State Pension help! Please

Errata

I married in the '60s and took the opportunity to pay the married woman's stamp. The difference in the cost of the full stampt and the 'small' stamp paid for the gas and electric, which meant we could afford the mortgage!
As someone else said, it was a no brainer.
It was explained very clearly that women who paid the small stamp would get no state sick pay, no dole and no pension. Whilst I can just about go along with women not being told or not understanding they wouldn't get a pension, these same women would have realised they wouldn't get it the first time they applied for state sick pay or dole.
Thinking about it, I'm not too sure what the 'small' stamp did give entitlement to !

seven-day-weekend

I don't think it gave entitlement to anything. I think it just paid the legal minimum that had to be paid.

chesky369

..... and some of us never had to draw the dole or get state sick pay.

krisskross

chesky369 wrote: »

..... and some of us never had to draw the dole or get state sick pay.

Agreed, I never did either.

In our defence chesky and I took the decision or just went along with it when we were very young and EXTREMELY hard up.

As I have said previously it is now water under the bridge and nothing to be done about a choice I made 46 years ago. The only time i ever get cross about it is when I read on these boards people stating that they have paid in for a few years and are now entitled to heaven knows how much. OK I and all the others in my situation paid in a lesser amount, about half, but I personally was paying it for 4 decades.

margaretclare

It did not give an entitlement to anything. It covered only 'industrial injuries'. I would think that, by that time, there were few women doing the dangerous jobs in wartime industry that they had been doing, so I really don't know why it was there at all.

Whilst I can just about go along with women not being told or not understanding they wouldn't get a pension, these same women would have realised they wouldn't get it the first time they applied for state sick pay or dole.

Oh-oh. That applied to me, when I went home in the summer of 1957. I wasn't on the dole for very long - picked up a short term-job working for the Potato Marketing Board (!) and then started my nursing course in September 1957. I wasn't disallowed for leaving a job, I must have argued that marriage failure was a good enough reason. Following that, I never applied for sickness benefit, I was always in jobs that had their own paid sick leave.

Margaret

Savvy_Sue

I thought that as well as entitling us (or not) to a pension, Unemployment Benefit, SSP and whatever predated the current maternity payments, NI went towards the NHS?

Or maybe that was only in the good old days ...

EdInvestor

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

NI went towards the NHS?

I believe that's right.There are some who will say it's a tax in disguise of course, but it is actually firmly attached to specific benefits, which you can't get if you haven't paid it.


The history is interesting: NI's 100th anniversary coming up soon

Details

Savvy_Sue

Yes, I have never really understood why it is a separate 'tax' from PAYE / Income Tax, it makes life so complicated.

margaretclare

EdInvestor wrote: »

I believe that's right.There are some who will say it's a tax in disguise of course, but it is actually firmly attached to specific benefits, which you can't get if you haven't paid it.


The history is interesting: NI's 100th anniversary coming up soon

Details

Yes, the history is interesting, but I'm not sure it's totally accurate. For example, it says:

The scheme, which came into effect in July 1912, was intended to create a national system of insurance for working people against illness and unemployment. All wage-earners aged between 16 and 70 were obliged to contribute 4d per week, while employers paid 3d and the state 2d. In return, workers were entitled to a level of free medical care and advice, and a "dole" of 7 shillings per week for up to 15 weeks per year in the event of unemployment.

Did it apply to all working people? I can't find a source, but I have a feeling that it did not apply to all workers, that it was mainly industrial workers at first, not domestic workers (of which there were huge numbers at that time because you didn't have to be very well-off to have a live-in servant - it's the old 'Upstairs Downstairs' thing) and also, this account makes no mention at all of the separate provisions that were made for women. These provisions, and the reasons for them, can be read in the original Beveridge Report which was taken up by the post-war government and enshrined in the National Insurance Acts.

Margaret