'WASPI women' appeal court ruling

[GrimSisters]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54158832

I'm 41. I'd always wondered why women retired at 60 and men at 65 and have known all about the changes for years because I read the news and don't live under a rock.

Given that, at the moment, I'll get my state pension at 68, I'm struggling to understand what the problem is. Please could someone explain why having to work until 65, along with their male counterparts, is so distressing?

I thought we wanted equality? Must admit that I'm struggling to have much sympathy. I work in a relatively low paid job and have four colleagues aged between 55 and 63 who haven't complained about the situation.

If you're one of the women who has been affected by this change, I'd be interested to know what the real issue is because I'm really confused as to why it is such a massive issue.

Iamthewombat-Fuck off.

When will you learn that being insulting and rude makes you look silly and removes any credibility your argument might have had?

It’s not just ‘tiredness’ I’m ill. But l have to keep working.

This is what disability benefits are for, not the state pension.

Do you have any concept of how difficult it is to get disability benefits?

Quite honestly I find your deliberate setting up hostility between different generations of women quite mystifying. I’ve never heard anyone my age whinging about paying for maternity benefits or subsidised childcare. Most of us are delighted women have those things now although we’re helping pay for them.

Equally our pensions partly are funded by younger generations - unless our income tax wipes them out - but tax paying pensioners are funding education for other people’s children and many other things some of which we don’t and never have benefitted.

I too think that equalisation of pension age should have been 63. That way all the burden wouldn’t have fallen solely on 350k women. There are 30 million taxpayers in this country, the cost to each one would have been minuscule. Yet we can afford HS2 ...

I went shopping with ds now 26 about 3 years ago. Every shop we walked into he knew an assistant. When l asked him why this was he said’ young people are just the bitches of society doing the shit jobs no one else wants to do’

Shit jobs? You mean like the millions of low paid workers in care, retail, food production etc. I wonder what the country would look like now if we hadn't had those key workers a few weeks back.

Bitches of society? I assume that expression comes from the fact that women have always been over represented in those low paid roles

If any of my adult sons used those expressions I'd be giving them a clip round the earhole.

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince and @Soontobe60 .

Soon your story really illustrates the way WASPI women have been utterly shafted, because not only have the rules been changed at short notice at the end of your working life, your story clearly shows that the start of your working life was hit by a whole load of institutional sexism.

So it's clearly not a case of "what are you complaining about, you asked for equality and now you've got it..." as some hard-of-thinking posters would have us believe. Women in this age group were systematically discriminated against in early and mid careers, putting them at a financial disadvantage to start with, then (icing on the misogynist cake) told they would be screwed over with regard to the one thing that played out to their advantage, without either the time or the financial means (thank you, insitutional sexism) to make alternative arrangements.

@Iamthewombat
Yes, but the WASPI women and the ‘Back to 60’ campaigners want those younger people to pay for their pensions - and theirs alone - to be backdated to 60. Which will be very expensive; acceding to the WASPI women’s demands, in isolation, will cost an estimated £30 billion plus

On the other hand you are saying that it's ok to steal 30 billion from older women. As far as pensions go I can only guess that 30billion is small fry if you think how many people are receiving pensions in the country. This was women with dobs over about 3 years I think.

And there must have been a HUGE saving by the gov in the shifting of retirement age. They've saved billions probably overall, over the last 10 years, from men too for the increase from 65 to 66. So the young people should be thanking us

I too think that equalisation of pension age should have been 63. That way all the burden wouldn’t have fallen solely on 350k women.

The ‘burden’, as you put it, of increasing and equalising the pension age has hit many age groups. It certainly has not been borne solely by the WASPI women. What about women in their twenties? They will have to work for longer than the 1950s women. That inconvenient fact doesn’t fit with the persecution complex though, does it?

There are 30 million taxpayers in this country, the cost to each one would have been minuscule.

Minuscule eh? The cost of compensating the WASPI women alone was estimated at £32 billion. I’ll do the maths for you, shall I? That’s more than £1,000 per taxpayer. Bringing down the retirement age to 63 for both sexes will cost trillions. Do you consider that minuscule? I don’t imagine that you’re planning on paying for any of it. You’re happy for your own children and grandchildren to bear the cost though, aren’t you?

