AIBU to think that WASPI women should not be entitled to compensation?

[mugglewump]

They've been on the news again marching for compensation in a climate where the government is having to make very difficult decisions about funding to stop our debt ever increasing.

I think there are far more deserving cases for goverment money than women who didn't act on information at the time and sort their pensions out or keep working (p/t or f/t) until retirement age.

Moreover, the people paying this compensation are those who will be working until they are 67 to 70 to claim a state pension. Surely, it's a bit ick to expect them to bail out women who retired at 60?

@Completelyjo You’re going completely off piste with you comments..
sandwiches - good grief!

I hope you have the same magnanimous viewpoint when you’re coming up to retirement and an additional 7 years gets added to the mix.

I'm a WASPI (hate that acronym) but I'd far rather compensation was paid to the screwed over subpostmasters. That shit show boils my piss beyond words.

I'd have resigned myself to the fact that being uninformed and out of touch can have serious financial consequences.

@ginasevern

I too think the postmasters should get compensation but that’s down to the Post Office to sort out. Pensions are a completely separate issue.

It’s honestly baffling that you can expect equal pay, equality laws, sex discrimination laws but have thought there was absolutely no issues with men retiring 5 years later than women and didn’t think it was at all unfair but okay.

I hope you have the same magnanimous viewpoint when you’re coming up to retirement and an additional 7 years gets added to the mix

I don’t understand why so many posters seem to assume that the only people who have ever been and will ever be affected by SP age changes is WASPI women. My generation are anticipating it going well into the 70a if it’s there at all. It’s changed twice already in my working life and I’m not yet 40. This is our normal!

@Completelyjo Equal pay and women’s employment laws etc were hard won by women of my generation. Those laws were rightly amended but there was still discrimination at the workplace.

Pensions did need to be adjusted.

However it is the speed at which it was done to a relatively small group of women that is the issue. So in 8 years it went up 5 years. How can that be fair?

Even my mother in law, who can't be described as the brightest button in the box, knew about the changes and adjusted her plans accordingly. The majority knew and were no worse off than any of us who had our retirement ages changed. I'd like to retire at 60 too but Im not entitled to a state pension til 68 (for now), it's just how it is. I don't want my kids to be paying for this compensation for years to come. Anyone with a conscience would feel the same.

NIC was A LOT lower a few decades ago, so you didn't pay the same level of NIC as middle aged workers have been paying for the last couple of decades.

There was never any "contract"! There were never any guarantees made that state pension age would stay the same forever. It's not how government works. Things can and do change over the decades. NIC isn't some kind of savings scheme - it's just another tax.

The thing I used to hate was if a man died his wife got a widows pension. I always worked and had to take out an insurance policy so my husband would get the same if I died and as a responsible parent I wanted to ensure that he and the children wouldn't end up in poverty because of no pension. Now it's equal but nowhere near as generous. You can't win.

Yes, the screwed over postmasters deserve the compensation MUCH more than the 'WASPI' woman! Indeed, the WASPI women deserve nothing IMO. I hope the whole thing is thrown out.

I don't believe anyone who says they didn't know about the changes.

I'm not sure how your response relates to my response. I was answering the pp's question.

Yes I know that. What I'm trying to get across is that you said they made your pension age higher than men's. It's not a man v woman thing, it's an age / DOB thing. Your husband was lucky enough to reach pension age before they moved the goalposts. You weren't.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

This. And to one of the PPs talking about having had a 'contract' with the government to receive it at 60: what contract? With which government? Because government can change every 4 years. Policies change all the time. NIC is a tax, not a pension pot.

Based on the amount of media that came out about it at that time, that's like someone not noticing brexit happening.

Absolutely this!

Would anyone believe someone who said they didn't know about Brexit because they don't have the Internet, watch tv, read papers or magazines, and no one in their circle talked about it?

Nope.

It was massive in the nineties, absolutely massive. There was an uproar about it, and it was big big news all over whatever media you can think of.

This. And to one of the PPs talking about having had a 'contract' with the government to receive it at 60: what contract? With which government? Because government can change every 4 years. Policies change all the time. NIC is a tax, not a pension pot.

this. The social contract is broken for us all. Welcome to life as an under 60- it’s shit! 👋🏻

I paid the same rate of NI as middle aged workers for the last couple of decades!

Average earners are paying less direct tax than they were at any time in the last 50 years.The basic rate of income tax has come down from 35 per cent to 20 per cent in that time too. The tax-free allowance is higher than it has been (as a proportion of income) than for most of my working life.
The main employee element of NI is higher than it was in the 1970s, but it is lower than at any time since 1982.
So tell me how I’ve benefitted here?

I'm in a transition category - much of my working life it was expected that women retired at 60. I was in that generation where inequality was more prevalent.

BUT I'm sick of that generation complaining all the time and saying they've worked all their lives. The people starting their working lives now will also have to work all their lives. But house prices are much higher, many more of them have student debt on top, and pensions won't start until 70, if at all.

I know of the changes and so do all of my contemporaries. They talk about the young being entitled but they seem the most entitled of all.

Exactly. Read the room!

'I know of the changes and so do all of my contemporaries. They talk about the young being entitled but they seem the most entitled of all.'

I agree. I see the young being told they are entitled by older people but when it comes to them receiving a bit less they are the most entitled of all, by a long way. Obviously this is a generalisation to some of the behaviour is shocking. The reality is that younger people have become progressively less fortunate, in a reversal of the previous trend.

I think the difference is that we've been expecting exactly that since the mid 1990s! We were surrounded by angry debate about pension age equalisation and increases as we began our working lives. We rolled our eyes, and joked that we'd never get a state pension anyway. When we were younger, our generation (X) was often criticised for being 'cynical' - it's served us well, I think!

Gosh, this is disingenuous. The 8% has only been in existence for a year and was a pretty well-trailed gimmick. It might survive the rest of this Parliament (it shouldn't tbh) but pretending that's been the reality for working aged-people for the majority of their NIC-paying lives is dishonest.

What were the rates before that? 12% (with a tiny blip at 10% at the start of 2024.) And at that level from 2011-2023, 11% for nearly a decade before that, and 10% since the early 90s.

And that's not counting contributions above the upper limit, which were only introduced in 2011.

Meanwhile, the basic rate for income tax was last 35% in 1976. It was down to 30 in 1979. 25% in 1988 and Major had it down to 23% by 1997. Not much of a leap to get it to 20% from there - and meanwhile NICs and VAT rose to offset it in a more regressive way.)