t resulted in lower growth and slower base rate cuts. And with Q4 growth numbers revised to 0% already the actual, when it’s published, is likely to be negative. With Q1 almost always worse that Q4…

The point is that for the last 50 years, household chores have not been a full time job. Whatever some of the martyrs on here say.

Are you assuming that everyone who disagrees with WASPI women receiving compensation is a net beneficiary and all the people who agree with compensation are net contributors,?

No, but pp keep making comments like WASPI women should have known from radio, tv, etc and planned accordingly. As I have said before, unpaid carers could not make plans - of which I was one. I had two disabled children and I knew one was never going to be able to live independently - so how was I supposed to plan for only getting carers allowance between 60 and 66?

I did in a way - I decided I wasn’t going to only get carers allowance. DD1 lives in a care home, costing way more than it would have cost to pay me the state pension for 6 years to look after her. I can earn more doing 8 hours work a week, than I did from looking after her 147 hours a week on 3 hours sleep a night.

I heard about it several times, many of those that demand compensation knew about it, you can never prove who knew and who didn't. Also many who didn't know wouldn't have known if you'd sent them a letter as they wouldn't have read it. There was no legal requirement to send it, there was a big campaign. The thing that was wrong is Labour saying in opposition that they would fund it to oppose for oppositions sake.

It’s not about knowing about it, the women who want compensation are those whose retirement age was pushed back with virtually no notice in 2011, saving the coalition government £181 billion. The notice - or lack thereof - is the issue, not knowing it was happening.

The ombudsman didn't rule that they should be compensated for that though did they? While the lack of notice wasn't great it wouldn't have made a financial difference to most people. I.e. They would have been in the same position if they had been given notice in that they just had to carry on working.

I was just old enough not to be a waspi woman so I was not affected. However, amongst my colleagues that were, they were all well aware of what was happening. The change was phased in so those who just missed it only had a sliding scale of more months to work. Those that were born after April 6th 1953 get a much bigger pension than me so it will even out. The ones I feel most sorry for are those who were born just before this date and had to work a lot longer.
There are always anomalies and inequalities. I had my first child young and waited five years for the next. In those days you did not get family allowance for the first child. My friend had her children later and got family allowance for both children and because she did she could count those years towards her pension, whereas I couldn’t.

No, that wasn’t what the Ombudsman ruled on but it was the main WASPI gripe - that and the grossly inequitable transition arrangements.

I know it was their main gripe but few people agree they should be compensated for it including the ombudsman. Everyone understands why you are unhappy that your pension age was increased but funnily enough people with an equal or higher pension age don't want to compensate you for it. Claiming that you deserve the money by taking credit for women's rights and/or claiming women born in the 1950s have had harder lives than younger women is not going to go down well either for reasons many posters have explained.

You haven’t read my posts, have you? I never expected to get any compensation and I don’t want any. I’ve certainly never Claimed that anyone deserves the money by taking credit for women's rights or that women born in the 1960s have had harder lives than younger women - some have, some haven’t. Generalisations about entire generations are always ridiculous.

If the government had a spare £10 billion kicking about I’d like to see it used to help alleviate the poverty of the millions of children currently living in poverty.

Agree. Always makes me roll my eyes when people pretend whizzing the hoover around and shoving clothes in an automatic washing machine is a full time job. All whilst the kids are at school. Of course that's your choice and totally fine, but don't pretend you're run ragged.

I am 14 years younger than youngest of the women in the WASPI cohort. My sister is 9 years younger. Yes, there were a lot of social changes going on, but those of us slightly younger still experienced a lot of the sexism, etc. Compulsory workplace pensions for all wasn't actually introduced until 2012. The first time I had any sort of workplace pension was in my 30s but ONLY because I changed jobs. Many people working minimum wage factory jobs as I was before then would have continued without workplace pensions. Many women were still not getting pensions when their male equivalents were.

It's not just the 20 somethings who grew up in a different world who aren't fans of paying this money out. I have to work until I am 68 (at least). Knowing that was likely to be the case didn't mean I was in a much better position than the WASPI women to do anything about it. I wasn't thinking about my pension in my 20s either. I had bills to pay on a low income, private pension companies were absolute sharks, who used bullying sales tactics and anyway, I didn't have the money to invest. Many of the women fussing about this had better careers and were/are brighter than me, but my tax money would be contributing to a blanket payout, when they could have just carried on working, as the rest of us will have to.

Back in the 50s and the 60s to a degree, women had family around who'd care for the children

After that more people moved away from their families so the support network vanished

I went back to work at a very low paying weekend job so my DH could have them and then when they went to school I had a better part time job

But I never could go back to my original high-paying career

I think you must be a similar age to me, maybe a couple of years younger. Can I ask what the reason was that you only started a workplace pension in your 30s? I started work in 1995, in a low paid job not much above minimum wage even though I was a graduate, and my workplace pension was opt in, not as it is now. The best advice my dad gave me was to start paying into it from the off, no matter what salary I was on and then I'd never miss it. I also had bills to pay, a tiny basic flat, second hand furniture, couldn't afford even an old banger to get to work for the first couple of years and had very little money indeed but I have always paid into a pension since my first job and never saw the very small amoutn of money I paid in as being otherwise disposable income.

I think the government had no choice but to bring in compulsory workplace pensions because some people just chose not to join them. I had friends who didn't. On higher salaries than me. They saw retirement as being years away and kind of buried their head in the sand about it all and just thought of a pension as being something the state provided rather than thinking about providing for themselves in any way.

Back in the 50s and the 60s to a degree, women had family around who'd care for the children

Something of a generalisation.
My parents didn't, and nor did so many of their friends.

Also, WASPI women are younger than those who had small children in the 50s. They were being born then, not being parents then.

I had three jobs between the age of 18 and 32. Nursing home and two factories. None of them offered a pension at all. I would have paid into it if they had. The first job I was offered the pension in was an office job. Workplace pensions were a much better option for those of us on low incomes, but they simply weren't offered at every employment place.

Like you, my father advised a pension if I could get one. I took advice from a private pension provider in my early 20s, who advised me to contract out of Serps. When my partner and I applied for our first mortgage together, we were assigned a financial advisor by the building society, who asked us about our general finances. He told me I never should have contracted out of SERPS as I didn't earn enough for my contributions to be doing anything more than paying the pension company and I would get nothing back. I contracted back in again pretty sharply.

As both these pension changes were made by Tory administrations, why is it that it's a labour government getting it in the neck? The tories had plenty of time to resolve this if they wanted to. No one cares about these women, its just been seized upon by the right wing press as another stick to beat the labour Party with.

Actually 25% of pregnant women or those with new borns are unlawfully discriminated against. Check with Pregnant Then Screwed.

I was 'made redundant' first morning back after maternity leave. My employer had given my job and my team to the sales director's wife. That was in 2008.

It happens all the time. And because there is no legal aid, and women who have just spent a year on maternity leave can't afford a solicitor and a barrister, employers get away with it.