Sign the Petition for Womens state pension age going up unfair

JezR

A report from a financial journalist on the new state pension back in 2011:

About 1.5 million people already get a state pension which is £150 or more. The Government has said that anyone who reaches pension age after the new system begins and who would have got a bigger pension under the old rules will keep that bigger pension. However, as time passes the value of SERPS and state second pension will diminish and eventually everyone will get more from the new pension than they would under the present system.

People who are in a salary related pension scheme get a payment with their company pension which replaces any SERPS or State Second Pension they have. That will continue after the change. So someone with a good company pension will find that part of the new pension will be paid as part of their company pension.

The journalist? Paul Lewis. A rather more neutral presentation than in the more later pieces from him given above and quoted for review purposes. Shows that he got it from the off (although he concentrates on DB), and that the basic message was there from the beginning.

Incidentally he was writing pieces on the increase in women's pension age between 2010-20 as early as 2001 from those available from his website.

Pollycat

missbiggles1 wrote: »

I'm another 50s woman but you must have totally misunderstood to have thought that. I was made very clear that the increase of pension age would be made incrementally for those reaching SPA after April 2010, something I was very happy to hear as, at one point, I thought that everybody born post April 2010 would immediately have their pension age increased to 65.

Sometimes people believe what they want to believe rather than taking onboard the information which is actually being given out.

Is 'born' really the word you meant to use?

I think anyone born post April 2010 doesn't stand a cat-in-hell's chance of receiving their state pension at age 65.

Daniel54

saver861 wrote: »

Well in terms of the numbers its factual. There is no debate about that. If you wish to see it as implicitly misleading then I'm not anything will change your mind on that.

The difficulty in these arguments are that there is an opinion that savvywoman, Paul Lewis, Jeff Prestridge etc have agendas and are somehow providing incorrect and misleading information. Now I have not read all the articles so I'm not in a position to judge. However these are experienced commentators, have they suddenly dropped their standards or become inept with facts?

As others have started,it is explicitly misleading by omission to state one side of an equation but ignore the other.Rosehip came along not long after your post as a prime example of this.

rosehip wrote: »

When the new flat rate for all was touted with a great fanfare, I thought at least I would get that, having easily over 35 years of NI contributions, but of course having been contracted out for a number of years and being penalised for it, I'm not going to get anything close to the new flat rate pension of £155 a week.

It is a very good question why the likes of Paul Lewis and Savvywoman,as examples whose writings I have read,choose to skew their arguments by being selective with their facts.
It is interesting that they both seem to take the view that women born between 6th April 51 and 5th April 53 are being discriminated against because they will not be eligible for the new state pension whereas men of the same age will be.Leaving aside the fact that being eligible for the new SP is different to being entitled to the full amount,the reason for the differential is that these women will reach state pension age at least 2 years before men born on the same dates.

The savvywoman poll was worded to achieve the desired result

"We asked if it was fair that women born the same day as men wouldn’t get the new state pension."

https://www.savvywoman.co.uk/5220/the-new-state-pension-from-april-2016-what-are-your-views/

I wonder how many of those 73% in agreement would have voted for the spa of the women in that group to be deferred by a further 2 years to equalise them with men.A very small percentage,if any, would be my guess

Paul Lewis on the same subject

Women born 6 April 1951 to 5 April 1953 all reach state pension age before the new state pension begins. So they won’t get the new state pension. But men of the same age – who will be 65 when it begins – will. That is sex discrimination and they want the choice to have new or old.

The savvy woman question on contracting out was similarly skewed

'We also asked if people thought it was fair that being contracted out would affect their state pension. "

55% thought it was unfair..Ask the right question and you get the right answer ....

My only conclusion is that these journalists are writing what they believe their readers on the subject want to hear.In doing so they are,in my view, failing in their duty to equip those readers with the knowledge they might need to counteract spin and poor communication from government and its agencies.

In doing so,they are not supporting their readership,they are badly letting them down

saver861

Daniel54 wrote: »

As others have started,it is explicitly misleading by omission to state one side of an equation but ignore the other.Rosehip came along not long after your post as a prime example of this.

I'm not sure I fully understand your point here. Rosehip states she was under the impression she would get the full new pension currently at £155. She then learned that would not be the case due to the contracting out.

At the risk of repetition again, the government mis-led when they announced the new pension. They have admitted the same - thus many were under a false impression, as Rosehip.

Daniel54 wrote: »

My only conclusion is that these journalists are writing what they believe their readers on the subject want to hear.In doing so they are,in my view, failing in their duty to equip those readers with the knowledge they might need to counteract spin and poor communication from government and its agencies.

In doing so,they are not supporting their readership,they are badly letting them down

That is your conclusion. That's fine. My point would be that, many on here have said those journalists are presenting skewed facts. These journalist are either supporting or sympathetic to the WASPI campaign. Those that think the facts are skewed also think the campaign is skewed!

On the other hand there was a number of people said the Frances Coppola article was correct and totally balanced. Those that thought the Coppola article was entirely balanced also have the same view of the Campaign as Coppola!

If I were reading these opinions for the first time without any background knowledge my instinct would be that these conclusions are potentially amiss.

What I am saying is that I agree with those who expressed their opinions on the Coppola article, but I don't agree with those that say the others are skewed. I have read now read a lot of articles on this from the journalists listed and others. I read all articles with the same eyes!

Journalist do write for their target audiences. A football reporter for the Sun will write a different type of report than a reporter for the Times while both are reporting on the same match. No doubt, both sets of fans think the reporter favours the other team!!

