Govt considering u-turn on WASPI compensation

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https://news.sky.com/story/government-to-reconsider-whether-to-give-compensation-to-waspi-women-13468696

Oh God no 😖😖😖😖

So no one needs to be sympathetic to the idea that it's a disappointment not to retire at 61, they just need to get their heads around the idea that the government really has to make sure that everyone knows when a decision is made to withdraw financial support.

I genuinely don't feel ignorance is an excuse. It's not an excuse in any other part of the law/society. i.e. 'I didn't know I wasn't allowed to stab him'; 'Oh, that's all right then, on you go.'
Also, it does scunner me that my mother is 19 years into a lovely retirement on a full pension (she got £11k back paid pension for the few years she was at home, full time child rearing, believe it or not...) I will be lucky if I can retire before I'm 70 😥, and as a single person, I don't have anything/anyone else to fall back on.
Yes, it shouldn't be about someone getting more than someone else, but it does stick in the craw that these women have claimed ignorance meant they are poorer than they thought.

But it isn’t “withdrawing financial support”? It’s a benefit. Any government can change the entitlement to a benefit — as many people found to their cost during the Tory governments of the 2010s.

Child benefit was a universal benefit/entitlement until the Tories decided to change that - and people had almost no notice at all of that change. Lots of entitlements that used to exist have been done away with by successive governments, and people have had to manage accordingly.

I won’t get my pension for 7 years later than I thought. It was on the news when the pension age changed. Some people aged 60 -67 are struggling but can’t they claim benefits if they can’t earn enough? Lots of people in the affected cohort (Im a bit too young ) are doing better financially than younger people with dependent children with both parents working and high housing costs. I never understood why there should be ‘compensation’. Means testing would be too expensive, I think it would be fairer to use the existing benefits system for women in this category who are genuinely suffering.

I heard a campaigner on LBC last night. She claimed to be angry that she wasn’t informed. She also said that she had seen no publicity and that she hadn’t read a newspaper since the 1970s. Ignorance isn’t an excuse in any other field so why should it be in this case?

i started work in the 1980s and my retirement age was expected to be 60. It’s now 67. That’s life.
One of the two women I know who are affected has been an active voice on this. She feels hard done by. She’s extremely wealthy but is looking forward to a payout. She always knew about the changes but she’s acting like she didn’t, like so many of these women. It’s awful. I’m embarrassed for them.

But fundamentally WHAT DIDFERWNCR WOULD MORE NOTICR HAVE MADE? Either way you had to work longer. Thats it.

One of the two women I know who are affected has been an active voice on this. She feels hard done by. She’s extremely wealthy but is looking forward to a payout. She always knew about the changes but she’s acting like she didn’t, like so many of these women. It’s awful. I’m embarrassed for them

This seems to be a common theme now. I hope these greedy women don’t see a penny.

Just to clarify before I answer, I think we were given plenty of notice and the changes were necessary. I find some of the WASPI campaigners greedy and embarrassing. Generally though you aren’t living up to your username at all. The last sentence stereotypes and generalises. The older women you know seem to have had stable marriages and reasonable incomes. You show no understanding of what it was like to be a woman in an unhappy marriage in the 1970s for example or how difficult it was to keep working before maternity leave came in in 1979, and even later when child care was hard to find. There were no in work benefits, income support was paid to the man as head of household, police wouldn’t attend “domestics”. Not every older woman is sitting in a nice paid for home with a big fat pension. Not everyone has inherited money. I know things are generally more difficult now but there are rich and poor in every generation. For poorer women waiting for their pension it was a disappointment. I agree that they aren’t the ones campaigning though.

I meant to add that as the waspi women will soon be heavy users of the NHS you would think that would be a bigger priority to them and surely they would want a good standard of education for their grandchildren.

It's a technicality, though. There were so many ways in which a moderately-informed person couldn't have failed to know; yes, they maybe should have technically had more direct communication from the government in order to tick the boxes, but it does women a huge misogynistic disservice and infanticide them to claim that they're unable to understand the world around them and the big issues of the day without being spoon-fed by the government.

I've currently got the TV on and they're talking about the stormy weather warnings; but even if I didn't have the telly on, I can still hear the howling wind outside and I will be standing in it when I go outside soon. If I ignore the media, and ignore the signs that my own senses clearly give me, and then go outside in my undies and get soaked through and shivering with cold as an obvious result, whose fault is that? Who owes me compensation? Can I claim compo from ITV as I wasn't able to watch their channel at the same time as the BBC, so I wasn't enabled to see their weather warnings?

I’m in the age group. We knew in plenty of time. I had more than one letter but even if people failed to get a letter it was all over the news and much talked about.

I'm astonished at how proud some people are at their own wilful ignorance. People used to be ashamed of it!

It's actually really arrogant to deliberately ignore all of the normal ways of learning about things and then to be shocked that you don't know the same things that everybody else does.

It's a bit like being amazed that you failed your driving test on the same day as your friend passed hers - simply because she had months of lessons and practice beforehand, whilst you just assumed that it must be obvious and turned up on the day for the first time. After all, the government never told you when you booked your test that you might need lessons first...

Agree with all of that 👏👏👏

In my experience these types are actively resentful of their younger family members and don’t want them to have anything. Not at their ‘expense’ anyway. They’re the same parents who feature in threads on here where the adult child works 50 hours a week to rent a tiny flat, while the parents go on cruises and live in a £1million house on a final salary pension yet bitterly complain about the WFA being taken away

Good God. You have had awful experiences with the older generation, that's all I can think.
I'm a pensioner. Certainly not rich, but comfortable in that my mortgage is paid ( my house is nowhere near worth a million, we're up north), have private pensions but certainly not 'fat' ones.
I have given my children all the help I can to support them on the property ladder.
I think the WFA should only be paid to those who need it ( the £35k limit is ridiculously high, i know no one who gets that much ). I totally disagree with the Waspi campaign.
I appreciate you are not talking about everyone, but you come over as extremely bitter.

And my experience of 'these type's of greedy envious young people is that they won't see that they, like everyone else, will become better off when they have finished raising children. I don't know anyone who didn't feel hard up in their 30's and 40's. It was just all a bit harder when we had basic rate tax at 33%, mortgage rates at 10 to 15%, and no gullible tax payers chipping in to pay for child care for us.

There is absolutely no point in getting so upset about this. You don't know that anyone will get any compensation, why lash out in this way? It's worryingly strange.
Have you all just found out that your parents are going to leave the million pound house to the cat and dog home?

Mortgage rate of 10-15% on a mortgage of £40-50k 🤣🤣🤣 (don’t forget housing was super cheap)
Families living on 1 wage and living well, so mum didn’t need to work
Free university
No (or super low) stamp duty

Well let’s hope that people like that are in a minority.

Also mortgage rates were only that high for about six months before coming down again (you can see the spike in the BoE base rate in historic data. It wasn’t for very long!)

The thing is though nobody on here is complaining about people like you. You sound perfectly reasonable and kind. Its the washing campaigners we're talking about. Of which you are not one.

Ha! Waspi campaigners obviously. Stupid autocorrect 😆

I agree with you - fully realising that by 'these types', you clearly aren't referring to all older people in any way.

It just seems so counterintuitive to want your children and grandchildren - not just younger generations in general, but your own family - to struggle more than you did, just so you can maintain the narrative of yourself as the put-upon martyr and them as the spoiled 'don't know that that they're born' lot.

Yes, different generations face different challenges and opportunities - although by no means everybody in that generation - but you have to accept that you live when you live and you have to take it as a package.

My DS is 13 and is already concerned about how he will pay for university. I didn't have any tuition fees to pay at all, and I even got a bit of a grant at one stage. I'm terribly disappointed on his behalf; of course we will do whatever we can to help him, but we aren't lording it over him with tales of how much harder life in general was for us and how much luckier he supposedly is.

In 40 years' time, he will likely be living in great health, prosperity and enjoyment; whereas I will be long dead. I'm genuinely thrilled at the prospect of how great a life he can hopefully have far ahead of him; I'm not making it all about me and bemoaning all the negative things that have befallen me, whilst conveniently glossing over all of the positive things in my own lifetime.

Here are some simple financial realities for you.

Houses cost what people will pay for them. Just because you can't afford them doesn't mean someone else can't. They plainly can.

The maximum that Banks would lend in 1990 was 3.5 x ONE SALARY. The average salary was £13,500. 3.5 x that = £47250. As more women chose to bring up their own children that mortgage represented 3.5 x total household income. And £47000 was around the average price of a house. There is no point in thinking how rich you would be if you only had to pay that mortgage on your current salary, you have to see income and mortgage together.

Fast forward. Banks started to lend multiples of two salaries (obviously, it makes more money for them) People with two incomes wanted better houses and were happy to borrow 3.5 x two incomes. The average salary today is £39000. In a two income family that's £78000 total household income. That times 3.5 is £273000, very near to the average house price of around £260000. So in fact hoses are just as affordable in a climate where women (quite rightly) want to earn and spend their own income. They just can't have it both ways, borrowing based on two incomes but wishing that prices were only based on one.

This problem has obviously not been caused by the people who bought 'cheap ' houses, but by those who came later and whose greater borrowing power caused prices to rise dramatically. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good misery moan.

I seem to be missing your logic. How is a house costing 3.5x 2 incomes "just as affordable" as a house costing 3.5x 1 income?

Because to pay for it you have to look at total household income. The borrowing is a multiple of 2 incomes, there for the repayment has to be seen as a percentage of 2 incomes. I'm sorry you seem to be struggling with the concept, but I can't explain it any more clearly.