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?

Rightsraptor · Today 12:12
All I can tell you are my own circumstances and I had 2 years 4 months notice that I would have wait a further 5 years 11 months than I'd expected before I was eligible to draw my state pension. I still have the letter. Can any of you justify that? How was I supposed to make up for 6 years' worth of pension in 2 years and still live day to day?
You may talk about it being 'all over the news' but there still remained an obligation for the government tell us and not rely on us watching TV or reading newspapers. They had a responsibility and they failed. Now they are ignoring the ombudsman.

@Rightsraptor
You could have made up 6 years pension contributions easily by working (therefore making NI contributions) for the remaining 8 years 3 months until your state pension age!!!

I can't believe that anyone could not know about this unless they were a hermit living in the middle of nowhere.

I am only just not a WASPI and I have to work an extra 7 years, think yourself lucky!

All I can tell you are my own circumstances and I had 2 years 4 months notice that I would have wait a further 5 years 11 months than I'd expected before I was eligible to draw my state pension. I still have the letter. Can any of you justify that? How was I supposed to make up for 6 years' worth of pension in 2 years and still live day to day?

Surely you just don't retire at 60? You keep working until you get your pension. Thats what I'm going to have to do until I'm 67 but I fully expect to hear in the next 17 years that it has changed. It will be a disappointment but I'll get over it.

I can't believe that anyone could not know about this unless they were a hermit living in the middle of nowhere.

They'll be the ones who said "ooh, I don't do politics"

Until they think they might get a payout of course

My mum and myself are in the cohort at either ends, it was widely publicised in 1995 when the law changed

Of course it's much easier now, with the Internet (although it's also much easier to get misinformation), but I'm old enough to remember life before the Internet.

Just because you had to make more effort to find information, that didn't mean that the info wasn't out there.

No need to even pay a financial adviser; just contacting DWP by phone or letter would have been a good start. Even talking to a friend or family member who kept abreast of current affairs and the news relating to all the changes would have been better than nothing.

I don't wish to offend, but anybody just retiring because they believed their state pension age would be due at a certain age and would never change (in spite of all the massive extended news coverage and the obviousness that it was always going to be equalised and/or rise at some point), and relying on that belief without even taking a couple of hours to verify that before burning their bridges surely has nobody else to blame but themselves.

According to the Ombudsman's own findings, a great many women did receive letters informing them of this and just didn't bother to read them.

I get that it was massively disappointing to miss out on retiring at 60 like previous generations - I'm sure loads of men were also disappointed that their SPA was increasing above 65 too and that the government didn't harmonise it at, say, 63 for everybody; but government policies do change often - and nobody ever complains when those changes happen to be to their advantage.

@mugglewump

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.
Perhaps you should get your facts right before denigrating women who have been badly treated and lack of notification has been admitted by the government

The ombudsman’s findings include:

Communication from 2005 onwards
Research reported in 2004 showed that information about State Pension age changes was not reaching the people who needed it most. The researchers recommended that information should be ‘appropriately targeted’.
DWP failed to take this feedback into account properly when deciding in August 2005 what to do next. It had identified it could do more but did not.
A survey in 2006 showed that too many women still thought their State Pension age was 60.
In November 2006, DWP proposed writing directly to women to let them know about their State Pension age. But it failed to do anything about that proposal until December 2007.
How DWP communicated National Insurance qualifying years information
We found failings in how DWP communicated information about National Insurance qualifying years.
Due to the 2014 Pensions Act and the introduction of the new State Pension, there were changes to the number of National Insurance qualifying years needed to claim the full rate of State Pension. There was timely and accurate information available about this.
However, research showed too many people did not understand their own situations and how the new State Pension affected them personally. The Work and Pensions Committee and the National Audit Office, as well as research that DWP commissioned, highlighted this gap between awareness and understanding. DWP failed to use this research and feedback to improve its service and performance.
How DWP and ICE handled complaints
We found that DWP did not adequately investigate and respond to complaints about these issues. There were also avoidable delays in its complaint handling.

But it wasn't exactly a secret, widely discussed in the community, on TV, radio, in newspapers, leaflets, posters.

I have never been officially notified that my retirement age has gone up to 67 but I have known about it for a long time

The WASPI women are denigrating women by perpetuating the male-myth that women are not as capable as men, due to being (or pretending to be) so thick that they didn't know about this.

It's a funny logic if you think about it that you need the mobility component depending on your age when the problem started not the age you are.

Yes my husband has DLA as a legacy benefit. I thought it worked the same with PIP so if you claimed before SRP you could still continue your claim.

