good waspi news

Thank you both.

Why didn't we wait for the ombudsman's report before going to court?

Ah, that was a different campaign group, spabbygirl - BackTo60, who want the pension age change to be reversed (that’s never going to happen, imo). My WASPI complaint had just nicely got to the Ombudsman stage when they went to court, and all our cases were frozen for over two years.

Maggiemaybe

I’ve been a member of WASPI since day one, paid my dues, written all my letters to the DWP and the Ombudsman, met my MP to discuss the issue, gone down to London for three demos and shaken my fist at the Houses of Parliament (very cathartic!). I resent the charges from earlier in the thread that women like me are entitled and greedy and just out for what we can get. I’m not going to discuss my personal circumstances or apologise for not being somebody else’s idea of poor just because a random GNer thinks I should put up and shut up if I’m not. But believe me I’ve met women on those demos who are in desperate straits, some of whom have had to sell their homes, are working three cleaning jobs while in constant pain, have been patronised and bullied on a daily basis because they can’t find one of the employers out there just dying to employ a 65 year old with poor health, and others who have life-limiting illnesses (terminal cancer, Alzheimers) that mean they will not live to see/enjoy any compensation we may or may not get. WASPI members are campaigning with and for all women in this position and if we don’t, who will?

The Ombudsman’s ruling, based on a sample of just six of the WASPI letters claiming maladministration from the thousands that WASPI members sent, is good news. But the Government can choose to take no notice, and goodness knows how long it will take to decide how much compensation is paid, even if they do agree to any. I’m not banking on anything yet, and think it will be a small amount at best, but it’s a big step forward. Fingers crossed.

As for the auto-credits issue, some of the men who’ve benefitted from it will certainly have been low paid and unemployed and seeking work. and yes, women in that position and claiming benefits would have theirs paid too.

But many other men will have simply taken early retirement because they wanted to, for whatever reason. They’ve had their NI payments paid for them for the non-working years, while women of the same age who’ve done the same thing have had to pay for theirs. How can this be okay?

Excellent post Maggiemaybe - well said on behalf of all those women affected

Well said, Maggiemaybe.

Why didn't we wait for the ombudsman's report before going to court? I don't really grasp the meaning. I'm really cross about it. George Osbourne just decided to change our pension age & entitlement with no consultation or consideration which is disgusting but typical of this govt who have no care for the ordinary folk but are happy to write huge cheques for big businesses in which many of them have shares

I’ve been a member of WASPI since day one, paid my dues, written all my letters to the DWP and the Ombudsman, met my MP to discuss the issue, gone down to London for three demos and shaken my fist at the Houses of Parliament (very cathartic!). I resent the charges from earlier in the thread that women like me are entitled and greedy and just out for what we can get. I’m not going to discuss my personal circumstances or apologise for not being somebody else’s idea of poor just because a random GNer thinks I should put up and shut up if I’m not. But believe me I’ve met women on those demos who are in desperate straits, some of whom have had to sell their homes, are working three cleaning jobs while in constant pain, have been patronised and bullied on a daily basis because they can’t find one of the employers out there just dying to employ a 65 year old with poor health, and others who have life-limiting illnesses (terminal cancer, Alzheimers) that mean they will not live to see/enjoy any compensation we may or may not get. WASPI members are campaigning with and for all women in this position and if we don’t, who will?

The Ombudsman’s ruling, based on a sample of just six of the WASPI letters claiming maladministration from the thousands that WASPI members sent, is good news. But the Government can choose to take no notice, and goodness knows how long it will take to decide how much compensation is paid, even if they do agree to any. I’m not banking on anything yet, and think it will be a small amount at best, but it’s a big step forward. Fingers crossed.

As for the auto-credits issue, some of the men who’ve benefitted from it will certainly have been low paid and unemployed and seeking work. and yes, women in that position and claiming benefits would have theirs paid too.