As for ‘stealing’ pension from the WASPI women: other posters have already told you that this is nonsense.

The state pension is a benefit. Very few people will have paid enough NI in their working lives to cover the cost of what they take out. So describing it as ‘stealing’ is ludicrous.

@Iamthewombat

As for ‘stealing’ pension from the WASPI women: other posters have already told you that this is nonsense.

The state pension is a benefit. Very few people will have paid enough NI in their working lives to cover the cost of what they take out. So describing it as ‘stealing’ is ludicrous.

It's a massive shame that women can't stand together against the inequalities we have suffered.

It's a massive shame that women can't stand together against the inequalities we have suffered.

Agreed. Why are the WASPI and Back to 60 campaigners (who backed the WASPI women’s appeal) only campaigning for compensation for themselves?

Why are they ignoring older women, and younger women? The younger women will retire even later. The older women suffered greater inequalities.

Your arguments might be more successful if you actually thought about them before putting them forward.

@Iamthewombat

Iamthewombat-Fuck off.

When will you learn that being insulting and rude makes you look silly and removes any credibility your argument might have had?

It’s not just ‘tiredness’ I’m ill. But l have to keep working.

This is what disability benefits are for, not the state pension.

🤣🤣🤣 you’re clearly joking. And patronising. In fact, it almost sounds like you’re a man!

HOUSE!

That’s me filling my bingo card. Eventually, anyone who demolishes the “woe is me” WASPI or Back to 60 arguments is accused of being a man.

If it's any consolation, I don't think you're a man Wombat. I will not say what I do think you are because I'd get deleted, but suffice it to say I think you are behaving very badly on this thread.

@TheWordWomanIsTaken I am really not just interested in women mid 50's.

The post of mine you have quoted was in answer to Viviennemary's post about how women in the 50's and 60's had it oh so easy. How families could live on 1 wage so if the woman worked it was for "pocket money".

I found that post incredibly rude and also totally untrue. Plus I could not see why she was talking about housewives in the 50's and 60's when the argument is about woman born in the 50's not already grown up and married.

I replied to it just because of how ludicrous it was. As I said, my mum worked and so did most of our female neighbours, my aunts etc. DH's mum worked and so did his aunts .

My mum and dad still struggled even with them both working. Admittedly my mum only worked part time - 5 hours an evening Monday to Friday.

My parents never had a car, never smoked or drank, obviously did not have phones etc. Also I think they had 4 holidays in 20 years all of them in the UK and all very cheap. I stand by what I say that lots of families today could manage on 1 wage if they did not want and expect so much. I can't think of any couple I know (most with children) that don't have a car each, a good expensive phone each, at least one holiday every year but quite often more and almost always abroad.

I don't want your sympathy. I am now getting my pension and it is a pretty good amount in my view. I never thought that the WASPI women would win. That doesn't mean though that I don't think the way the changes were brought in were unfair or that I was, and still am a bit, bloody furious that I had to wait 4 years longer for my pension that my hairdresser who was born the year before me,

Thankfully my DH, who is younger than me, works so I could stop working before my pension age due to ill health. We did struggle but we got there. Otherwise I would have been forced to either try and work and make myself more ill or claim benefits

@CaraDuneRedux

If it's any consolation, I don't think you're a man Wombat. I will not say what I do think you are because I'd get deleted, but suffice it to say I think you are behaving very badly on this thread.

^ this

@Iamthewombat yes of course young women will be working longer BUT they know that already don't they?

Most young people already pay into a private pension and they have years ahead to plan for their retirement.

I, and many other women, thought we would be retiring at 60. OK there was a change but it was only, I think, 3 years. The second change lots of us received no notice or very little notice. I know you want to deny the truth of that but it is true no matter how much it annoys you.

When I started work I never even thought about a private pension. No one I knew had one although, again, I am sure you will argue that point.

By the time private pensions were more commonplace I was really too old for it to be of much benefit plus I could not really afford to put money away.

A financial adviser came to my place of work to talk to us about pensions and I was told it was not worth bothering because of my age as I would have to put away a large sum each month. I think I was probably about 40.

You tell another poster that if she is too ill to work she should claim disability benefit. Oh yes if only it were that easy. I couldn't work and was entitled to precisely nothing. Thankfully my DH worked.

