Ageism,ignorance, intolerance. class bias on mumsnet re Waspi women

[CAJIE]

I did not honestly expect any compensation though I might have hoped. Iwas aware of this change but did not have the chance to make extra provision for it.I do have a professional pension but will have to wait a while longer for the state pension which is extremely challenging.My plans were changed by covid and I doubt I will be employed again except possibly on poor and temporary contracts or gig economy.Secondary school supply on a daily basis has more or less gone.
However what appals me is the attitudes of many mumsnetters who assume that everyone has the abiity to understand pensions and that the Waspi women should have taken so called control of their situation.Maybe some could but there is a hell of a lot of class bias towards the women in lower paid jobs who perhaps were overwhelmed by struggling to survive and did not understand or read the news or the pension changes were not clearly explained to them.Pensions can be hard to understand and provoke anxiety.This appalling prejudice that all older people are rolling in it and this nice habit of some younger women to be sadly quite misogynistic and ageist towards women who are in poverty is very concerning.All sections of society should thrive even in older age and perhaps you younger women should be challenging society, housing costs, the whole ideology of owning a house and actually trying to build something new rather than bitching about what boomers have and their endless cruises etc.
.You are turning against your sex and the comments are cruel and harsh.You know nothing about these womens lives.
Starmer wants to punish older people and older women are always a good target.Your spite about all the things that boomers are supposed to have and you apparently dont is unpleasant.Women beware women.Very sad and against justice.

@TheFancyDuck everybody who draws a state pension benefits from both a child's parents working. Those contributions that you so carefully made through your working life - they got spent. State pensions are paid from the taxes of those still working.

I was 16 when I began working for Lloyds bank in the 70's.
Women were not allowed to pay into the work pension until they were 25 because it was assumed you'd be married with dc by then.
9 years pension I lost at the beginning of my working life and 7 at the end because by then no one remembered the inequality that my agd group of women suffered.
It's women my age who fought and changed the law so that you as a woman have financial equality.
You're welcome.

@Porcuporpoise exactly my point. I think you'll find my generation did it willingly and without name calling. To say that there's no money is laughable. I had no money when I was a twenty four year old single parent back at full time work when my baby was a few weeks old, but I still paid N I without complaining that some people had more than me.
The Government is finding money for every hare brained green scheme that anyone comes up with, and yet consistently refuses to treat people properly.

@losingweightandgainingconfidence there's one thing we do agree on and that is that your school was awful.
How you've worked out that their budgets got cut year on year as a child is a baffling thing.
In fact if you are 25 as you say budgets were rather healthy until the 2008 crash, when the terrible old people were absolutely hammered by the government bailing out the banks and big business.

@TheFancyDuck Oh tell me more about these "hare-brained green schemes " please. Are they the ones that give us clean air, or clean water, or stop degrading our soils, or provide warmer homes or protect us from flooding or give us a cleaner, more reliable means of generating electricity than relying on oil from Russia and the Middle East?

Lots of people, across age ranges, have been dealt a bad hand financially and that's wrong. But individual stories don't apply to a whole generation. There are plenty of women of the WASPI generation who did very well.

My mum is a WASPI woman. She had free university education, including a full maintenance grant, up to masters. She had a civil service job where she couldn't be sacked or made redundant. She had maternity pay and a final salary pension and retired at 55. She bought a house in London in the 80s and now, mortgage free, her biggest financial decisions are whether to get a new Mercedes or a Tesla. All of her friends are the same. Do I think they should be compensated for their hardship? Give me a break.

I didn't get any of that but I don't need or want to be compensated.

I'd prefer my dm, 89, who gets £12k a year net to be given back her winter fuel allowance.
The way that was cut is disgraceful.

I’d rather see the 4.3 million children living in poverty get the money personally.

