We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.

This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.

📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

MSE News: Government refuses to budge on women's state pension changes

1246789

Comments

  • Pollycat
    Pollycat Posts: 35,891 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Savvy Shopper!
    saver861 wrote: »
    I'm not sure how else to explain it. WASPI started the campaign but, in reality, the campaign is unlikely to have made noticeable progress unless there was a groundswell of opposition. Once there is sufficient opposition that then gathers pace like a snowball.

    That's how it works for all of these things.

    Companies use it sometimes to generate PR. You might recall a few years ago Coca Cola done something saying it was going to change the ingredients of Coca Cola. Coca Cola fans started to voice opposition. This generated any amount of publicity for the company virtually all at no cost.

    Similarly, when Clinton was US President, Hilary dropped the ball on a Health Care issue. She took objection to what some of her opponents were saying and actually generated a great deal more adverse publicity than if she had ignored it. Had she said nothing, the issue would have just died away without notice.

    In football, they call it an own goal .....
    The only way you could explain it would be to quote one of your own earlier posts that actually said this (or something similar i.e. not in praise of the WASPI campiagn):
    saver861 wrote: »
    The point being missed by so many is that actually, it is not WASPI that generated their publicity, but the 'opposition' to WASPI.

    If those who had opposed WASPI had kept quiet, it would never have gotten to where it is now.

    The campaign in terms of getting the issue into the public domain has been entirely successful. It has now had coverage in all areas of the media and two debates in the HoC. That is down mainly to those who opposed it and wanted to shout louder. Had they stayed silent, so too would the campaign have been silent and mostly unheard of!!
  • saver861
    saver861 Posts: 1,408 Forumite
    Pollycat wrote: »
    The only way you could explain it would be to quote one of your own earlier posts that actually said this (or something similar i.e. not in praise of the WASPI campiagn):

    I think you are still misinterpreting my message.

    I'm not saying anything against the WASPI campaign as such and I have not changed my mind on one single thing. I'm saying the success of the campaign in getting it into the public domain was primarily down to the opposition generated.

    It seems counterintuitive but thats how these things work.
  • le_loup
    le_loup Posts: 4,047 Forumite
    saver861 wrote: »
    I have not changed my mind on one single thing.
    You may be surprised to know that that is unsurprising.

    This dead horse has stopped twitching - please leave it some dignity rather than continuing to poke it.
  • bowlhead99
    bowlhead99 Posts: 12,295 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Post of the Month
    saver861 wrote: »

    Not sure I would position myself to tell Martin Lewis how to make decisions or money!!!

    Presumably to use the analogies you put forward above, if MSE want to get famous as well as improving public education they should next come out in support of a "let's legislate that the world is flat" campaign with petition.

    It won't get much support on its own because it's a very small special interest group which few agree with. But once the ridiculous demands are in the public domain, you would have every scientist and his dog come out to say stop being so loopy, the world is clearly round, and those disagreeing loudly in public with the stupidity of the petition would propel its popularity.

    Due to common sense, no laws would change and no science textbooks would be rewritten but everyone would be aware that the education and scientific community were up in arms about something, and stop by to have a look, while Twitter, Facebook and tabloids would be buzzing with the new hot topic of the day.

    The result would be two Commons 'debates' led by the Opposition where 20 SNP and labour MPs would take turns to thank their honorable friend for bringing up the plight of those who suffer under the "world is round" rules and about 2 or 3 Tory MPs try to get a word in edgways to explain why it is that they won't change the rules which has previously been debated without new evidence arising since.

    MSE could then run a headline as "consumer champions" that the petition which they backed finally got its day in the House -thanks among other things to them featuring it in a newsletter - and only through the government being utter bar stewards was the 200 to zero vote ignored.

    In that way, they would be forever in our hearts as consumer champions who stick up for the little guy.

    The big picture of course is that if they kept doing things like that, eventually their future clamours would be met with derision by the government and serious media "here we go again, another ill thought out petition making unreasonable demands with that guy Lewis and his ten million bleating followers". It is the story of the Boy who cried "Wolf".

    To my mind, that is the point Dunstonh is making while you seem to think it is fine for them to support any issue. Of course they have that right, but the right is earned and the right becomes less valuable if credibility is doubted.

