Govt considering u-turn on WASPI compensation

[Ticklyoctopus]

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

Oh God no 😖😖😖😖

Oh absolutely nobody is saying every boomer wants this paid, or is greedy etc - but this generation has done FAR better financially than any other yet still pushes for more, when everyone else struggles so much. Honestly unless you were born post 1980, you can really understand what it’s like to work and buy a first home in this climate. It’s brutal.

No government, not even one as daft as this one, would u turn on this. There is probably some box that needs ticking that has been missed.

Public authorities are under duties to give conscientious consideration to evidence and representations when taking certain decisions and they can be subject to procedural challenge if it appears an outcome had been pre-judged.

I am sure that this talk of reconsideration is just performative until whatever this new evidence is can be formally dismissed.

Yet the same generation will really condescendingly say “oh just spend a bit less!”, or “you have to slum it for a while”

my mum missed out on being a waspi by 3 years, but she is definitely part of the boomer generation and she will often say she used to “survive” on only £30 a week after paying her mortgage and bills.

but that £30 would buy food, transport, socialising, everything else. She doesn’t seem to understand that these days £30 isn’t even enough to get you to and from work for a week.

Absolutely. MIL isn’t Waspi (1 year too old) but her greed, entitlement and ‘fuck everyone else’ is staggering. She was born in a modest (but not poor) Northern family, became a military wife at 21, and thanks to economic circumstances they have lived an incredibly comfortable life - I think she worked for the equivalent of about 15 full time years (took a decade off to have children then very part time), lovely large house in nice area, holiday home abroad, the forces paid for both of her children to attend boarding school in the same town they live in so she didn’t even have to parent for years, just saw them at weekends. Has wanted for absolutely nothing. I don’t begrudge that, anyone else would do the same, but she’s convinced that she’s ’worked all her life’ and is now paying for everyone else in the country to be feckless and workshy. There’s no doubt in my mind if she was WASPI she would be fighting tooth and nail for the payout, saying she’s ’worked all her life’ and deserves it.

He’s even more annoyed about it than I am!

Totally the same as my mum.

She’s worked hard. I don’t deny that. But through various lucky circumstances her and my dad have ended up with 5 (!!!) residential rental properties and one commercial rental property. Plus the family home. They make more in a month than I do in three. But they were still outraged when their winter fuel allowance was cut. Claimed they’d go cold without it. In reality it was because she used the winter fuel allowance to pay for the Christmas food and wanted to do the same last year. I’m sick of the entitlement.

I am a pensioner in the WASPI cohort. I don't think there should be a payout.

I kind of wish I hadn’t opened this thread. By all means and of course it’s necessary to mention age when talking of the Waspi issue is off the scale vitriol and hatred. But the slurs and lumping of all of us “boomers” as selfish rich and property laden and more is pretty disgusting. I know that the next comment will be something like ‘well it’s disgusting their entitlement and we’re paying…”

Boomer is not a slur.

It’s very difficult, but the kids like spending time with her so I just have to tolerate it. But she’s very snide, proud, underhand and all about ‘number 1’. Probably a matter for another thread!

Maybe not in isolation, but it is being used very negatively to say the least in many comments on this thread.

Well, the general consensus on here is that the WASPI women shouldn’t get a payout, and some people are getting quite excited that a payout is even being mooted, and how the older generation have had it better than younger generations blah, blah, blah. Calm down! No one is getting a payout anyway I’m quite sure of that. And even if they were, it would take our inefficient government so long to sort it that they’ll all be 6ft under by payout time anyway. But as I said before, I wouldn’t mind getting it, and I daresay those of you frothing wouldn’t turn it down either.

Maybe reflect on why that is?

I think it’s naive to not expect the generational attitude to come into play here (and no, as ever, that doesn’t mean it applies to every person). I don’t think any other generation would pursue this as vigorously as the WASPIs if they knew they were as a cohort far better off than the rest of the country.

I will be furious if they do this.

It is around here.

I was born in 1953. The first change to pension age in 1993 was completely fair, it gave around 20 years notice and allowed for pension planning. You’d have had to live under a rock not to be aware of the second change in 2011 but it was fundamentally unfair because it gave virtually no notice to some women born in the early 1950s. The implementation of the changes was an absolute shitshow, it was a whole series of cliff edges - I missed out on four months of pension by being born eight hours too late.

I don’t want or expect compensation and will return it in the very unlikely event that it’s offered but I would like acknowledgement that the 2011 changes gave way too little notice and the implementation was carried out by civil servants who had no idea what they were doing.

No. It’s not. It’s a descriptor of the time period you were born in.

Nothing to suggest that ministers intend to do this, just an MP saying they should reconsider as far as i can see from that report.

Honestly, I was born in 1956 and understand completely how much of a struggle it is for younger people to buy property.

The constant comments about older people not understanding completely undermine your argument. It should not be young against old, it should be decisions made for the general good and giving people who have enough is just not right.

I'm a WASPI woman. I'm neither greedy nor entitled, and live on state pension only, which I top up with a few hours locally at NMW (which I'm taxed on).

I grew up believing that retirement age was 60, I had no letter or other notification to tell me this had changed. During the years I was married (quite a difficult time) we had no newspapers nor TV so if it was widely advertised (which I doubt - surely I would have heard something?) so I actually had no idea. The assumption that we "should have known" and that "letters were sent to us" is annoying.

I only found out when divorced and trying to support myself, it was far too late then and I had no money to put into any pension scheme of any sort.

I doubt there will be any pay out, and the government/country can't afford it anyway, so I accept this as I can manage as I am. But it is hurtful to hear comments about pensioners being the richest in society, or that we had time or we should have known etc., when this is not always the case. There are 1.4 million of us who survive on state pension alone and who do not own a property either. Unlike younger people who have years ahead of them to earn more, we are old enough to have health problems and general aging (quite apart from the age bias in the job market) to be unable to work for much longer. Besides which, we have toiled for a lifetime and paid into the system, we do deserve better than the constant anger against us.

It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about publicity and notice being given as it has already determined that there was maladministration and that compensation should be paid. A judicial review is scheduled to go ahead this side of Christmas. The govt is in the position where they either reconsider, or go back to court.

I am just in the waspi cohort - born February 1960 - and I have known about the pension age increase since I returned to work in 1994. We used to discuss it and calculate exactly what age we would get our state pension. Also received 2 letters in 2009 and 2014.

The women I feel should be compensated are those born between April 1953 and April 1955 whose pension age shot up following the acceleration of the state pension age by George Osborne in 2011. With only 5-7 years notice their pension age was increased by up to 18 months. A colleague born in April 1954 should have received her pension at 64 years and 1 month under the 1995 Act but after the 2011 acceleration she had to wait until she was 65 years and 7 months.

Other than that group I feel little sympathy for the waspi women.