To be fed up with the WASPIs' renewed campaign?

[Jane379]

I sympathise with people who genuinely did not know but hiw many was this? And how would we know who to compensate even if the money were available?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/waspi-latest-compensation-legal-challenge-pension-b2976014.html

I'm a 1954 Waspi and received the state pension at 66

An extra year was added at short notice but prior to that it was known for many years that women's state pension age would gradually increase to equal that of men, then 65

I don't know any woman who wasn't aware of this - there's no excuse for wilful ignorance for those who claim they didn't

How about not making every thread about migrants?

So was my Mum, she is 72 in August and still working full time. She just got on with it with very little moaning.

I think that the annoying aspect of the 'waspi' campaign is that it seems to be presenting difficulties faced by a few thousand women, arising from specific communication failures by the DWP, as a major social justice issue that somehow amounts to discrimination against women or discrimination on the grounds of age.

In other words, it has become a bit polemicised, in the way that has happened with so many issues in recent years. This seems to have coincided with the arrival of the campaigning term 'waspi women'. For years the matter was addressed in cool technical terms, but now it seems to have had a populist makeover.

They're a bunch of selfish idiots and they drive me mad.

If you're taking about the budget spent on asylum seekers, the money comes from the foreign aid budget. If it didn't pay for that, it would be going to the countries that need aid. It can't be spent on Waspis or anything else in the UK.

Many groups have had to face disappointment when what they originally believed their tax/NI would cover was reduced or removed, and that the state support they recieve is less genetous than that of previous generations.
The young people that now have to take out loans for university.
People who fall ill after years of work to find sickness benefit is only for 6 months before its means tested.
Those in crisis who's only option is now the charity of the food bank.
Having to pay for the dentist.
Selling your home for social care.
Benefit caps.
Whether you think the receipt of less support than recieved by previous generations in your circumstances is fair and reasonable, or highly unfair, tends to depend more on whether you're in a group losing out, than any rational reason why the stare should prioritise you over any other group from a finite pot.

Yep. They can sod off.

That depends when you started work doesnt it?

I started work and started paying stamp prior to the changes. So my expectation was that I would retire at 60, my contract changed with the government at that point

If you started working and paying your stamp after the changes, fine, you're not working an 'extra' 7 years because your contract was that you would retire at 67 (or whatever).

The changes shouldnt have been retrospective to those of us who were already paying in

i agree with this.

there is absolutely no excuse for ‘not knowing’ - the changes were widely advertised, those affected were specifically informed too. If these women didn’t bother opening or reading letters addressed to them about the state pension, if they ignored all the announcements and mortifications about it then that’s on them. It was virtually impossible to ignore the fact that the pension age was rising.

When I started work, the state pension age for women was 60. It was later changed (quite rightly, to be equitable with men) to 65. Further legislation (absolutely necessary for affordability) means that I now won’t get a state pension until I’m 67. So guess what? I’ve continued working full time, I manage my finances and don’t moan about it because I understand the reasons behind the reforms and I’ve kept myself informed.

The WASPI women are an embarrassment. The claim to ‘not know’ information that was widely announced is ludicrous. I suspect the reality is that they just didn’t want to carry on working, or had spent years working part time so hadn’t made decent provision themselves.

State pension reforms have affected everyone …. men who would have always expected to retire at 65 (unfair in the first place that they were expected to wait five years longer than women!) are now having to wait until 66,67,68…..

These women need to shut up now, they aren’t going to get anywhere with this latest outcry anyway and it’s now very transparently just an excuse for not having bothered to keep themselves informed and take personal responsibility

I do genuinely see why they're upset & in theory, I believe they're right. But I just can't muster up any motivation to actively support them. I don't want to work till I'm 67 either & I never thought I'd have to. But here we are, fair enough, no prospect of the age being reduced now so we're all swallowing this bitter pill together. It's dismal.

What?

I'm a WASPI and I was well aware of the changes to the state pension age many years in advance so I was able to plan for the later retirement date.

I have friends a few years older who retired at 60 but they receive the old state pension whereas I receive the new one. My pension is significantly more than theirs and we calculated that after approx 15 years of retirement that additional pension will have made up for the later retirement age.

You paid it. You will get it, a year sooner than I will and probably a lot sooner than young people today will.

With life expectancy now so extended, it just isn't fair or reasonable to expect a government pension from 60.

State pension age for women was 60 when I started work. Then raised to 65 (quite rightly, to equalise with men.) Since then it’s been raised for everyone - I won’t be eligible until 67, seven years later than the eligible age when I joined the workplace.

But I keep myself informed (and let’s face it, it was impossible to ignore the wide publicising and the notifications about it) and have kept working.

the WASPI women are ridiculous. What an embarrassment to use your own alleged ignorance to try to claim you should be compensated. They are pretty much saying ‘I ignored all the notifications on tv, radio, in the newspapers, i didn’t bother opening/reading the letters personally addressed to me, I basically stuck my fingers in my ears la la la - and now I want to be compensated for doing that!’

Looking at my mum and her friends, many of them spent a lot of their working life as sahm, they received child benefit to pay their "stamp". They brought up children at a time when one income could sustain a family.
Add this context to the fact that they were just definitely informed and I can't see his v they think they are owed anything. A state pension isn't a savings pot, no one has stolen from them.

I just wish people would stop saying I paid into my pot, as there isn’t such a thing. My NI at the moments pays for the pensioners at this present time. It doesn’t go into a magical pot with my name on.

It’s a future entitlement (hopefully) but not guaranteed. I’m fully expecting the age of retirement to have gone up, life expectancy to have come down and be in a worse position.

Same. I remember as a child being aware my aunty would have to work 5 years longer than her older sister, my mum. No excuse not to be aware. No sympathy.

Agree.

My MIL is Waspi age. She says she ‘worked all her life and paid her stamp’. What this looked like was working until she was 25, then taking 10 years off to have children, then returning part time (3 days) until 60 when she stopped working.

So she’s worked about 1/3 of a full working life. All the women I know of her age have done roughy similar, aside from single mums who couldn’t rely on a husbands salary.

They’re taking the absolute piss

@likelysuspect You are not “paying in”! It’s NOT a personal fund. Your tax has paid for other people every year you paid your taxes. NI is a TAX, it’s not your pension pot. Therefore there’s no contract with you. You have paid tax for longer, that’s all.

This. Think of someone age 90 - they’ve been drawing a state pension for 25 years!

Agree its idiotic. NI is a tax. It's not a savings scheme.

As the cohort of women who are considered to be Waspi women are women born between April 6, 1950, and April 5, 1960, they are all now in receipt of their State Pensions.

I am in this group and knew about the changes to the state pension age for years before my retirement age. This demographic is probably one of the luckiest generation of women who didn't go through the privations of war/rationing, many of whom benefitted from free higher education, house prices that people could afford on one income and, for some people, huge increases in the value of their houses.

Many Waspi women are very comfortably off and certainly don't need any compensation. A small payment to all women in this demographic would mean that it would be paid to those who don't need it and it wouldn't be enough to compensate the small sub-section of women who did really suffer financially due to not knowing about the changes.

It’s embarrassing. Look at our poor kids - student loans expensive houses low wages few jobs and the older generation want even more from the pot?! Astonishing.

Stolen 😂