WASPI Women - getting compensated

[CanSeeClearlyNowTheRainHasGone]

I've just read this:

The government will reconsider its decision not to award compensation to Waspi women, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden has said.

And I'm livid at the incompetence of Labour.

Having put the issue to bed once, they are now going to create a heap of trouble for themselves.

Either they decide (again) not to make any payouts - in which case, cue more outrage from WASPI and negative headlines.

Or they decide now that they will make payouts - which goes directly against the whole "we have to raise taxes" budget.

Or are they really so stupid that they're going to carry on paying everyone, raising salaries for Public Sector, 2-child cap, WFP, etc and carry on bleating about a black hole and how we must all pay more tax.

Am I being unreasonable that this seems like madness?

It doesn't necessarily disadvantage you but if you've acted responsibly, and made financial decisions based on getting your pension when you expected it, you could be at a great disadvantage. I gave an example in my post at 10.15. If you gave up work knowing your pension was due 12 months later, and then the rules changed, what are you going to live on once the 12 months are up and there's another three years till your pension is due? You might be able to get another job but at 60+, even if you can, it's unlikely to be as good as the one you gave up. In your example, suppose you gave up work in 1998 thinking that your savings of (say) £12000, would cover the gap for a year. If you then find out that the rules have changed and the £12000 has to cover an extra 3 years, it means living on £3000 a year instead of £12000. That's a big difference if you can't find another job.

This doesn't just apply to women who gave up work, it's also true for women who made any financial plans that involved having their pension as a substantial part of their income. Ironically if they'd just muddled through, taken no responsibility and made no plans, they'd have been disappointed but not necessarily disadvantaged. It's the women who genuinely did their best to make sensible decisions who ended up in the worst position.

They are planning for it as it happened to us - we were shafted - now people know it can happen.

i think the people who come on here saying they received lots of info on the change to pensions are younger and talking about the change from 65 upwards.

I think a lot of posts are brushing aside facts and knowledge to make way for jealousy and spite tbh

Did women really expect that wages and workplace rights for men and women would equalise by law, yet the huge elephant-in-the-room anachronism of women getting to retire 5 years earlier (in spite of living on average several years longer than men) was going to continue on and on indefinitely for decades. Wouldn't you at least have this in mind when cautiously making plans thaf involved burning any bridges?

See men set the pension ages at 65 for men and 60 for woman, this was due to it being the norm for men to be older by a few years than their wives. This in turn led to the men setting the ages realising that the woman would need to be at home when the men retired - so they could take care of the men - and being a few years younger needed them to retire at an earlier age to be simultaneous

Well said @Katypp

I don’t understand anyone giving up work without checking their facts about when they would get a state pension. That doesn’t sound particularly responsible, particularly as pension changes were in the news from about 30 years ago.

I can understand not being 100% certain what I was due, but I cannot understand anyone not having the slightest inkling that changes were coming, and definitely can’t understand choosing to give up work without being very certain of my financial facts.

Well, the WASPI women have been given the right to employ legal counsel and intend to appeal this.

This will run and run.

Agree with this.
These people are often also employers and starters of new businesses.
Tax them too much and they will move their capital, tax and employment opportunities elsewhere.
If we are going to have generous State Benefits ( including pensions) we need to encourage wealth generation in the UK

See men set the pension ages at 65 for men and 60 for woman

According to https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/

“The origins of this claim rest in the Old Age and Widows’ Pension Act 1940, where the state pension age for women was lowered from 65 to 60 in response to a campaign by unmarried women in the 1930s. The policy created a relative disadvantage to men, justified by the social conditions at the time.”

It was known as the “spinster campaign”.

@nutmeg7 I appreciate that it's hard to understand in today's world where all sorts of information is readily available. Back then it wasn't always easy to get a definitive, personalised answer in a reasonable time frame.

I suspect that many of the worst affected women genuinely believed that they understood the changes and had made arrangements to deal with them as best they could. I don't recall much fuss being made about the second set of changes at the time and it's easy to see how some women could have thought they'd already done everything that was necessary. I could accept an argument that they should have been more careful IF the second set of changes had come with a health warning such as 'if you were born between xxx and xxx these proposals will mean that you may have to wait three times as long as you expect to draw your pension'. But they didn't. They were presented as a means of accelerating fairness and equality for all. The fact that in order to achieve this, they would have to disproportionately disadvantage a particular cohort of women, was never mentioned as far as I recall.