I better not tell my husband I'm raising queries about his DLA.

It's funny how so many people on here think they know better than the independent public body whose job it is to investigate this type of thing.

I mean really the public body said the gov had no responsibility to notify women personally by the change but since it did attempt to it was wasn’t widespread enough and a small number of women weren’t personally contacted in a timely manor, since it wasn’t possible to accurately identify just those women their recommendation was a low level compensation for the whole group as a gesture.

And the government response was equally valid in stating that the majority of women who did receive letter admitted to not opening it or even reading it anyway, so on that basis they didn’t feel the group wide compensation was justified.

The problem is the few women who did slip through the net and didn’t plan their retirement properly because they had no awareness of the new age are overshadowed by the huge numbers of women who simply shout about “being robbed by 100k” as some posters on here put it by merely having to retire at 65 rather than 60 and so the county as a whole find it hard to have sympathy for the genuine few because the movement has just been taken over by greed.

Is it as funny as people ignoring the judgement of the courts that no laws were broken, that no duty to notify whatsoever anyone of the changes existed so any efforts went above and beyond what was needed, and that no redress was payable and instead parroting (mostly incorrectly and selectively) the opinion of a non-judicial bureaucratic body whose view just so happens to chime with the outcome said people happen to want whilst simultaneously also ignoring the extremely lengthy response from the Government pointing out why said non-judicial body's opinion is incorrect using the body's own evidence?

I really appreciate your honesty and actually this is it isn’t it. This is how WASPI women feel- pissed off they had to work longer at short notice (understandable) but ultimately without a viable argument as so why they need to be ‘compensated’.

They bought in the subsidised hours for younger kids literally the month my child turned 3 and would have got the 30 free hours as standard. I was so raging- I’ve paid £75,000 in childcare fees for my 5 and 7 year old so far- I can guarantee people weren’t paying that much in the ‘olden days’. I’d have loved the option to stay at home with them instead.

I appreciate your honesty @MrTiddlesTheCat

I think this is probably the truth for the vast majority of the WASPI crowd. They would be less criticised if they just dropped this claptrap about not knowing. I don't know how they expect anyone to fall for it.

Funny that the changes in pension age have apparently just passed them by but the relatively modern concept of compensation culture hasn't.

I think everyone can sympathise with them being angry about the change, its the ridiculous lies and insistence on compensation which gets people's backs up.

I'm just outside the WASPI age group and bloody fuming I have to work an extra 7 years but I don't expect any compensation or claim ignorance.

Sorry, I find this quite insulting to working class people in the north. My parents generation (who would be in their late 90's/Early 100's now) left school at 14 and could read and understand letters and keep up with current affairs even though they were from the north and working class. That applies to both sexes.

The WASPI women were born in the 50's so would have left school at 15, or 16 for the older of the age group. No reason they shouldn't be capable of understanding and knowing about the pension age change.

Again, insulting to the north. The north is not behind in culture and attitude it is behind in funding and investment.

From the Ombudsman’s report:

”Research reported in 2004 showed that information about State Pension age changes was not reaching the people who needed it most. The researchers recommended that information should be ‘appropriately targeted’.
DWP failed to take this feedback into account properly when deciding in August 2005 what to do next. It had identified it could do more but did not.
A survey in 2006 showed that too many women still thought their State Pension age was 60.”

So many comments on here are blaming women for not knowing. Many comments are very harsh. I’m an intelligent woman. I have O and A levels, a diploma, a degree and a post grad in teaching. I was born in 1954 so one of the worst affected by the changes. I didn’t receive a letter. I didn’t know about the changes. According to many on this thread, it’s my own fault that I didn’t know.

According to many on this thread, it’s my own fault that I didn’t know.

Correct.

According to many on this thread, it’s my own fault that I didn’t know.

Yes, it is.

Do you not wonder how it passed you by? I was aware and I was a small child.
Don't you think head in the sand wishful thinking might have been to blame?

What else don't you know?

How did you find out about seat belt laws? Or the ban on smoking indoors? Or ever-changing driving laws, i.e. latest being priority to pedestrians/cyclists when turning left off a major road? And all manner of other laws introduced in the last few decades? Government didn't personally write to you every time.

There has to be an element of actually being an adult and staying aware of things. It was all over newspapers and magazines, TV news and current affairs programs, leaflets in GP surgeries and hospitals and libraries.

Or did you expect the prime minister of the time to knock on your door and tell you every time a law changed?

Don't worry when your still working at 80 I'm sure you will be saying of course I'm happy nobody told me about the changes until I was 70