Sign the Petition for Womens state pension age going up unfair

saver861

BobQ wrote: »

What matters is that they defined the policy after they made the decision so it was not the policy when the decision was made.

Yes - but that will be the question to answered. The difficulty they have is justifying that is reasonable.

BobQ wrote: »

I think it is difficult to justify an action as being discriminatory when it is rectifying something that is discriminatory.

Rectifying the spa to be equal is the correct thing to do. No debate about that.

However, the unfairness or potential discrimination of the 2011 changes is not even about men v women. Its about some women having less notice than other women and longer extension to their spa than other women.

BobQ wrote: »

I can agree with what you say above. But you do not prevent discrimination by maintaining a system that is already discriminatory.

Agreed. However, neither do you prevent discrimination by introducing more of it!

saver861

RickyB2000 wrote: »

Ultimately I am trying to understand the rationale behind the 10 year recommendation, and whether it makes sense.

I think most would agree 10 years is a reasonable amount of time to make up any shortfall. Say you have a mortgage and intended to have it paid off in 10 years and interest rates changed such that it would now be 12 years. If you still wanted to pay off the mortgage in 10 years you make the extra payments to do so and budget accordingly. Clearly, if you only had 6 years notice but still wanted to have it paid off, you would need to make significantly higher additional payments to achieve the same goal.

RickyB2000 wrote: »

So we are surely left with those who would be impoverished by the change and that the state would not want to turn out onto the streets.

As mentioned before, if any government is not accountable then that's exactly what they might do!

RickyB2000 wrote: »

Incidentally I fully agree that the 10 year point should be challenged and discussed.

Yes I do understand where you are coming from and understand your thinking.

BobQ

saver861 wrote: »

Originally Posted by BobQ View Post

So we are surely left with those who would be impoverished by the change and that the state would not want to turn out onto the streets.

To be clear your statement at 0945 attributing this statement to me is incorrect. I think you are referring to RickyB2000 in post 141.

Easily done:)

BobQ

RickyB2000 wrote: »

Ultimately I am trying to understand the rationale behind the 10 year recommendation, and whether it makes sense. This is ultimiltey driven by who loses out and how by not having 10 years notice. If we believe life expectancy has gone up, then in theory no one loses out financially (the years you lose up front are paid for by the added years at the end). So we are surely left with those who would be impoverished by the change and that the state would not want to turn out onto the streets. Then it is back to what they would be doing in the 10 years notice to prevent this. If I was cynical I could say that the 10 years recommendation is simply to push the problem into someone else's parliament .

Incidentally I fully agree that the 10 year point should be challenged and discussed.

I think the 10 year figure is arbitrary but it does seem a reasonable period to choose. It would have been better if the 2011 decision was given more thought and announced at an earlier date.

saver861

BobQ wrote: »

To be clear your statement at 0945 attributing this statement to me is incorrect. I think you are referring to RickyB2000 in post 141.

Easily done:)

lol ... duly corrected ... apologies for that. I never noticed and I'm not even sure how I managed to do that but obviously my cutting and pasting techniques have fallen short ....

Btw, I think you meant the 10:00pm post as the 09:45pm post was/is correct?

Al.

Frances Coppola blogged on this (on Dec 29th) thoughtfully and concisely. I agree with her points. In respect of redress, there will be some who have a genuine case for assistance. But a unilateral rewinding of the clock is unfair and not, as has been suggested, 'fair'.

http://www.coppolacomment.com/2015/12/here-i-stand-i-can-do-no-other.html

atush

BobQ wrote: »

I think the 10 year figure is arbitrary but it does seem a reasonable period to choose. It would have been better if the 2011 decision was given more thought and announced at an earlier date.

And when a petition only about the 2011 changes is made, I would sign it.

Most of us here have always supported the view the changes were too short.

However, it does appear not enough people are saving for their retirement. At all. Even those who save a pot to retire early and burn it before a DB pension pays out, if a change of a year-18 months impacts them that badly, they didnt save enough- ie no contigency.

And does anyone know how far into t he pipeline it is that the proposal of extending Nics to pensioners if still working?

Al.

saver861 wrote: »

There is no privileged position. People who pay their NIC's are entitled to pension - that is not a privilege, its a basic right as the policy stands.

The changes to state pension ages are necessary - there is no debate about that. Where those changes have not been smoothed out fairly, then that suggests a problem, i.e. 2011 changes.

We elect a government to make decisions like these and when we refer to 'fair', we must consider fair too, for Millennials and Generation X. The State Pension is going to be paid for, not by previous NIC (which also fund other increases in healthcare as well, don't forget etc) but by tax payers of tomorrow. To acquiesce to the WASPI demands would be to consign future tax payers to an inconceivably large and unanticipated amount of extra debt.

NIC is paid for more than just the provision of a state pension. On a technical point, the basic state pension is not (and never has been) a 'right'. If the average worker pays, say, £2000 per annum over 40 years, that makes a NI 'pot' of c.£80,000. The state pension, as it stood, at sixty requires a notional pot of closer to £300,000. You can argue the toss about cross subsidy from those who die prematurely, but the amount required is still far in excess of what we contribute in NIC.

The changes were first publically promulgated and commented on in April 1995 (not 2011), by Frank Field MP amongst others - that year's budget rubber merely stamped them, and we, as citizens, have a duty too, to remain informed. It stretches plausibility to suggest that many/most of these complainants (especially the affluent and/or professional classes) had no idea over the course of the subsequent 15/20 years simply because DWP didn't write to them. WASPI is seeking compensation, that's the wrong word (imho) because it's not a lost legal entitlement.

What we should do is address obtaining fair transitional support for those plausibly and most worse affected and I welcome the debate on January 7th to resolve that.

Pollycat

LHW99 wrote: »

This idea does worry me somewhat (and I am impacted by both sets of pension changes). Any benefits, be it pensions, JSA or whatever are in the end paid by all taxpayers (through NI and other taxes).

And?
I paid NI contributions for 33 years.
I paid tax for the 33 years that I worked and have continued to pay tax on my occupational pension for the 12 years that I have been retired.
Don't try to tell me receiving the state pension is a privilege in my case!

LHW99 wrote: »

The country, ie taxpayers, have to be able to afford it, and therefore once anyone is receiving an income from the state equivalent to the minimum (living?) wage it seems to me that any extra above that is a priviledge rather than a right.

Perhaps an old fashioned view but there.

What you are suggesting here makes an absolute nonsense of encouraging people to plan for their retirement!
My OH & I saved and invested.
We lived a good life, yes, but we did not live the high life.
We drove ordinary cars, we could have driven Mercs, BMWs, Porsches - like some of our contemporaries.
We could have holidayed in 5* hotels, travelling first class - like some of our contemporaries.
But we didn't.
WE saved and invested for our retirement.
And you think that because we did that, I shouldn't be entitled to a state pension because I have a certain level of income from those investments I made?
Really?

RickyB2000 wrote: »

To be clear, I would say the same thing. However, do you really have the right? Only in so much as current government says you have the right. As we see, that can be changed at any time, with seemingly little notice. One could say that up until recently those earning £60k had a right to child benefit - they don't anymore.

Ultimately, I would say that if you could challenge the government in a court of law and win, then yes, you do have the legal right to the benefit.

The point I am making is when considering if these changes are fair and made with enough notice, looking at the finacial impact on those affected surely must be the key measure. If it is only impacting wealthy pensioners with more cash than they know what to do with (as everyone else just keeps working), it becomes harder to justify reversing / smoothing / compensating those who are being impacted. Again, like the child benefit change - those who were used to the extra money (and spending it) suddenly lost it. It didn't garner much sympathy / support from most people. I wonder how many people here supported preventing that change (actually considering there are probably a decent number of high earners on here, probably quite a few). But in the grand scheme of things, these people are not now on the bread line. They just had to reduce their spending a bit.

Note that I would love to be in a world were we could afford both of these things. Neither change is 'fair'

But it isn't just affecting 'wealthy pensioners'.
It's affecting a certain group of women (who had already - or should have - been aware of the putting back of their state pension age as part of the equilisation process in 1995) who were then told that their SPA was being put back again by as much as 18 months.

That is the topic that is being discussed.

jem16

Al. wrote: »

Frances Coppola blogged on this (on Dec 29th) thoughtfully and concisely. I agree with her points. In respect of redress, there will be some who have a genuine case for assistance. But a unilateral rewinding of the clock is unfair and not, as has been suggested, 'fair'.

http://www.coppolacomment.com/2015/12/here-i-stand-i-can-do-no-other.html

Well written blog and I agree with her points too.

Unfortunately she has felt obliged to do this due to harassment via Twitter from many WASPI supporters who just cannot accept that many don't agree with their main campaign of compensation for every 1950s woman.