The questionnaires on these sites etc are a more a source of gaging readership numbers than they are of gaining opinions. I don't pay much heed to these and would agree, you ask a question in the framework that is more likely to give you the desired answer. Oldest trick there is when asking for a show of hands!!

What an journalist can't or should not do is intentionally mis-lead. So, while they can be articulate with the facts, they take a risk if they deliberately go deep into deception.

JezR

saver861 wrote: »

I'm not sure I fully understand your point here. Rosehip states she was under the impression she would get the full new pension currently at £155. She then learned that would not be the case due to the contracting out.

At the risk of repetition again, the government mis-led when they announced the new pension. They have admitted the same - thus many were under a false impression, as Rosehip.

This doesn't tie in though with both government statements (verbal and in papers) and contemporary reports from financial journalists back in 2011 that give the position on the contracted out issue right from the start. Maybe it was too early in the process for many to take notice then.

These early articles are present in newspapers such as the Mail and the Telegraph that subsequently from 2014+ went on campaign as though they had made a new revelation, when all they needed to do was to go into their morgue and find out what they themselves reported only a few years back. It is these articles that are misleading - and seem to have created a situation where there is a belief that this is somehow a sneaky late facet that had been kept quiet rather than an integral part there from the beginning. (Whether you agree with it or not.)

missbiggles1

Pollycat wrote: »

Is 'born' really the word you meant to use?

I think anyone born post April 2010 doesn't stand a cat-in-hell's chance of receiving their state pension at age 65.

Oops, I made a mistake, thanks for the correction.

Now altered to actually make sense.

Goldiegirl

Daniel quoted the following from Paul Lewis

Women born 6 April 1951 to 5 April 1953 all reach state pension age before the new state pension begins. So they won’t get the new state pension. But men of the same age – who will be 65 when it begins – will. That is sex discrimination and they want the choice to have new or old.

This illustrates the flaws in the WASPI campaign.

On the one hand 'women' are saying they are being discriminated against because they reach their SPA before men, yet on the other hand, WASPI are campaigning to retain an even earlier SPA!

You just couldn't make it up.

I imagine the perceived sex discrimination is that men born in the stated period will get the '£155' and women of the same age won't. But we know this isn't the case at all - people will continue to get the pension that has been earned by their NIC's. But anybody trying to point this out to WASPI's will just get a load of abuse.

saver861

JezR wrote: »

This doesn't tie in though with both government statements (verbal and in papers) and contemporary reports from financial journalists back in 2011 that give the position on the contracted out issue right from the start. Maybe it was too early in the process for many to take notice then.

These early articles are present in newspapers such as the Mail and the Telegraph that subsequently from 2014+ went on campaign as though they had made a new revelation, when all they needed to do was to go into their morgue and find out what they themselves reported only a few years back. It is these articles that are misleading - and seem to have created a situation where there is a belief that this is somehow a sneaky late facet that had been kept quiet rather than an integral part there from the beginning. (Whether you agree with it or not.)

If you are of the opinion that it is the fault of the media rather than the government then its unlikely anything will dissuade you from that premise.

It's the governments responsibility to get the correct message across. For the purpose of simple example, lets say the government has a great news story that they are going to rise the personal tax allowance for everyone by 20%. If the media somehow misinterpreted this and put it out as just 2%, the government would be working at every point, port and avenue to have the information corrected.

Just about everyone was mis-led by the new pension amounts - and the government themselves admit this. I'm not sure why anybody would then want to exonerate the government and blame the media!

The personal pension estimate statements produced by the DWP added to the confusion. The starting amount was originally known as the foundation amount. The whole starting/foundation amount thing then got scrapped. Are we putting that as the fault of the media?

In terms of communication, one of the issues was how well it was communicated in 1995 and many say it was communicated effectively in the media. Would this be the same media that is apparently at fault for mis-leading on the new pension?


Ultimately the originator of a message has the responsibility of ensuring the recipients receive the intended message whatever method of communication is used. This did not happen in relation to peoples understanding of the new pension amounts. It is the responsibility of the government to put it right, if the message has been lost in transmission.

Malthusian

It's the governments responsibility to get the correct message across

No, you cannot be responsible for something that you have no control over. The government cannot force newspapers to report it accurately, they cannot force people to read the newspapers which do, they cannot force people to go online and inform themselves. They have no way to ensure that every person has "got the message" without sending DWP agents to talk to every single one of them face to face (disproportionately expensive).

The government's responsibility is to issue correct information, which they did. It is the individual's responsibility, if they are making retirement plans based on receipt of government benefits, to ensure their understanding is correct and up to date.

What you and WASPI are effectively demanding is that if the government announces that the personal allowance increases by 2%, and the illiterate hacks in all the major newspapers report an increase of 20%, the government is obliged to increase the personal allowance by 20% because that's what everyone thought they were going to get.

JezR

There was a period in 2013-15 where government publicity & speeches emphasised the long term aspects of the change, which ultimately will be a flat pension for a large percentage of the population who live in the UK through their entire working lives as 35 years will not be that difficult to accumulate taking into account those that will receive them as credits. The difficult to explain transitional aspects tended for a while to take a back seat.

This lack of emphasis of the details of the transitional arrangements for those in the workforce now which are a complicated set of measures only seemed to allow misconceptions to take root.

Whether this emphasis was deliberate or not, it seems clear that it is now thought of as a mistake by the current government.