    At the moment I take MSE as being more credible than the Daily Mail or the Sun, on financial matters. Likely the government does too. That may not always be the case if they focus on popularity over substance.

    IMHO. :)
  • Malthusian
    Malthusian Posts: 11,055 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    phillw wrote:
    It is standard, but its not helpful when the people who are good at appealing are not necessarily the ones in the most need. It should be set up like like car parking fines to dissuade them from doing it like that. If the DWP doesn't give you the money straight away then the benefit should double (and no sneaky halving the benefit in the first place).

    The clued-up middle classes (with access to the Internet or an expert on the system) would submit a deliberately vague application for disability benefits which they knew would be turned down, knowing that on appeal they would double their money.

    Those who didn't know how to play the system would fill in the forms like a normal person, and if they were lucky, get the standard benefit. Those who didn't know and were unlucky would fill in the forms and get rejected, and would not appeal, and get nothing.

    So in other words it would work exactly as it does now and always will. And of course if you made employees of the state personally liable for wrong decisions, no-one would take the job, so no-one would get anything.
  • SallyG
    SallyG Posts: 850 Forumite
    edited 4 February 2016 at 5:16PM
    I voted for this:
    "Petition
    Make fair transitional state pension arrangements for 1950’s women
    The Government must make fair transitional arrangements for all women born on or after 6th April 1951 who have unfairly borne the burden of the increase to the State Pension Age (SPA). Hundreds of thousands of women have had significant changes imposed on them with a lack of appropriate notification "
    Richard Graham, Chair of the All Party Group on Pensions misrepresented the petition and undermined petitioners by choosing to include demands that weren't in the petition.
    http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2016-02-01a.249.0&s=speaker%3A24921#g256.1
  • Pollycat
    Pollycat Posts: 35,891 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Savvy Shopper!
    saver861 wrote: »
    I think you are still misinterpreting my message.

    I'm not saying anything against the WASPI campaign as such and I have not changed my mind on one single thing. I'm saying the success of the campaign in getting it into the public domain was primarily down to the opposition generated.

    It seems counterintuitive but thats how these things work.
    I don't think I am misinterpreting your message.

    Of course you're not saying anything against the WASPI campaign - you were the one banging on about the 'success of the campaign'.
  • POPPYOSCAR
    POPPYOSCAR Posts: 14,902 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    saver861 wrote: »
    I think you are still misinterpreting my message.

    I'm not saying anything against the WASPI campaign as such and I have not changed my mind on one single thing. I'm saying the success of the campaign in getting it into the public domain was primarily down to the opposition generated.

    It seems counterintuitive but thats how these things work.



    I get exactly what you are saying.


    I had never heard of WASPI until I stumbled across the petition on here and the subsequent posts and discussions sparked my interest.


    I even followed the debate live which is not something I would have done.
  • jem16
    jem16 Posts: 19,723 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    SallyG wrote: »
    Richard Graham, Chair of the All Party Group on Pensions misrepresented the petition and undermined petitioners by choosing to include demands that weren't in the petition.

    He didn't misrepresent anything.

    He simply stated the "ask" as quoted on Facebook and by Anne Keen ( one of the co founders of Waspi ) to the Work and Pensions Select Committee of which he is a member.

    You are correct in that it should not have been there but the Waspi Campaign put it out there and refused to remove it despite requests from supporters as they were quite clear that that was what they wanted.

    If any misrepresentation was going on, it was all at Waspi's end.
  • POPPYOSCAR
    POPPYOSCAR Posts: 14,902 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    jem16 wrote: »
    He didn't misrepresent anything.

    He simply stated the "ask" as quoted on Facebook and by Anne Keen ( one of the co founders of Waspi ) to the Work and Pensions Select Committee of which he is a member.

    You are correct in that it should not have been there but the Waspi Campaign put it out there and refused to remove it despite requests from supporters as they were quite clear that that was what they wanted.

    If any misrepresentation was going on, it was all at Waspi's end.



    Was this in the actual petition as presented to the Committee or just on faceache.?
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 351.9K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.5K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 454.1K Spending & Discounts
  • 244.9K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 600.5K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 177.4K Life & Family
  • 258.7K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.2K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.