Also disability benefits are hardly much money. The pension is a lot more

32 billion means we were deprived of 91,000 each, if each got the same amount.
That's scandalous.

yes of course young women will be working longer BUT they know that already don't they?

Does that make it all right, in your view? That they should not only compensate you for your perceived loss but that they should work longer than you, becaus they ‘know about it already’? Are you sure that this is an argument you want to start? See below.

I, and many other women, thought we would be retiring at 60. OK there was a change but it was only, I think, 3 years. The second change lots of us received no notice or very little notice. I know you want to deny the truth of that but it is true no matter how much it annoys you.

On the contrary. I haven’t denied anything, because facts are facts. The pension age equalisation was accelerated for a group of women born in 1953 and 1954. Those women would have to work for between another year and another two years before drawing their state pension, compared to the previous estimate. They were given between seven and eight years’ notice of this.

Seven to eight years is not ‘no notice or very little notice’. The information was out there, and the courts recognised this first time around. You might like to present it as ‘no notice’ if you found out about it late, because you think that you were too busy to read the news, or watch the news, or listen to the news, or contact the DWP to check your retirement age.

Incidentally, when I started work my state pension age was 60. It is now 67 and will probably rise again before I actually retire. I’m not sulking and demanding redress though; that’s just life. I’m certainly not expecting younger people to cough up extra tax to let me retire at 60, or 63, or 65. Why should they?

When I started work I never even thought about a private pension. No one I knew had one although, again, I am sure you will argue that point.

Happy to. Anybody who watched TV in the eighties and nineties, or read magazines, or newspapers, or looked at advertising billboards, would know that private pensions were a big deal. TV adverts for Scottish Widows, Standard Life etc etc etc. were everywhere. Anybody could have started one.

A financial adviser came to my place of work to talk to us about pensions and I was told it was not worth bothering because of my age as I would have to put away a large sum each month. I think I was probably about 40.

I think your memory might be cloudy. Yes, anybody starting a pension would have to put more away if they start at age 40, but to extrapolate that to ‘not worth bothering’ sounds like your interpretation, not something a financial adviser would have told you.

Young women today may not be working longer because they often start work later - uni, masters, etc
People started work at 16 when I was 16, a few went to uni.

I just wish people would stop getting into a major argument over something so simple.

I just wish I had been able to collect my pension at 60. That's all folks :)

So I didn't. Well bully for me eh?

You’re scraping the barrel now.

@Iamthewombat

You’re scraping the barrel now.

Why so bitter?

@Straven123

Men don't die younger - or not much younger now because they no longer smoke.

I didn't know this, assumed it was still the same.

MIL has been proper screwed around with the pension thing, just missed out on getting it. She now reckons that once it comes close to 'her time' again, she expects they will raise the age again.

The whole increase of retirement age is wrong - what should have happened is men’s retirement age should have been brought down, with the equal RA being 63.

Exactly. But honestly, this was never going to happen and I can't believe anyone thought that was how it would go tbh. Was always going to be 'men, stay the same, women, lose out'. The men gained nothing, at all. But it was clear that would be the result

Younger people are being denied the opportunity for work whilst older people are being forced to work longer. This is just wrong.

Also completely agree with this. Some people 60+ won't want to retire, and thats fine too. But while the jobs market is so crappy, it makes sense to me to pay any older person who wants to their pension, and let the younger take the job vacancies. Everyone wins there no? Unless am missing something, which is entirely possible.

Anybody who watched TV in the eighties and nineties, or read magazines, or newspapers, or looked at advertising billboards, would know that private pensions were a big deal. TV adverts for Scottish Widows, Standard Life etc etc etc. were everywhere. Anybody could have started one

Tbh I don’t watch TV with adverts even now. I definitely didn’t watch tv in the 80’s or 90’s. Certainly didn’t read newspapers or magazines or listened to the radio and billboards might have been at the roadside but when you are driving do you read and take in adverts at the side of the road or are your eyes where they are supposed to be, on the car/road in front and looking out for pedestrians/dogs/cats and young children that might just run out in the road.

Also the Scottish Widow, i was never too sure what she was meant to be advertising. I thought it was about life insurance,