Women lose landmark legal fight against state pension age rise - MSE News

Clive_Woody

Juebrads wrote: »

I can assure you all I am 1955 birthdate, and I did not receive a letter at all warning me of the changes, I had no idea and found out when I left the NHS due to ill health at 58. I was expecting my pension at 60 and instead found myself working full time in menial work that men are paid more to do. Funnily enough we still do not have parity in wages with men, and I cannot be bothered to even mention it, what is the point, I accept I am a second class citizen.

You are correct in that you still do not have equality when it comes to state pensions. On average women live longer than men, so despite retirement ages now being equal, women will benefit far more than men by claiming a state pension for a longer period.

If you had received a letter...or had a TV, a radio, internet access, read a newspaper, talked with your HR rep or colleagues, etc, what would you have done differently to plan for your retirement knowing that the 60 retirement age did not apply to you?

seven-day-weekend

I do have some sympathy of course, especially for the ones affected by the later legislation, but in the end is it any different to my not getting the new single tier pension because I am too old to qualify? (And needing 39 years of NI)?

thepurplepixie

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I do have some sympathy of course, especially for the ones affected by the later legislation, but in the end is it any different to my not getting the new single tier pension because I am too old to qualify? (And needing 39 years of NI)?

I was eligible for the new single tier pension but it was less than I got under the old scheme. I think the difference in your situation is that you were never expecting to get the new pension.

thepurplepixie

molerat wrote: »

That is not possible. It may have been less than the maximum you could have accrued under the old system but the safeguard put in place was that you got at least what you already had.

I got what I was entitled to under the old scheme as it was more than the new single tier pension, I think lots of people don't realise that. I have had people say it to me, "Oh you waited a bit longer for your pension but you got more." No I got what I was entitled to under the old scheme.

Davy_Jones_II

woolly_wombat wrote: »

'Personal choices' that have had long term economic consequences for (mainly) women who worked part time to fit work around family and found themselves barred from pension membership.

It's been a lose lose 'choice' for those women.

P.S. I am not a WASPI woman either, but I do think some empathy wouldn't go amiss for women like Jubrads who find themselves in dire straits after doing their level best in difficult circumstances.

I can sympathise with anyone whose choices leave them struggling, but that’s not the same as agreeing that an injustice should be prolonged to protect them but leave men in the same boat struggling.

molerat

thepurplepixie wrote: »

I got what I was entitled to under the old scheme as it was more than the new single tier pension, I think lots of people don't realise that. I have had people say it to me, "Oh you waited a bit longer for your pension but you got more." No I got what I was entitled to under the old scheme.

I have deleted my post as I misread what you said, my reading was that you actually received less under the new scheme than you had earned under the old

colsten

woolly_wombat wrote: »

P.S. I am not a WASPI woman either, but I do think some empathy wouldn't go amiss for women like Jubrads who find themselves in dire straits after doing their level best in difficult circumstances.

I need to be quite open and brutally honest here: over the years, I have seen way too many WASPI sob stories that turned out to be totally untrue. This now leads me to the default reaction to treat all WASPI sob stories as untrue to start with. I am sick and tired of the lies about not knowing about SPA increases, too (delighted to see one of them - called Julie Delve - got found out in this regard by two High Court judges).

Jubrads worked in the NHS, and says she retired on ill health grounds. She doesn't answer questions such as what she would have done differently had she had any letter in 1995, why she didn't get ill health retirement money from the NHS, whether pension age rises were never discussed at work, why she should be treated differently to an ill man her age, and her index-linked NHS pension doesn't figure in her story.

I do absolutely not have even a shred of empathy for women who would be quite happy to see ill men their age having to exist on ESA (£73 pw), with all the horrors of repeated assessment ordeals, whilst the women demand a free ride on £168 pw for themselves, regardless of their financial circumstances. We all know that there are countless 1950s women who live in wealthy households, many of them with gold-plated final salary index-linked pensions. Yet they bleat about a plight that has allegedly beset all 1950s women, and that besets only 1950s women. 1950s men, as well as everyone born after 1959, gets happily thrown under a bus by them. They equally couldn't care less about existing pensioners who are living in poverty, about the homeless men and women of all ages, about children who grow up in poverty, or about those people who would have to somehow find the many tens of billions the WASPI want. All they are interested in is money for themselves. Don't ask me, or anyone, to have empathy with that greedy lot! :mad:

colsten

Clive_Woody wrote: »

You are correct in that you still do not have equality when it comes to state pensions. On average women live longer than men, so despite retirement ages now being equal, women will benefit far more than men by claiming a state pension for a longer period.

The inequality goes even further than you have already identified. As a result of the now well-known gender pay gap, the average woman pays a lot less NI throughout her working life than the average man. At the extreme, a woman can pay absolutely nothing for an NI year (due to getting the NI credits she might be entitled to), whilst a man might pay many thousands if not many tens of thousands for the same NI year. Reality is somewhere in the middle, and we can ignore that there are some women paying more for an NI year than some men do - - the average is that women pay less for an NI year than men do.

When it comes to calculating the state pension amount, each NI year has the same value, regardless of how much the owner of that NI year paid for it. At 2019-20 values, an NI year buys £4.81 of state pension per week. This may be subject to COPE deductions but we can ignore those because the rules for deductions are the same for men and women.

Silvertabby

colsten wrote: »

The inequality goes even further than you have already identified. As a result of the now well-known gender pay gap, the average woman pays a lot less NI throughout her working life than the average man. At the extreme, a woman can pay absolutely nothing for an NI year (due to getting the NI credits she might be entitled to), whilst a man might pay many thousands if not many tens of thousands for the same NI year. Reality is somewhere in the middle, and we can ignore that there are some women paying more for an NI year than some men do - - the average is that women pay less for an NI year than men do.

When it comes to calculating the state pension amount, each NI year has the same value, regardless of how much the owner of that NI year paid for it. At 2019-20 values, an NI year buys £4.81 of state pension per week. This may be subject to COPE deductions but we can ignore those because the rules for deductions are the same for men and women.

The option of paying reduced NI (married woman's stamp) ended in 1977, but those who were already paying less could continue to do so.

In 1978 over 4 million women were paying the married woman's stamp, being 45% of all NI paying women.

Just saying.

Paul_Herring

The option of paying reduced NI (married woman's stamp) ended in 1977,

That is not the point being made. This is. And this.

People earning less money pay less NI but can still get full NI credits, and those not earning, because reasons, can still earn full NI credits without paying any NI whatsoever.

And the people in those two groups tend to be, apparently, female.