'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.

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

This comes across quite..all lives matter/feminists should fought for everyone else instead of themselves arguments. Similar to whinging that a charity for helping cats doesn't help lizards.

On the contrary, I’d say that they understand very well how it works, can see quite clearly that what you are asking them to pay for is unfair, and think, with justification, that you are being unreasonable.

Clearly you dont understand how the system works. It isn't just young people who pay for current pensions it is everybody.

And this will go on happening and these same young people you seem to think you are speaking for will have a younger generation paying for their pensions.

Nobody's NI contributions have been put up solely to pay for one particular group.

I dont understand why this so aggravates you.

Most contributors are trying to talk about a fairer system. Or put alternatives in place eg Citizen Incomes.

You just seem to want to insult one group of women and not look at solutions.

@BatShite

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.

An unemployed single person under 25 would be entitled to £58.90/week, it's slightly higher for those over 25. The pension payment for a single person is currently £175.20/week

Hmm yeah you are right I suppose. Never thought of it like that. Still think it would be the fairest thing though (but given it will cost seemingly, no chance). Its not a subject I have looked into much tbh, only when trying to help MIL figure hers out.

Clearly you dont understand how the system works. It isn't just young people who pay for current pensions it is everybody.

Oh the irony. I understand it perfectly, thanks. Can you understand that people retiring now, or imminently, who want their pensions backdated, will not themselves be contributing to the cost of the change that they are campaigning for? Because they will be retired and hence not earning and paying NI?

Who will pay for it? Oh yes, people who are not retired. Younger people, in other words.

It’s really entertaining to see posters confronted with a logical evidence-based argument that they don’t like, resorting to “you don’t understand, you’ve missed the point, you’re smug, you’re behaving badly, you’re a man”.

@Iamthewombat

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.

As another poster said, a lot of youngsters don't start working when they leave school. They go to uni so maybe don't start until 21 or older. One of my nieces didn't start until she was 23. A friend's daughter didn't start until she was 25.

I started work at 17 and others started at 16 so they won't necessarily be working much longer if any longer will they? Add on the time they will probably have off when they have children and I doubt most of them will work as long as many women born around the same time as me did.

We were not given 7 to 8 years notice. The DWP admitted that many had NO notice and others had 18 months notice. Don't keep ignoring it because it doesn't fit with your story.

Also it was not a matter of having to work another year to two years. I had to wait another FOUR years to get my pension than someone who was born a year before me. Again, I keep saying that but, again, you just ignore it. There is no way on earth that can be regarded as fair.

Why the fuck would I contact the DWP to find out my retirement age? I was meant to be getting a pension at 63. Why would I think it would change AGAIN and so quickly?

Keep going on about people watching the news blah blah. You are so pathetic it is untrue.

Completely untrue that people in the 80's and 90's all knew about private pensions and had one. Just maybe some of us had a life and were not watching tv all the time. Certainly none of my friends or work colleagues had a private pension.

The financial advisor did say that so please do not call me a liar.

Maybe you lived (and still do) in a different world to me. My family and friends did not have private pensions and I don't think they even knew they existed until they much older. My parents only have the state pension. I think you said your mum had a private one so you would have known about them through her.

This comes across quite..all lives matter/feminists should fought for everyone else instead of themselves arguments. Similar to whinging that a charity for helping cats doesn't help lizards.

This made me laugh (in a genuine way, it’s funny).

The comment about WASPI women and the Back to 60 group only campaigning for their own interests, not those of older and younger women, was made in the context of claims that this campaign is a feminist issue that all women should be standing together to support. When the campaigners clearly don’t want compensation for the women older or younger than them, who have faced the same discrimination they are using as the cornerstone of their argument.

@Oliversmumsarmy don't you know you MUST watch tv especially the news and read papers avidly just in case there is news about pensions etc that may affect you?

I too don't watch tv with ads. If I want to watch something on a channel that has ads I record it and then fast forward through the ads.

I hardly watched tv when I was younger, too busy having a life and also working full time, commuting for over 3 hours a day, looking after a house and garden. Even with DH doing his share it still took time.

I certainly didn't read newspapers and still don't. The argument about billboards is pretty pathetic too. Like you I thought Scottish Widows was about life insurance

They will have to work for longer than the 1950s women

They won’t actually. 1950s women started work aged 16, unless they were in the 5% who are graduates. With 50% now going to university, they’ll be working fewer years.

16 - 67 = 51 years
21 - 68 = 47 years

We were not given 7 to 8 years notice.

Oh yes you were. The acceleration of the pensions equalisation was announced in 2011. If you were born in 1953, you’d have been 58. If your new retirement age was 66, that was eight years’ notice.

The DWP admitted that many had NO notice and others had 18 months notice. Don't keep ignoring it because it doesn't fit with your story.

Let’s see your source then. It’s quite hard to ignore maths: see the calculation above.

