Sign the Petition for Womens state pension age going up unfair

mumps

jamesd wrote: »

What will it cost?

The PR is very bad, contemplating increasing gender and age discrimination after reducing it. But that's PR in the opposite direction from the one you're thinking of.

Neither is great but at least men have got what they were always going to get up to 65, once the changes kick in I also feel sorry for men who had change imposed at short notice. We are always being told to plan for retirement but it is hard when the goal posts keep moving.

Of course there used to be differences in what men and women got for their NI, for example when I first got married men knew that their wives would get a pension if they died, I had to pay insurance to get the same sort of cover for my husband and kids. Women didn't get much in the way of maternity pay in those days but then that did improve and now men can share that with them. Lots of swings and roundabouts.

Malthusian

The fact that the goal posts are always moving is exactly why you should plan for retirement - i.e. have private provision and a plan that doesn't just consist of "I'll just work until my State Pension starts and then pack it all in and live on that".

Football is not a good sporting analogy for retirement planning, with its fixed rectangular playing area and fixed match duration and so on. Sailing would be better. Or any sport without set conditions in which the ability to adapt to weather and other changing circumstances is paramount.

mazzy

As a woman with a birthdate in Oct 53 I am one of those affected. My main issue is that I missed tthe cut off point by 6 months and thought a fairer way would have just been to make me wait 6 months longer to collect my pension not an extra 18 months. I wish the WASPI campaign had not gone all out to reclaim back to age 60 as we had plenty of notice about that and it made the campaign not so widely supported.

jamesd

mazzy wrote: »

As a woman with a birthdate in Oct 53 I am one of those affected. My main issue is that I missed tthe cut off point by 6 months and thought a fairer way would have just been to make me wait 6 months longer to collect my pension not an extra 18 months.

Back on 5 April 2010 a person who was one day away from being 50 was one day from getting access to their pension money. As of 6 April the age rose from 50 to 55 and they become five years away. They missed by just one day but had to wait five more years.

Worse still, a person who was say 53 also suddenly became barred from taking it even though they were already past 50, unless they had already started to. This was set in motion by the Finance Act 2004 so people had just six years of notice that they wouldn't be getting their pension money when they had planned. There was no campaign of mass postal notices to all those affected from the government.

It's far from being only women who have the age at which they can take money from pensions increased, be it the state pension or private pensions.

Some workplace pension schemes, generally defined benefit types like final salary, were allowed to keep age 50 for those people already in the scheme.

mazzy

Fair enough I take your point, it was still a lot longer than the notice we got about the second rise in age though.

jem16

mazzy wrote: »

I wish the WASPI campaign had not gone all out to reclaim back to age 60 as we had plenty of notice about that and it made the campaign not so widely supported.

This was their first mistake.

However their biggest mistake was in trying to deny that this was what was wanted whilst accusing everyone else of misinterpreting their claim and detracting from the campaign. At this point they lost most public sympathy with their entitlement views.

jem16

mazzy wrote: »

Fair enough I take your point, it was still a lot longer than the notice we got about the second rise in age though.

The lack of notice for the 2011 Act was where the whole campaign should have focused. It was unfair for those born from 1953 to 1956 and especially for 1953/54 with the smallest amount of notice and biggest amount of time added on.

jem16

Out of interest and following on from the discussion on evidence for the WPSC enquiry on early drawing of the state pension, another piece of evidence has been published. Many WASPI supporters are posting it in numerous places as a great submission and that it basically proves they should all have their pensions as the money is in the NI Fund.

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/work-and-pensions-committee/early-drawing-of-state-pension/written/31539.pdf

My first thoughts are that it is advocating not using the NI Fund for the NHS and instead increasing taxation to pay for the NHS instead.

My second thoughts surround the actual surplus figures quoted as it seems to mix up inflows with outflows.

Any thoughts?

JezR

Gordon Brown increased NI by a percentage point to fund specifically the NHS. It could be argued that it would have been more appropriate to have increased the basic rate of income tax instead, but nobody does that these days. Back then the NIF surplus was expected to be maintained, and some considered it was in a genuine permanent surplus position so higher pensions could have been paid out without more NI contribution. This thinking assumed boom and bust had been eliminated from the British economy.

The NIF will go into a temporary surplus in the next few years mainly through the ending of contracting out and the consequential extra revenue. As the percentage of people claiming the full rate of new state pension rises plus the effect of the baby boom generation reaching state retirement age (ie the 'bulge' born from the late 1950s until the mid 1970s) this will fall off again, notwithstanding any slowdown in the economy.

OldBeanz

Sorry cannot have this phrase said without the necessary smilie:
"This thinking assumed boom and bust had been eliminated from the British economy.":rotfl: