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.

@Amplepie You are welcome to meet my Liberal left children b1994 and 1998. We sometimes think they were planted by cuckoo's.

DH, very working class background and I, who watched my family lose their land and my mother's inheritance after the Wilson/Callaghan governments, have Tory written through us like Brighton Rock.

@wombat15 equalisation came in in 1995 so not really the early 90s, and besides, the issue is not so much equalisation, it's how and when it was done.

This page gives the best summary I've found of the various changes.
http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/statepensionage/SPA_history.htm

It shows that there were only 4 changes between 1908 and 1995. It was normal for there to be a change from time to time. It was not normal or expected for there to be a succession of complex changes. It's clear from the discussions on this thread and others that those changes and their implications are still not fully understood by many, even now with the benefit of hindsight and in the information age, and I can absolutely understand why the Ombudsman concluded that people should have been informed individually in good time.

Once equalisation had been decided in principle, any further increase in the retirement age was always going to hit women harder than men, because women were already trying to make up the 5 years needed to equalise, and they had a limited time to do it. In 2007 the age increased to 66, to be brought in between 2024 and 2026. At this point men had one year to make up, women had 6. The better informed planned the best they could, but there was another hit in 2011 by the rise to 66 being brought forward to 2018, even though the coalition government had previously said that it would not come in till 2020. Revisiting already stretched retirement plans to make them stretch over two additional years was just not possible at that point. This is why I support compensation for that particular subset of WASPI women.

This page of the Ombudsman's report summarises their conclusions. https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/publications/womens-state-pension-age-our-findings-department-work-and-pensions-communication/summary
The previous few pages are worth reading too. Till I read them I had had no idea that many the communications that did take place had been incorrect and misleading as well as late. Here are some extracts:
107. An internal DWP memo from November 2006 refers to a survey that year that found 50% of women whose State Pension age was between 60 and 65 thought it was 60.
114. The proposed schedule for issuing letters included women who turned 60 between April 2010 and May 2015. We have seen no evidence of what – if anything – DWP proposed to do to tell women who turned 60 after May 2015 (whose State Pension age had increased to 65 under the 1995 Act) at this stage.
157. DWP began writing to people affected by the 2011 Pensions Act within a couple of months of the Act becoming law. An effect of the maladministration, however, is that letters were not issued unsolicited about the effects of the 1995 Pensions Act until 14 years after that Act was passed. A 2016 Work and Pensions Committee report notes that Paul Lewis (a financial journalist) had calculated that letters informing women about the effect of the 1995 Pensions Act were received, on average, one year and four months before they turned 60.

Many of the WASPI women have a legitimate grievance. They will not be compensated for it. That is an injury. To tell them they should have known, they don't deserve it, or that others have it worse only adds insult and adds fuel to the intergenerational conflict.

For those about to say 'why recommend compensation for everyone', this is what the Ombudsman said in the final report:

502. As a matter of principle, redress should reflect individual impact. But the numbers of people who have potentially suffered injustice because of the maladministration, the need for remedy to be delivered without delay, and the cost and administrative burden of assessing potentially millions of individual women’s circumstances may indicate the need for a more standardised approach. HM Treasury’s ‘Managing Public Money’ requires compensation schemes to be efficient, effective and deliver value for money. It also says the administrative costs associated with compensation schemes should not be excessive.
503. Parliament may want to consider a mechanism for assessing individual claims of injustice. Or it may consider a flat-rate payment would deliver more efficient resolution, recognising that will inevitably mean some women being paid more or less compensation than they otherwise would.
504. We recognise the very significant cost to taxpayers of compensating all women affected by DWP’s maladministration. Compensating all women born in the 1950s at the level 4 range would involve spending between around £3.5 billion and £10.5 billion of public funds, though we understand not all of them will have suffered injustice. Our Principles for Remedy acknowledge that public bodies need to balance responding appropriately to people’s complaints and acting proportionately within available resources. But they also say finite resources should not be used as an excuse for failing to provide a fair remedy.

I didn’t intend to work past 62 (my 1995 pension age). There were contracts but I didn’t want them. Necessity dictated that I had to carry on because we still had a mortgage.

I'm not ageist, in fact I should have been retiring next year. Instead, I'll be working reduced hours until my amended pension age. I've also moved to a much smaller property that I can afford the upkeep on.

What I don't expect is for younger working age people to be paying extra tax to fund my lifestyle, whilst I still consider myself young and fit. Society cannot afford the lower pension ages,not given how long people are now living for.

Yeah, it's disappointing, but get over it.

I don't need the history lesson. I am not much younger and was working from the early 80s so I was there. By the early 90s it was obvious to everyone I knew or worked with that the pension for women would increase to that of men. It was a case of when not if. When it was formally announced in 1995 it was on the news everywhere and everyone was talking about it particularly in work places. I am sceptical of anyone who says they didn't know because they didn't get a letter. They must have been living under a rock in which case a letter wouldn't have made a difference.

When it was formally announced in 1995 it was on the news everywhere and everyone was talking about it particularly in work places. But that wasn’t true of the 2011 changes

Did you not hear anything about it on the news? I certainly did and everyone was discussing it at work.

@RosesAndHellebores my grandparents, born in 2009 and 2011 remembered the workhouses. My great grandparents did more significantly (nobody in my family went there). They also remember a time when there was no NHS, no pensions, no benefits. I think people born in the 70s/80s/90s have forgotten just how hard life was for previous generations.