Also it was not a matter of having to work another year to two years. I had to wait another FOUR years to get my pension than someone who was born a year before me. Again, I keep saying that but, again, you just ignore it. There is no way on earth that can be regarded as fair.

No, you have misunderstood again. You had to wait an extra year to two years compared to your previous estimated retirement age after the 1995 changes, not compared to your hairdresser.

Why the fuck would I contact the DWP to find out my retirement age?

Because you’re a grown up who is supposed to take responsibility for yourself?

Completely untrue that people in the 80's and 90's all knew about private pensions and had one

Who said that? Not me. I said that they were widely advertised and sold and anyone could have started one.

I think you said your mum had a private one so you would have known about them through her.

Nope, didn’t say that either. I said that she had the sense to realise that paying the reduced married women’s stamp would get her a lower pension.

You are so pathetic it is untrue.

HAHAHAHA! It’s not me insulting strangers who can argue a case better and actually understand the facts of the argument. It must be very frustrating for you.

When the campaigners clearly don’t want compensation for the women older or younger than them, who have faced the same discrimination they are using as the cornerstone of their argument

Because this didn’t affect older or younger women. If affected a quite specific group of 350k women. There’s nothing to compensate any other age group for.

The acceleration of the pensions equalisation was announced in 2011. If you were born in 1953, you’d have been 58. If your new retirement age was 66, that was eight years’ notice

I was born in 1953. After the 1995 changes I was expecting to get my pension at 61. After 2011 it became 64. I had three years notice before the age at which I might have been planning to retire. Fortunately y occupational pensions kicked in at 60 so I wasn’t entirely screwed but women relying solely on the state pension certainly were.

What this shows is that women cannot trust the continuing existence of a state pension.

I implore you all to save into a pension if you can.

My state pension age is 68 plus some months/days. I have 25 more years to work and save for a pension.

I hope and dream to be able to pay off my mortgage and pay into my pension. Even still I'm expecting a very frugal retirement.

WASPI women were often prevented from paying into a private pension (some only open to men or FT employees) it's a scandal what happened.

Completely untrue that people in the 80's and 90's all knew about private pensions and had one

Who said that? Not me. I said that they were widely advertised and sold and anyone could have started one

Yes anyone could have started one if they knew they were a thing.

Were we meant to guess.

Where would we have even started.

Did it say on a bill board who we were meant to call.
Were we supposed to read it and make a note of it whilst driving past.

I think there is a lot of assumptions that advertising means apparently everyone should know.

Unless you write to individuals and make sure the letter tells them of why the new legislation affects them and what they should do/can do. Then relying on a bill board advert of a picture of a woman in a cape and expecting for people to know that means you can take out a private pension is stretching it

Of course it affects younger women - it affects me!!
I grew up thinking that the contract was that I would retire at 60. That's now 67.
Now yes, even when the second change came it's not that I have had time to prepare, but really to just resign myself to it. It is unfair that a generation of women before me retired at 55/60 depending on private pension provision. At 55 myself, if I thought I just had five years to go it would be bearable but I have twelve. And I've already made the contributions required for my SP (at the moment anyway, no doubt the rules will change again to exclude more people). I understand that very few people are net contributors but it feels galling that I will have made 50 years worth of contributions when others have made much less. But I guess that is the point of a society that works for all people.
I really don't want my post to sound all woe is me. I have a local government pension to fall back on, not gold plated like many ill-informed people believe, but it puts me in a much better position than most at retirement.
I do get the WASPI argument - I really do, I just don't get that I should have to pay for it when I'm also having to work many more years than I expected to and I'm not that much younger than you. And I don't see why my daughter should just, well just because.

@TheWordWomanIsTaken, I completely understand what you’re saying. It irks me no end that so many of us have made many more years contributions that we needed to. I made 43 years’ worth. And I was a higher rate tax payer for the last ten so that amounted to a fair amount.

contact the DWP to check your retirement age
That's so bloody funny.
Ok did you ever live through the 80s and 90s as a full adult?
I think you are putting today's values on yesteryears habits.
I'm pretty sure I still have somewhere the letter (snail mail not email) exchange I had with the social as it was then. Its 15 very determined letters from me, 16 replies from them. Each reply has at some point in it the words "we didnt receive that"
This despite me sending the same document over and over again in with the letters. You will say I forgot to include said document and I will say its possible once in the original letter. But no way did I forget it 15 times over.
And in this exchange is in fact a receipt for the document, included with one letter that says we did not receive.

Eventually I had no choice but to visit at great expense and major sorting of childcare, to take the damn document and get a written there and then receipt which took all bloody day, because one had to take a numbered ticket (remember that) and wait until your number was called.
If you wernt there at the crack of dawn to be the first 10 or so people inside you waited ages. In a stinky sticky vinyl floored room.
The whole thing took months because the social were never very quick about stuff.

