Waspi women should be compensated for state pension age change failures

[IwantToRetire]

I heard a discussion about this on the BBC which was more detailed than this article, and implied that the problem wasn't so much how it was announced in the 1990s, but the later changes during the time Coalition was in power.

But suspect whoever is in Government there will be a delay in any payout.

https://www.professionalpensions.com/news/4188325/waspi-women-compensated-pension-age-change-failures

Somebody did try to suggest it wasn't fair on younger people to expect them to foot the bill (as if it hasn't always been the current tax payers who foot the bill at the time).

Which would be the same as saying the local government's who have gone bankrupt once it was shown they had discriminated against women employees and owed them money, shouldn't have to do it.

So not only are women too often cheated at the time, but are later told they shouldn't expect compensation because not fair on current tax payers.

(For some reason cant access the WASPI web site, but suspect it might just be overloaded. But when back on line may be worth checking their take on the situation. http://www.waspi.co.uk )

Hard to have the 6 o’clock news on if you don’t own a tv. You don’t own a radio and you don’t buy newspapers

Might glance at the newspapers occasionally when I am getting petrol but if I only get petrol once per week then I only will see that days news (Most of the time I get petrol at 2am and there are no newspapers around at that time

Also don’t have family and work alone and don’t really have friends

You have to get your mind round the fact that not everyone lives their life exactly like you

Yeah, not sure I'm buying this 'my life is set up to avoid any contact with the outside world whatsoever' as a pretext for ignorance. You might have organisd your life so as to actively avoid any input from society but I'll bet your set-up isn't usual among Waspi women; who seem perfectly capable of mobilising the media and the internet they claim not to use when it came to keeping them informed.

Hard to have the 6 o’clock news on if you don’t own a tv. You don’t own a radio and you don’t buy newspapers

Also don’t have family and work alone and don’t really have friends

When did you get an internet connection, then, and when and how did you find out about the pension age changes?

But there was a second change later on. I'm classic WASPI, lost 6 years of my pension as a result of two different changes. I knew about the first change, just as you did - but not the second which IIRC took away another 3 years.

And some women have said that they checked the relevant website & it still said women retired at 60, after the changes had come in.

I've explained elsewhere that because women like me were subject to TWO changes to their pension age, once the first (1995) change was made it's quite easy to mistake later references to women's pension age changes as referring to the change you already know about, or to a different cohort of women. Why would anyone assume there were two changes, when the first one was explained as necessary to equalise the pension ages of the sexes, as required by the EU, & we were told it was all fair because it was being gradually introduced?

When the pension age for women had been 60 for as long as we could remember, & it had already been raised by the governement & sold to us as part of a done & dusted deal, why on earth would anyone suspect that it would be changed again? Why would anyone check (how often? every week?) what their pension age is? Do you check yours regularly, to make sure nothing's changed?

I don't expect to ever get any money back. We can all see successive governments kicking compensation claims into the long grass & waiting for claimants to die off. I don't expect this to be any different.

Btw @user1477391263 & some PPs, there's no point talking about what you think would've happened & what imaginary people definitely would've said. And insulting people is not in the spirit of MN. The paucity of knowledge or compassion amongst those attacking recently-retired women is unfathomable to me. Over the years I've read some heartrending stories from them & about them. How have you missed those? They've been readily available.

But non Waspis have been subject to more than 2 changes as well and really don't get it.
When I left school retirement age for women was still 60. Went to 65 then 66 and again 67 and now talk of it going up to 68.
I can imagine before I finish it will probably be 70.
And there's nothing we can do about it but keep buggering on and hope somebody will want to employ us nearing that age. I mentioned it to my boss the other day and she looked quite horrified at me still turning up age 69!

Let’s just take away disability benefits next then, eh, and what about unemployment benefits. Let’s send them all to the wall. Those people don’t matter either do they?

Anyone else as depressed as I am to see women scrapping with each other on this of all boards?

Yes -people being deliberately obtuse - ‘ no, we are not saying retirement age should have stayed at 60’ -everyone’s convinced they’ve got it so hard -no way will they agree to anyone being compensated.
As if women have always been treated and paid the same as men so obviously they don’t deserve compensation.

I was one of the 50s women affected and I’m about to get my pension at 66. I was lucky enough to have been able to stop wirk at 65 by taking a work pension of about benefit level, which with top ups from savings has just about kept me going for this last year. Whilst I do believe that the pension changes could have been better communicated I don’t believe that we should be compensated. By continuing to work past 60 I have been able to earn a lot more than the pension I ‘lost’. I really do agree that it is much harder for those who will have to work to 67, 68 or longer before they get their state pensions.

Not wingeing, but I would say though that things used to be very different in terms of pension arrangements. For example, I worked part time hours teaching adults in the 1990s and as a part-timer I wasn’t permitted to join the Teacher’s Pension Scheme until 1994 when they changed the rules to allow part-time staff to contribute. Hard to believe, but it was the case as far as I remember.

Re my post above, I just checked the legislation and see that the Teachers Pension Agency made full access to part timers on 1st May 1995.

In the 1990s, very very few people were TV-free AND radio-free AND never bought or glanced at a newspaper AND never had a conversation with similar aged friends in which the subject of “the age I’m thinking of retiring at” never ever came up.

It was the 90s, not the bloody Bronze Age.

There is no rule that women have to agree with each other at all times. In fact, that’s quite a sexist idea.

Oh dear - never been called sexist before - slaps wrist 😞

No one suggested that women have to agree with one another “at all times”.
That’s a wilful and mischievous misinterpretation of what was said.

Well, OK, but who made the PP the judge of when it's OK for women to disagree with each other and when it isn't OK? What are the criteria here?

If you read a few threads you'll see that there are often quite robust disagreements between women about all sorts of things.

That's not 'scrapping', it's lots of women with opinions voicing them.

Do you think we should all meekly agree with each other? If so, which opinion do you think we should all be agreeing with?

You are on the feminist board. It’s to be hoped you would at least have a passing interest in feminism, which would allow you to consider the context of the challenges faced by women in the earlier generation who were not able to join their pension schemes as they were part time, were held back in their careers and were campaigning to get the right to equal pay that women today expect (but still rarely get).

Instead, posters who know very little about the context think they know better than the ombudsman which has spent five years investigating and coming to its conclusions. I’d be embarrassed to post my opinion without educating myself first.

I still don’t watch tv or listen to the radio or buy newspapers. I also don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes or eat meat or have ever taken any sort of illicit drug

just because most people do certain things doesn’t mean every one does them.

There is and always has been more interesting things to do than watching TV or listening to the radio etc

Dh did get a tv at some point and it drives me up the wall with the constant irritating noise being there when I come into the house.
I end up going out just to get away from the noise