Of course I'm aware of how hard life was for previous generations. At the risk of entering into a Four Yorkshiremen but since you have patronised me, my own grandmother was born in 1919 and my father was born at the outbreak of WWII. Several families in her street were killed when bombs were dropped on their houses, including the house directly opposite. As the daughter of a mining safety engineer, I am familiar with the history of coal mining and the horrifying conditions in which people (including children) lived, worked and, in far too many cases, met their untimely deaths. I was responding to the 'life is what you make it' comment made by a poster who plans to retire in six months. Being 'self-made' is much more achievable if you grow up during a period of strong economic growth, absent or minimal tuition fees, high wage growth and affordable housing than it is if you grow up during a period without this.

Economic inequality in the UK (and elsewhere) is increasing and the point I was making is that we are regressing to a society of haves and have-nots, ironically the type of society in which your grandparents grew up. How long do you think it will be before we go back to a time of no NHS, no pensions and no benefits? We are already on the way to 'no NHS', many younger people on this thread have said that they don't expect to receive a state pension, and the only thing we know for sure about other benefits is that they are far from safe.

I feel my sympathy lies more with the younger generation, if I’m being honest. Young adults from poorer (non-inheritating) families are only going to see the gap widen and widen. I think those of us who are older need to consider the impact of the cost of tertiary education, housing, availability of permanent, salaried positions of sufficient financial reward and the impact of a huge financial crash, pandemic and global unrest. I don’t think it’s those born after the 1990s who have ‘no idea’. The WASPI demand for compensation seems to suggest it is that generation which has ‘no idea’.

The WASPI demand for compensation seems to suggest it is that generation which has ‘no idea’.

Those demanding compensation are a relatively small number. Most of us have adult children and have a very good idea.

Thee was a lot about the first change, that took a tranche of women expecting to retire at 60 and moved their retirement to various odd ages like 63 years and 4 months. I didn't notice much about the later change.

I worked with men. There wasn't much discussion about women's retirement ages.

Given the question was otherwise entirely irrelevant to the main point of the thread, of course there was an assumption.

It still isn't always necessary, in many jobs you can climb the ladder to higher pay without qualifications.

It's no where near as easy to climb the ladder nowadays without a degree.

This is 100% true. I am mid 40s started working at 16 so 30 years experience. I HAVE been promoted multiple times within my organisation but struggling to get considered even for much more junior roles elsewhere even with proven results/ experience.

True, but there were far more opportunities for a university education from the 90s onwards for our kids than there were in the 60s for us. Only one of our generation in our families went to uni. It was a rare occurrence from our ordinary backgrounds. We left school at 15 or 16, and had jobs not careers. However, several of the next generation are graduates, including our DC, who have masters, plus nieces and nephews, including one with a PhD.

I think there are lots of families like ours, first generation home owners, who saw education as a stepping stone for their DC who are now in their 40s and 50s. In lots of cases it was. Now our DGC and great nieces and nephews view university and/or degree apprenticeships as the norm.

I really wish people would stop suggesting younger people are privileged because they get to go to uni. It really isn't a privilege in most cases. You HAVE to go if you want to get almost any job. Even an admin role needs a degree. And a degree nowadays leaves you paying back a massive student loan for potentially the rest of your life. Doesn't sound like a privilege to me. Id call that a burden. A big one.

@Shwish I totally agree with you. But people are reacting against younger people who say older people were privileged to go to university for free. I am 62 from a poor background. When I was at school nearly the whole year left school at 16 years old. Generally the people privileged now are the people privileged back then i.e. people from families with money who are supportive.

But you're from an age where you could walk out if school at 14-16 with no qualifications and straight into a job that paid the bills. Do you see that happening now? I don't.

LOL!!! I am from an age where there was loads of unemployment. I had to move far away from my home town as my home town was destroyed as the old industries collapsed. I still remember a friend coming into school absolutely elated as he had managed to get a job in a local factory for when he left school at the end of the month. It was very very hard to get any job at all.

@DrIggyFrome When I was young the news was full of how my generation would be full of young people who would never get a job and be destined to be unemployed all their lives. That gloomy prediction was wrong.

We did have advantages. The rental market now is absolutely insane. The couple next door to me in their thirties are paying incredibly high rent. They moved in this year.

But young people also have advantages we did not have. Sexism was still incredibly high, and sexual harassment of young women in the workplace was common place and almost expected. People were still put into mental hospitals for being lesbian or gay. It was a more rougher culture where we were all expected to just get on with it with little support. And anyone neurodiverse was just the weird kid.

But you will see over your lifetime things will change in ways you can't imagine now. Some things will get much better, some may get worse. What we all have to do is make the most of what we do have.

I think the other way to look at it is that the government cannot afford to pay the pensions to all the pensions, we are in a massive deficit.

The change has hit all women. Future women must work until 67 or 68.

We all want to stop working earlier than this, whatever our sex or current age.

We all are impacted by this. Unfortunately. I wouldn't take the decision, or comments as sexist, ageist, whatever. Just focus on what you need to do.

Unfortunately the state benefits will have to reduce, and some people will lose out. But for our future generations we need to chat our expenses as a nation.

I do empathise. But...

I absolutely agree with you op. We faced other challenges too that thankfully women of today’s generation won’t, which have severely impacted on our earning potential.
When I was at school girls were not allowed to do metal work, wood work, technical drawing. We had to leave employment if we were pregnant, we were pushed into nursing and secretarial jobs. We couldn’t catch up, we didn’t start the race on the same start line.

A lot of people don’t “choose” early retirement, a lot of those have had to make difficult choices having been blindsided due to serious ill health or being made redundant with little hope of walking into another job!