MSE News: ’Women's state pension petition secures second Parliamentary debate

zagfles

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

So his sisters are his household?

I don't know. There was a lot of other irrelevant drivel in the debate, why does this MP mentioing his sister concern you so much?

dunstonh

mazzy wrote: »

I was born in October 1953 so I fall into the group being discussed. The question I would like answered is why when the cut off point to get pension at 63 was in April and I was 6 months past that why was my pension age raised to 64 yrs 9 mths. It would have seemed much fairer to me to raise it by the 6months. I completely understand the raise in age had to happen but the transitional period could have been fairer.

You are exactly within the group that most people feel had an unfair change put on them.

It is a shame that the WASPI campaign did not focus on your situation as their campaign point and instead campaigned to put the age back to 60.

stokesley

dunstonh wrote: »

You are exactly within the group that most people feel had an unfair change put on them.

It is a shame that the WASPI campaign did not focus on your situation as their campaign point and instead campaigned to put the age back to 60.

Well said. Born July 1953 - pension age now 64, and irreversible decisions made about the future post 1995, based on what we were then told. In my case, these decisions centred around the fact that I had the 30 year's qualifying contributions, subsequently changed with almost no notice to 35 years.


Daft lot at WASPI threaten to derail a valid argument - no sane person can argue that retirement age for men and women needs to be the same.


On a separate note, don't tell Dave, but he's still handing out free prescriptions at 60 - equally daft.

colsten

Should we have a Referendum (or only another Petition, against a Petition) on this?

I think (as a 1954 woman, fully taking the blow of pension age increase, but not supporting the published aims of WASPI) WASPI are now wasting the time of our MPs and Ministers over this matter, and we need our MPs to get back to discussing what matters.

The WASPI 'asks' are totally ridiculous and totally selfish. It's time the Nation spoke, and the women got reminded that they are not the only citizens of this country.

WASPI_ask_21:57_1_February_2016 wrote:

Who are WASPI? We are an action group campaigning against the unfair changes to the State Pension Age imposed on women born on or after 6th April 1951 (and how the changes were implemented). This includes both the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts.
What is our ask? "WASPI ask the Government to put all women born in the 50s, or after 6th April 1951 and affected by the changes to the state pension age in the same financial position they would have been in had they been born on or before 5th April 1950".

greenglide

Born July 1953 - pension age now 64, and irreversible decisions made about the future post 1995, based on what we were then told. In my case, these decisions centred around the fact that I had the 30 year's qualifying contributions, subsequently changed with almost no notice to 35 years.

ermm the change from 30 to 35 qualifying years for this age group only impacts anyone who is better off under the new rules than the old rules so they will not have lost out but they might not benefit form the new rules.

POPPYOSCAR

+

zagfles wrote: »

I don't know. There was a lot of other irrelevant drivel in the debate, why does this MP mentioing his sister concern you so much?

Sisters not sister.


As I said irrelevant to the debate. I did not find much else irrelevant actually. I thought most speakers were quite succinct.


I also like how his comments about women being emotional were dealt with.

p00hsticks

greenglide wrote: »

ermm the change from 30 to 35 qualifying years for this age group only impacts anyone who is better off under the new rules than the old rules so they will not have lost out but they might not benefit form the new rules.

True, Also it only dropped from 39 to 30 years in 2010, so it's difficult to believe that (m)any women born in the 50's based much of their pension planning on only requiring 30 years.

POPPYOSCAR

colsten wrote: »

Should we have a Referendum (or only another Petition, against a Petition) on this?

I think (as a 1954 woman, fully taking the blow of pension age increase, but not supporting the published aims of WASPI) WASPI are now wasting the time of our MPs and Ministers over this matter, and we need our MPs to get back to discussing what matters.

The WASPI 'asks' are totally ridiculous and totally selfish. It's time the Nation spoke, and the women got reminded that they are not the only citizens of this country.

You had better start organising it then, from what I heard on the debate today they had no intentions of letting this go.

bowlhead99

colsten wrote: »

The WASPI 'asks' are totally ridiculous and totally selfish. It's time the Nation spoke, and the women got reminded that they are not the only citizens of this country.

Problem is, the rest of the nation don't have anything to get up in arms about, unless the government *actually* give Waspi a bunch of cash to shut up. At that point, it would be clear that you could get a bunch of cash and reverse the rules from 20 years ago just by moaning loudly enough about the fact that you were ignorant, which is unjust for the rest of the nation, and people would be rightly annoyed. However, having just changed the rules in favour of waspi, the government would surely not listen to the nation to unreverse the rules again, at waspi's expense.

In other words, it seems to me there is not really an easy way to get people motivated against waspi when they have not succeeded in their goal, and if they did succeed it would then be too late to do anything about it.

Though waspi want to cause a £100bn problem for the government, most people would not bother writing a letter to their MP saying "hey, there's a special interest group that's going to make some unreasonable demands based on fake facts, a pretence that extreme examples are the norm, and use of emotional blackmail to play on our sympathies because we all have mums and sisters and daughters who have worked hard. Please don't give them £100bn". I know I would feel silly wasting a busy and competent MP's time with such a letter, because i would prefer to have faith that he is not an idiot. But as he is an MP, and I don't know how much a vocal minority have been lobbying him, i don't know that I am really safe *not* writing...

:cool:

jem16

Well I watched the majority of the debate yesterday and felt it got far too bogged down with far too many MPs relating emotional stories about some of the women affected rather than looking at what, if anything, could be done. It took about three quarter of the way into the debate before anyone managed to put forward a possible solution. To my mind it was too much about political posturing against the government and not enough about the actual issue.

Richard Graham did his part by making sure that everyone knew about the WASPI ask and its implications. Notable that today WASPI are complaining that he had too much time to do this and it was unfair. They obviously don't realise that he was answering the motion put forward by Helen Jones who was given 27 minutes so it was only fair that he was given time to answer it.

Many MPs were still conflating 1995 and 2011 and in doing so I think they have blown it completely. WASPI has been too greedy with their main ask and this has now come back to bite them.

The main issue is that those really in need of help are in real danger of getting nothing now.