If there was info sent out explaining to women how the changes affected them where is it ? Surely someone or some dept has a copy of what they sent out or someone can produce a copy of the financial changes explained or reported on in The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail etc etc
I had stocks and shares ISAs and regularly read the finance pages but don’t recall any info on the pension changes.

Even the WASPI women campaign group doesn’t dispute that information was sent out. They argue it was too late, and didn’t reach all women. But there’s no suggestion that this information was never sent at all.

I remember shouting at the radio when the second lot of changes was announced because it was so damned unfair to hit the same cohort of women twice. I didn’t receive any information at all, unlike the first time when I received a letter.

The only group of people less sympathetic than the WASPI women are those people who got rightfully caught out over the IR35 loan charge rules.

Why have governments spent time and money on a review if they weren’t going to abide by its findings? Why did Labour politicians back the waspi women when they were in opposition, but not now? I am a waspi woman, and I sure won’t send it back if ever they decide to compensate me, but I strongly suspect that pigs will fly before that ever happens.

@Daisymay8 The information was in all the mass media, endlessly talked about: newspapers, tv, radio. Just a quick online search of old artivcles related to the issue turns up 100's, here's one of many www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/09/state-pension-inequality-cost-women-20000-campaign

Err sorry I never read 'The Guardian'. In fact I stopped buying newspapers after my divorce. Raising two kids on my own it wasn't on my list of priorities! Money was very tight! I never got a letter about my pension changes. The 1st I or my colleagues (all nurses) heard about it was from a HCA who had read something in 'The Sun' and I would never had read that rubbish paper even if I could have afforded it!

But how were any younger cohorts hit any less hard?

I understand if that cohort knew what was coming - it had surely been obviously inevitable for years anyway, ever since the Equal Pay Act - and had hoped to sneak through and benefit from it being phased in more slowly; but once the change gained pace and became a more sudden climb rather than the hoped-for plateau just for them, they simply joined all of the generations of women to come in future (along with the men) at the same point of that climb.

You never had access to a TV or radio either? It was massive news, covered prominently and incessantly right across the media - which, of course, meant that people would tend to discuss it with others in their workplaces and other conversations.

How did you find out when there was a new Prime Minister; or changes to tax thresholds and allowances; or new/amended legislation such as toughened mandatory requirements for use of seat belts, child car seats etc.; or about the poll tax coming in and going out again......?

If anybody knew that they had no source whatsoever for keeping up with current national affairs, other than to hope they might receive a letter or phone/write to somebody, it's even more astonishing that they would assume that nothing had changed and make plans based on the last thing they'd heard, many years previously.

The Guardian is just one of many articles. It was all over the news generally.

Plenty of free access to news articles about the issue toohttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13834281.amp

All over facebook too

Of course they aren’t going to compensate a group of marginalised people. Old women are disadvantaged through being women and being old. They are seen as worthless, hence not worth paying compensation to. Anyway they will go away soon because they are all slowly dying.

I’m disgusted that Labour changed their policy on this but they are such a weak government and have changed their minds on several things.

"See men set the pension ages at 65 for men and 60 for woman, this was due to it being the norm for men to be older by a few years than their wives. This in turn led to the men setting the ages realising that the woman would need to be at home when the men retired - so they could take care of the men - and being a few years younger needed them to retire at an earlier age to be simultaneous"

Why bother with facts when you can resort to disinformation and misandry instead...

As a pp said, it was women who campaigned for earlier retirement age for women

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_White_(campaigner)

I have a letter telling me that I would have to wait over almost six years longer than anticipated before I could claim my state pension. I had two years and a few months' notice of this. Please explain to me how I could budget to cover this shortfall

Its not a "shortfall". Its a delay. Most people simply continued to work, my mother included. I don't have a lot of sympathy because i'll have to work for longer, earning less in real terms but paying more for housing & other costs.... and my tax/NI is paying your pension.

So the law changed in 1995 and it was brought in in 2011. They had 16 years to make adjustments. What is the issue? I’m failing to understand.