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

zagfles

badmemory wrote: »

I have every sympathy with Rabbit24. I wonder if some bright spark will come up with the idea of unemployment benefit being a bit like the minimum wage, different depending on age. Maybe making it increase annually as you progress from 60 to your SPA, at least that may help ease the way a little. But we really do need to restore some of the safety nets we have lost in recent years.


There are going to be a lot of people losing their jobs in the next couple of years & I think the bulk of them are going to be over 50.

The safety nets haven't been lost, some have been frozen so have reduced a bit in real terms, but they're still there. Except perhaps for people with savings who move from tax credits (which doesn't have capital rules) to UC (which does). But I guess they have to use their alternative safety net, ie savings.

Rich2808

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

That's a good one!
Injustice should not be rectified too quickly, because it's unfair to suddenly bring in equality.



Was it unfair to abolish slavery too quickly?

Women were getting pensions up to 5 years earlier but on average living up to 7 years longer - so got 12 years more pension than men on average. Not all men had it easy in the past - not all women had a tough life.

Many men working in hard manual jobs/coalmines in the past never lived long enough to claim their pension at 65 - surely its how tough your job/life was (i.e. the working classes in factories or mines had it tougher than the middle classes doing desk jobs) which matters arguably as much in this context not your gender? Did middle class women in well paid jobs in the past have it tougher than coal miners who died of work related diseases before they got close to claiming a state pension?

Bogof_Babe

Mistermeaner wrote: »

This is the problem for me in a nut shell: lack of personal accountability and self imposed helplessness

Individuals must take responsibility for their own interests and not expect to be spoon fed info or cash

arnoldy wrote: »

Yes the helpless dependency is quite depressing. Fully agree on the need for personal responsibility.


Otherwise it's all cast back on the 'State' aka Taxpayer when the order should be 1.Self, 2. Family, 3. Friends/Charity and at the very last 4. State.

In the words of one Donald Rumsfeld:

There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

Okay that's a bit of poetic licence, but I don't think it's fair to suggest that women deliberately took no personal responsibility for their pension arrangements.

In my case, we were automatically enrolled in the company scheme at age 25, and in those heady early days we didn't even have to make contributions. It all sounded good so why would we delve into the implications? We were far too busy doing our jobs and running our homes. The scheme became contributory in the 80s, but as we were already in it, it would have been madness to opt out at that stage so we just let it roll on. The contributions were not a huge chunk out of our pay, and as it was deducted before we saw our net pay it was just another deduction along with tax and NI.

The only time pensions were brought to my attention was when the company changed the pay-out age for women from 60 to 65. There were only half a dozen of us who would be majorly affected by that, and a challenge was put to the pensions management committee, but we lost so just had to suck it up.

I did know about the change of SP age (never had a letter, must have read about it in the press), but having always been a saver I wasn't unduly concerned. But I admit I had never heard of "contracting out" until I joined this forum, by which time I had already taken early retirement (voluntary redundancy) to care for my elderly parents.

Mistermeaner

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

In the words of one Donald Rumsfeld:


Okay that's a bit of poetic licence, but I don't think it's fair to suggest that women deliberately took no personal responsibility for their pension arrangements.

In my case, we were automatically enrolled in the company scheme at age 25, and in those heady early days we didn't even have to make contributions. It all sounded good so why would we delve into the implications? We were far too busy doing our jobs and running our homes. The scheme became contributory in the 80s, but as we were already in it, it would have been madness to opt out at that stage so we just let it roll on. The contributions were not a huge chunk out of our pay, and as it was deducted before we saw our net pay it was just another deduction along with tax and NI.

The only time pensions were brought to my attention was when the company changed the pay-out age for women from 60 to 65. There were only half a dozen of us who would be majorly affected by that, and a challenge was put to the pensions management committee, but we lost so just had to suck it up.

I did know about the change of SP age (never had a letter, must have read about it in the press), but having always been a saver I wasn't unduly concerned. But I admit I had never heard of "contracting out" until I joined this forum, by which time I had already taken early retirement (voluntary redundancy) to care for my elderly parents.

You were extremely lucky to have been able to have a comfortable retirement with no conscious effort or thought on your part - this type of good fortune is not available to most people today

[Deleted User]

Let’s not forget about the main victims here: men. I deliberately married an older woman so I could retire in a couple of years when my wife is 60. I could have lived swimmingly on her pension. Now all my careful planning has been wasted. Planning to sue the government on behalf of all men who married older women.

Mistermeaner

Deleted_User wrote: »

Let’s not forget about the main victims here: men. I deliberately married an older woman so I could retire in a couple of years when my wife is 60. I could have lived swimmingly on her pension. Now all my careful planning has been wasted. Planning to sue the government on behalf of all men who married older women.

No point hanging on to her now - you have to accept its time to move on

roddydogs

A woman born the same year as me had their pension 5 yrs before me, can I have my £25,000 please

Bogof_Babe

I think one of the reasons why there was ever an age differential was because the majority of women tended to marry men older than themselves, meaning that they would retire around the same time. In those days people married younger (I know that’s a generalisation but certainly most of my contemporaries were in their 20s), and men tended not to want to settle down as early as women.

Also (dons tin hat) before all the gadgets that virtually take the work out of housework, a woman would spend her retirement mostly looking after home and husband while a lot of men just left it all to her!

ArcticRoll

roddydogs wrote: »

A woman born the same year as me had their pension 5 yrs before me, can I have my £25,000 please

It's been 24 years since they knew their retirement age would be equalised with men.

Or maybe they think only legislative changes that they're personally informed of should have any impact on their life and are free to ignore every act of parliament unless the govt take time to write them a personal letter. I'm sorry but because they chose to remain ignorant of their pension age for nearly a quarter of a century is entirely on them.

The irony of these women demanding other men (and indeed younger women who won't be given preferential treatment at all) to effectively pay for their ignorance is actually quite outrageous. They are treated the same as anyone else now. The argument that 24 years is insufficient time to add a single day to the previous 60 year old retirement age of women is laughable. As are the scenes of women outside the High Court complaining that they can't get their pension. It's as if they think they should be treated differently because they're women.

"Equality is nice, but look she's crying, this should mean she gets money earlier than a man of the same age"

It's absolutely outrageous. These self-entitlement, arrogant women. They're now treated the same as men and actually had nearly 25 years of interim continued preferential treatment to enable them to prepare. The fact they didn't isn't the responsibility of the younger generation who'll pay in more and get less much later than them, or on men who've been living with the same terms they've been subjected to for decades. Presume they weren't terribly outraged or offering to increase their tax contributions to alleviate their plight?

Pollycat

ArcticRoll wrote: »

No. It's been 24 years since you knew your retirement age would be equalised with men.

Or maybe you think only legislative changes that you're personally informed of should have any impact on your life and you're free to ignore every act of parliament unless the govt take time to write you a personal letter. I'm sorry but because you chose to remain ignorant of your pension age for nearly a quarter of a century is entirely on you.

The irony of these women demanding other men (and indeed younger women who won't be given preferential treatment at all) to effectively pay for their ignorance is actually quite outrageous. You're treated the same as anyone else now. The argument that 24 years is insufficient time to add a single day to the previous 60 year old retirement age of women is laughable. As are the scenes of women outside the High Court complaining that they can't get their pension. It's as if they think they should be treated differently because they're women.

"Equality is nice, but look she's crying, this should mean she gets money earlier than a man of the same age!"

It's absolutely outrageous. These self-entitlement women.

I think you may have misunderstood roddydog's post.
I think he's making the point that a woman the same age as him received their state pension 5 years earlier than he did.
Which would have been the case a decade or so ago.
I think there might have been a touch of irony in his post.