But many other men will have simply taken early retirement because they wanted to, for whatever reason. They’ve had their NI payments paid for them for the non-working years, while women of the same age who’ve done the same thing have had to pay for theirs. How can this be okay?

When I was 59 I thought I could retire at 60, I really cant remember being told that I couldnt retire until I was 66. I remember looking it up and was surprised I had another 6 years to go. I truly wasnt informed personily. I was born in 1955. I retired last Jan couldnt wait after working since I was 14. 1/2.
I cannot in all honesty think they would back pay all us women the pension money we missed out on. I doubt very much we would have got compensation even without the pendemic. Imnot expecting anything but I do admire WASPI they remind me of the Sufferage.

I haven’t lived on a very low income, no - and I didn’t say or imply that I had - I said that I was very far from starving and had a decent standard of living.

But as I keep saying, I don’t understand what that has to do with the argument. There are many posters on here who seem to be a lot better off than I am, and I don’t begrudge them the pensions they have earned - why would I?

That was, in fact my point. I will not fall into the trap of assuming that anyone wanting more than a basic standard of living is greedy or entitled, particularly when they have paid into the system that promised them a pension. That would result in a race to the bottom, and I would much rather see things move the other way.

And I disagree that your idea of a decent standard of living is low. I've noticed from your previous posts that you really don't have experience of living on a very low income. Like so many posters on GN, I don't know whether you are really aware how poor people have to be to claim any kind of benefit.

I'm not contributing any more to this thread.

Incidentally, I realise that men have traditionally earned more than women, but I don't think the state pension is the way to right those wrongs.

I'm afraid I have never read anywhere that the state pension was ever intended to be more than a way of providing for a very basic lifestyle and if women ever thought it would, they really should have done some research.

Sorry Doodledog but I think you're wrong on this. The men who got their NICs paid were unemployed or on a very low income. If you had ever been in that situation, you would have had yours paid too.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think people have got the dates wrong on this. The government website states that the latest birth date for receiving autocredits is 5 October 1953. They were awarded for years in which men reached the same state pension age as women.

www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/national-insurance-manual/nim41245

What the autocredits did was to equalise the situation for men and women. Otherwise, men would have had to pay NICs for longer than women. The system stopped when the sPA became the same for men and women. It only applied to men who were unemployed or whose income was less than the full entitlement for JSA/UC, which was somewhere in the region of £71pw. Women were already in receipt of their pensions, so were receiving more than men.

No, you didn't if you signed on as unemployed. Did you try it? The difference would have been that you would have had to look for work, in which case you could have complained that it was unfair.

No, I don't register as unemployed, as I wasn't. I was retired, and doing spasmodic consultancy, which I still do. The NI I pay from that costs more per month than voluntary contributions for a quarter, but doesn't cover a full year (I only do it for four months of the year), so I also have to pay six full year's contributions that the men got paid for them if I want to get a full state pension, and that will be after 50 years of working when I eventually get it.

There are times when I feel like a mug. Women who didn't work while their children were at school got contributions paid, men who retired at 60 got contributions paid (I have no issue whatsoever with the unemployed or ill getting them), but women who worked throughout and paid tax, childcare and other associated work costs out of what was left end up with shortfalls, and are told that if we aren't on the breadline we are being unreasonable to complain.

A relative of mine is 55. She left work when she married, and got her NI paid when her children were younger - for decades as they are spaced out. Her husband's accountant advised him to keep up her NI at the voluntary rate when the state stopped paying, so she will get a full pension without contributing at all.

People on this thread who have worked and paid in all along are finding (or have found) that they will have shortfalls. A lot of this was apparently done in the name of equality for men, but they have (a) statistically earned more than women for centuries, and (b) were not only more likely to be offered occupational pensions but had their state ones topped up 'to save paperwork'.

None of this is fair at any level, and the implication that women who feel let down are greedy, or want what is theirs at the expense of the poor, or should have to pass some sort of 'neediness' test, or whatever other nonsense is thrown at is is insulting.

