MSE News: Women's state pension petition gathers over 50,000 signatures

greenglide

Depends on your definition of stealth I suppose

How about :-

1. The act of moving, proceeding, or acting in a covert way.
2. The quality or characteristic of being furtive or covert.
3. Obsolete The act of stealing.

It wasnt done in secret and it wasnt hidden away. It was part of a whole raft of legislation but that is quite normal. What was different was that the press, who usually jump on these things, seem to have ignored almost all of the changes in the legislation around the new State Pension and the "tweaks" to equalisation.

monkeyspanner

OldBeanz wrote: »

Glad to see the end of the debate which bleats about some poor women while ignoring they are still getting a better deal than men.

Godwin's Law

There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.

Oh dear lets use a derogatory term like bleat to put the little women in their place or are you like Cameron "Calm down dear"
I what way are women still getting a better deal?
Incidentally I am a man.

Although I agree with your previous post that the pension age should have been equalised following the equal pay legislation there is still a gender pay gap some 45 years later.

OldBeanz

My username has nothing to do with the debate. I used the term bleat because it reflects the weak and wavering arguments put forward when there is still inequality for men. Comparison with Hitler just took the discussion to a different level and shows it is totally fallacious. The gender pay gap is a different debate.

monkeyspanner

OldBeanz wrote: »

My username has nothing to do with the debate. I used the term bleat because it reflects the weak and wavering arguments put forward when there is still inequality for men. Comparison with Hitler just took the discussion to a different level and shows it is totally fallacious. The gender pay gap is a different debate.

I don't recall mentioning your username. Neither did I mention Hitler. I used a quote because it demonstrates the affect of not challenging injustice.
Please address the question rather than restating your assertion regarding your opinion there is inequality for men.

zagfles

monkeyspanner wrote: »

Oh dear lets use a derogatory term like bleat to put the little women in their place or are you like Cameron "Calm down dear"
I what way are women still getting a better deal?
Incidentally I am a man.

Well stop being so patronising then. Or don't you think women can speak for themselves?

Although I agree with your previous post that the pension age should have been equalised following the equal pay legislation there is still a gender pay gap some 45 years later.

Well maybe that's because some employers weren't personally informed by letter about the sex discrimination act That would be just as pathetic an excuse.

Or maybe it's mainly down to the choices people make about jobs and other stuff. You know, like the gender gap in the prison population, or in custody cases, or life expectancy etc etc.

Equality in the eyes of the law doesn't mean the same number of men and women will get sent to prison any more than it means the same number will get high paid jobs. There still is a difference in the choices men and women make and that's reflected in a difference in outcomes, whether that be pay, prison, life expectancy or the custody of the kids after a divorce.

But equality of opportunity should mean the basic framework is the same for men and women, eg equal pension ages.

BucksLady

I'm in my early thirties, but nevertheless feel tremendous empathy for those affected by the changes. I think it is simplistic to assume that 'all' women were aware of the changes or that 'all' women should have made adequate arrangements to account for them. This is not the case.
The majority of people who post on this forum are fortunate in being able to 'understand' what is happening; fortunate in being able to prepare for the changes. Not everyone is in this situation.

''A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it's lowest ones'' - Nelson Mandela

Malthusian

greenglide wrote:

What was different was that the press, who usually jump on these things, seem to have ignored almost all of the changes in the legislation around the new State Pension and the "tweaks" to equalisation.

I'm sure if you search the archives you'll find they did cover it, on page 65 of the Saturday paper. In general, they don't think readers are interested in stories about changes to State Pension ages that will affect them more than 10 years later. They like stories about increases / cuts in pension benefits that affect older readers *now* but don't bother with stories about the distant future. And most of them don't understand the rules anyway.

You can't expect that the newspapers will trumpet the changes to state pension ages on the front pages anymore than you can expect the government to personally write you a letter.

BucksLady wrote:

''A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it's lowest ones'' - Nelson Mandela

A nice soundbite but an irrelevant one. The women in question are not "the lowest", they are in a more privileged position than half the population and a great many younger women.

saver861

missbiggles1 wrote: »

But, to use monkeyspanner's link,

"A DWP survey of 2004 showed that only 41% of women realised there was pension age equalisation by 2020. But also only around 85% of women knew that the retirement age was at that time 60. ."

So whose fault is it that 15% of the female population didn't know what the "normal" female retirement age was and had been for half a century?

You can lead a horse to water and all that......

Well lets see now.

If 85% of the women said they were aware of the equalisation by 2020 then I would have said the government succeeded in getting the message out. However, as it says only 41% were aware, I would deduce from that the government did not get the message across sufficiently.

15% were not aware of the normal retirement age. That is considerably different from the 59% unaware of the 1995 changes.

I have no clue how the information was disseminated in 1995. However, at that time, very few households had a personal computer. The internet, as we know it, was in its very early stages of infancy. There was no forums etc. etc.

If we consider some practical assertions:
- women were less likely to be working, or less likely to be working full time. The workplace is often a source of information.
- women were more likely to be at home rather than down in the local etc. Again, a source of information
- some women were more likely to be living in difficult home situations etc etc.

Some of these factors may contribute to the 15% or 59%.

Raising the pension age from 60 to 65 was not exactly good news. Governments have a knack of looking for 'good ways to sneak out bad news'.

saver861

BucksLady wrote: »

I'm in my early thirties, but nevertheless feel tremendous empathy for those affected by the changes. I think it is simplistic to assume that 'all' women were aware of the changes or that 'all' women should have made adequate arrangements to account for them. This is not the case.
The majority of people who post on this forum are fortunate in being able to 'understand' what is happening; fortunate in being able to prepare for the changes. Not everyone is in this situation.

Unfortunately many people forget when they did not know something. When they then become aware of something they then assume everyone else will also become aware of this information.

I'm on these forums as it is a source of interest, moneysaving etc. My wife has no interest in such matters whatsoever. There is a danger then, that these forums provide the 'little bit of knowledge' which then can be insidious to some.

I fully agree with the equalisation of the state pension ages. Times have changed and women have now got 'nearly' the same advantages as men. That has been far from the case - more so, the more you go back historically.

What does surprise me is how women are not prepared to support their fellow women in such matters. Women don't need men to put them down - lots of women do a pretty good job of putting their peers down without any need for male intervention!!!

Goldiegirl

saver861 wrote: »

I have no clue how the information was disseminated in 1995. However, at that time, very few households had a personal computer. The internet, as we know it, was in its very early stages of infancy. There was no forums etc. etc.

If we consider some practical assertions:
- women were less likely to be working, or less likely to be working full time. The workplace is often a source of information.
- women were more likely to be at home rather than down in the local etc. Again, a source of information
- some women were more likely to be living in difficult home situations etc etc.

I do remember as far back as 1995. The information was on the TV news and in the papers. There was also a lot of articles about it in the financial pages of the Sunday supplements.


Most of the women I knew at that time were working, and the majority of them were working full time. There was no information about the changes in our workplace - considering it was a bank, one may have thought that they'd be on top of financial matters like this, and how it affected their employees. So if a bank didn't do it, I'd be surprised if other employers, not in the financial world, would have made a point of informing their employees


The information could be obtained by even the most stay at home woman - you didn't need to leave the house to obtain it.