You are okay then 🤣

I agree with the decision not to pay compensation given the many other priorities the government needs to meet.
I also feel that personally I was kept fully informed .
I do agree that the attitude to older women from some people on here and on other forums is both ageist and misogynistic.
There is a lot of stereotyping based on some peoples' experience of a few women who have not had to take much responsibility and lent on their husbands etc. These people are not representative of a whole generation.
We are a varied group of individuals and some women in this age group have had difficult lives.
Some also campaigned for a lot of the improved rights women have today.
There is a real lack of respect.
Karens, old biddies and Hyacinth Buckets.

I don't think that is the majority though. Many of that age group didn't go to uni, don't own a property and worked minimum wage jobs (Despite Mumsnet seeming to think they all bought a house for pennies).

Wrong post - but too much hatred of older women here.

You didn't have to go to university to get a good job though.

As an aside , with many of here saying,' that ' waspi ' women were in the never had it so good era , and as I wrote upthread , I am just out of that catagory , many commenters on here are talking about back then when these women were of the age of on here now . the mortgage rate late 70s/ early 80s was 17% ! , yes houses were cheaper but the average wage back then was around £100 -£109 a week for a man .

This in shedloads

I don't think that is the majority though. Many of that age group didn't go to uni, don't own a property and worked minimum wage jobs

It's obviously not the majority but there are lots of posters trying to claim that women aged 65 had a really bad hand and I'm saying it's not true for everyone. 1 in 4 people aged over 65 live in a household where total wealth is over a million. 3/4 of people over 65 own their own home mortgage free. Only 6% are in private rented accommodation.

@khaitai that household of "over a million" is because a normal ex council house costs over £750k in the south east, where most people live. It has no bearing on actual income and probably includes very wealthy people and those with savings and pension pots.
A lot of pensioners are trapped in big houses, too frail to move, too poor to heat or maintain it. They need the house to pay for care. Head to the elderly parents board for some informative discussions.

I’m not sure that only being able to accrue 35 years of final salary pension is quite the right flex to get Gen X, Millenials and Gen Z on side.

You do seems to come up with some random “facts”.

England’s population is split pretty much 50/50 between north and south (depending on where you draw the line. And bear in mind that the “south” includes the south-east and other areas such as Cornwall. So it’s just not true that most people live in the south east.

And, even in the south-east, a “normal ex-Council House” won’t cost anything like £750k except in a few of the very wealthiest pockets. I live in one of the smarter commuter villages in the Home Counties and £750k gets you a pretty nice place, albeit perhaps without much “character”.

OP is absolutely right.
I had a low paid job, and was informed when the pension age was first raised to 62, but not of the subsequent changes to 65/66/67, although I did know about the two later rises through the media.
So I'd spent my working life expecting to receive my pension at 60, then 62.
I'm still working, albeit part-time at 70, and for the record I voted remain.

I do get sick of people, both in the press, social media and politicians with an axe to grind, blindly assuming that everyone over 60 is a raging xenophobe who voted leave.

However, I don't think paying compensation willy nilly is the best solution. As a country we cannot afford it, so any help should be distributed where it's most needed.

Not having women disadvantaged in future is what I really hope for. But don't expect.

I am with you OP. I wasn't always earning a "middle class" income, but pensions have always baffled me and any time I tried to figure it out I end up more confused than when I started. That's not the mention that the government keeps changing the rules and the age of retirement.

I sometimes wonder if there will ever be a retirement by the time I reach that ever receeding, magical age where I can stop working.

How can you prepare for something that it so confusing and unstable? I'd rather stick my head in the sand.

I think that paying a couple of thousand to every person in this category is too much. However, I think that this group of people could/should be marked for slightly enhanced pension credits. This should be easily done, as all the data will be held by HMRC and it will target those who face the worst consequences of the government’s lack of communication - they were found wanting in this area.

it will also mean that those who were not badly affected do not get money from taxpayers who may be worse off. It cannot be the case that benefits cannot ever be changed if they disadvantage some people. How it is done should be looked at carefully.

i will add that adults do need to take some responsibility, but so do governments and people who work for them.

People are talking about private pensions. Lots of pension schemes went bankrupt in the eighties and nineties or there were financial scandals and they collapsed. Lots of protection was introduced after that. Lots of people lost all their pension savings up until this point.