It may be that some of the WASPI women (and I stress that I do not identify as such, although I am of the 50s-born age group) may be comfortably off. So what? And anyway, who is to define what that means for others? If you were expecting a pension of £Xk but found yourself £8k short because of the year you were born, don't you have a right to feel annoyed, even if the X represents a figure beyond the dreams of others? The £8k could make the difference between having the retirement you planned for and not, and that is the injustice.

I am far from starving, and have a decent standard of living, but my idea of what is financially 'comfortable' is probably lower than a lot of people on GN, if their posts are to anything to go by. Does that mean that I have a right to suggest that they shouldn't get to keep what is theirs? I don't think so.

Despite how it may appear on here, I am not eaten up by this, incidentally . It's just when I see some of the patronising posts on threads about pensions that I see red.

(PS - only the first paragraph of this post is addressed directly to you, growstuff!)

Maggiemaybe

All the information’s in the link I provided, growstuff. And it says quite categorically that the men did not have to sign on. They got the NI credits automatically whether looking for work, not looking for work or working in low paid or part-time jobs. They got them up until and including the tax year 2017/8, and as I’ve already said, this applied to all men born up to October 1954.

Yes, my mistake. But they were still unemployed or on a low income. I couldn't have afforded not to work. They would have been 63 and a half by the end of the 2017/18 tax year.

In the tax years from my 60th birthday to the end of the 2017/18 tax year, I paid about £470 in NICs. The alternative would have been not to work and register as unemployed, but I couldn't have lived on UC - presumably these men could.

From the article I linked to:

The woman who raised this with the DWP is one of a number who has not got enough national insurance contributions to get a full pension. She falls short by three years and will have to pay them £3000 to make up the years to get another £400 a year.

A man – one of the 4.65 million who was covered by auto credits- would have to pay nothing. That is hardly fair. And he could take a low paid job and still not pay NI contributions as they would be covered by the state.

More seriously it does knock a hole in the DWP case that the raising of the pension age was an equality measure to create a level playing field with men.

It is hardly a level playing field if men on this huge scale are getting their national insurance contributions for free. What started as a measure for 90,000 ended up helping 4.6 million. No wonder the DWP were not happy to have to disclose this.

My answer to your last but one post.

Yes. And so was I. I’ve had to buy in two NI years I would have had credited had I been a man.

I was born after October 1954.

So these men were 64 when the scheme ended? Is that right?

All the information’s in the link I provided, growstuff. And it says quite categorically that the men did not have to sign on. They got the NI credits automatically whether looking for work, not looking for work or working in low paid or part-time jobs. They got them up until and including the tax year 2017/8, and as I’ve already said, this applied to all men born up to October 1954.

No, you didn't if you signed on as unemployed. Did you try it? The difference would have been that you would have had to look for work, in which case you could have complained that it was unfair.

When did 60 year old men stop being eligible for the scheme?

growstuff

I agree that I was wrong about the obligation to sign on. I guess it saved everybody a lot of time and effort on a pointless exercise.

Yes, but effectively it meant that men were able to get their NI contributions paid for the five years before getting their pensions, which women like me (and you, I think?) have had to fund ourselves.

growstuff

Of course the women didn't get them. Women over 60 were already retired.

Not in 2018 when the scheme ended, they weren’t. This was available to men born up to and including October 1954. Women born in October 1954 have a state pension age of 66.

I agree that I was wrong about the obligation to sign on. I guess it saved everybody a lot of time and effort on a pointless exercise.

Of course the women didn't get them. Women over 60 were already retired.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/davidhencke.com/2020/05/22/exclusive-the-4-6-million-men-who-retired-at-60-to-get-a-pension-top-up-paid-by-the-taxpayer/amp/

It was a men only subsidy, they didn’t have to sign on, and women did not get them.

So to sum up, if I’d had a penis I wouldn’t have had to pay to buy in the two tax years 2016/7 and 2017/8 to enhance my pension, I’d have had them credited. Fabulous.