And you think the waspis should have written and asked, waited a month for them to tell quite possibly lies? When as far as they knew they were retiring at the age of 63?
As for TV and papers, they cost money. Often people didnt have money for papers let alone TV. And of course few people sat indoors all day watching TV.
I just about remember my parents watching the news some nights. I know they only ever got the Sunday paper and it wasnt every Sunday. And we were pretty well off compared to most families around us.
And as it happens I hate the TV. We have one but I rarely bother with it. And I cant stand the radio, the noise irritates me, so its probably a good thing I live in a computer age and can fairly easily request such info as when I might get SP. Lucky me, what a time to be alive.

Of course maybe all these women should just identify as being older than their assigned date of birth and have their birth certificate updated with the age of birth they identify as? This could help.

A transgender woman won the right to her pension at 60 rather than at 65....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44612117

@Iamthewombat I am not sure why I bother as talking to you is a bit like talking to a brick wall.

The papers (you know that you read so avidly every day) all mentioned quite a few times that a lot of women had 18 months notice of the second change. I can't be bothered to look it up and, even if I did, I doubt you would believe it.

No I did not have to wait an extra 2 years. My age in the first change was 63. My age in the second change was 2 months short of 66. So almost 3 years.

I do take responsibility for myself but still do not see why the hell I would decide to phone DWP. Should I have said to them "has our shitty government decided to change the pension age of women yet again"? Why on earth would any woman think it would be changed a second time and we would not receive any notice? People don't usually just decide to phone the DWP.

Anyway would they actually have given reliable and accurate information. As another poster said their website was wrongly showing the age for women to get a pension long after the age had changed.

You don't understand the facts of the argument better. You are totally wrong about every women getting notice. You are also totally wrong about how much notice some women that did actually get a letter had.

I am not bothering with you any more. You carry on with your sad little smug life watching the tv every day, dutifully reading your paper and listening to the news. Oh and of course phoning the DWP just in case another change has been made to pensions.

From what you said about your mother not having sympathy for WASPI women (no of course she doesn't because in her 80's it doesn't affect her at all) you get your nastiness and smugness from her. She must be so proud

@Oliversmumsarmy ffs - if you don’t watch any tv, read any newspapers or pay any attention to what goes on in the world, you might not know what your entitlement to state benefits is. That’s no ones fault but your own though. You can expect the taxpayer to pay out billions because you don’t want to find out when you are entitled to be paid your state pension. Look it up! Also one of the two protagonists in the waspi women case was written to personally twice and told what her retirement age was - it could hardly have been a surprise.

I don’t think this is a feminist issue at all. Quite the opposite- pp seem to be keen to infantilise waspi women as some kind of idiots who are incapable of reading a newspaper or saving for their own pensions because they just left it all to men. There’s all kind of posts about how these women couldn’t work or weren’t allowed to pay into pensions- what rubbish! These are women who were born in the 50s and are retiring now. We are all going to have to work longer before retirement- no reason waspi women should be an exception.

@lynsey91 - sorry but you should have checked what age you were getting your state pension at. It’s noones fault if you didn’t but your own. The movement of the state pension age was well publicized decades ago. If you were planning to retire, why would you not check if you were going to be paid a state pension? I know when I’m going to get mine and I’m more than 20 years from retirement. I will continue to check rather than just assume everything will stay the same always!

@Gurufloof - we’ve had the Internet for about 25 years at least now. The state pension age should not be a surprise to anyone.

Wombat
Because they will be retired and hence not earning and paying NI?
Who will pay for it? Oh yes, people who are not retired. Younger people, in other words*
Most pensioners I know pay tax. I will pay a good bit more now I get a pension. Many have a second pension thanks to years of work.

don’t think this is a feminist issue at all. Quite the opposite- pp seem to be keen to infantilise waspi women as some kind of idiots who are incapable of reading a newspaper or saving for their own pensions because they just left it all to men. There’s all kind of posts about how these women couldn’t work or weren’t allowed to pay into pensions- what rubbish! These are women who were born in the 50s and are retiring now. We are all going to have to work longer before retirement- no reason waspi women should be an exception

If that’s what you’ve taken from this thread you haven’t read it properly. If you had a child in the 70s there was a good chance you couldn’t work. There was little or no childcare so you took time out until they started school - or at least everyone I know did. And it was a very rare pension scheme that admitted women.

Waspi women know we all have to work longer. Most of us sucked up the 1995 change, shrugged our shoulders and got on with it - after all we were only in our early 40s and we’d been given plenty of notice. What really outraged us was the 2011 change just as we were preparing to retire.

If this had happened to men there’s no way there wouldn’t have been complete outrage. No government would have dared do it.

The ignorance on this thread is astounding, quite depressing really.

@Straven123 - pensioners don’t pay NI. It’s the younger generation who are paying for their pensions plus increased cost of healthcare etc. some pensioners pay income tax, yes, but pensioners as a whole cost society and the state pension is enormously expensive.