“The Government does not believe paying a flat rate to all women at a cost of up to £10.5 billion would be a fair or proportionate use of taxpayers’s money. Not least when the previous government failed to set aside a single penny for any compensation scheme and when they left us a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.”
Even though there was that £22 billion hole, and no money set aside, we did pay the train drivers. Because train drivers is important, see? Not some old biddies.
TTK has more pressing needs like further upping the multi-million pound bung payable to Mauritius for the next 200 years in return for their permission to continue using our own sovereign territory (which they have never owned and have zero claim to anyway).
Mind you the whole waspi business is on a par with “nobody ever wrote to me saying that I couldn’t park there so I shouldn’t have to pay the fines irrespective of all the No Parking signs” and I’m all out of fecks to give.
To make women’s pensions “fair” the entitlement age should be ten years later than men’s to match the extended life span.
At work we used to exchange wry glances when the new bod explained their failure to make progress by referring to the mess their predecessor left. It might have been true, up to a point, but only for a brief time, and it was considered bad form to say it. I wonder how long it will be before the productivity and prosperity kicks in, and this government can drop the excuses…
Don’t hold your breath!
Not paying the train drivers was costing the country money – lost revenue from passengers plus having to pay the remaining employees. It was just that the revenue goes directly to the Treasury whereas the costs go to the Department for Transport, so the latter was happy with the strikes. It is why there were rarely strikes either when the train companies were privatized, or in London, where the mayor gets both the revenue and the costs.
I feel the real grudge the Waspi women hold is that friends and relatives who were just a few years older got their pension at 60 yet they had to wait longer and in some cases up to 66. This is exactly what happened with my wife and her slightly older sister. It’s not that she didn’t know about the when it was announced in 1995, it was a case of not liking it.
It was a very widely known subject and at the time a large subject of women’s conversation especially for those in the age groups close to and on either side of the change
Feigned ignorance is not grounds for compensation.
Unionised train drivers matter to labour more …
When a political organisation has a descriptor in its name, it’s invariably a lie. In this case the ‘Inequality’. They should be calling themselves Women Against State Pension Equality because the whole complaint is that they have to wait the same length of time as men to get the state pension.
Currently I won’t be eligible for the state pension ’til I’m 68, and fully expect it to be at least 70 by the time I get there. And quite probably means-tested against assets (excluding main residence and defined-benefit pensions, obvs, can’t have the pols and the public sector suffer) as well. Shrug. These women would have been ~40 when the changes were made, and if you haven’t worked out by then that the government can’t be trusted…
It’s such a middle class campaign.
As I understand it, if you couldn’t work and had income below the Pension Credit threshold (currently 218/week although much lower 8 years ago) then you weren’t affected by the age increase for the State Retirement Pension.
I’m rich and want my compensation for not being richer.
It seems sensible not to rely totally on the government in this matter. I took out a private pension scheme when I was in my late twenties. A few years later I got married. I will be forever indebted to my wife, who understood such things better than I at the time, who looked at the statements and declared that I wasn’t paying enough into it. So together we increased our contributions year on year and could retire at a time of our own choosing.
The train drivers matter because they are all members of a union. And the more the train drivers earn the greater their union contributions. And the richer the unions become the more they donate to the Labour Party. The more money the Labour Party has the greater the expenses charged by its officials. So public money is transferred to the Labour Party by a nicely circuitous route.
Though this does pale into insignificance when compared to the Net Zero Scam and the likes of Dale Vince…
The train drivers all belong to the union.
Because if you can’t if you don’t, and barriers to entry or discussions with extreme prejudice are the reason.
So…
The union is de facto a monopoly supplier of train drivers.
The excessive profits are clear evidence of that.
As a monopoly the union should be nationalised and state run.
It’s in the best interests of everyone.
(Actually a cartel but the same / same).
Why are WASPI women against equality?
I’m a bit behind the news on this: has Weird Ed handed over the billion-and-a-half that the retired miners wanted?
“Why are WASPI women against equality?”
Because women have only ever been in favour of equality when it suited them. Equality to sit at the boardroom table? Naturally. Equality to get all the nice professional jobs in warm offices? Definitely. Equality to get paid the same as men even though they are doing different work women don’t want to do? Of course! Equality to work in manual jobs that cover you in shit and fuck you over physically by the age of 55? No thanks. Equality to get the same pensions as men have for the last 100+ years (but still better because women live longer)? How very dare you!!!!
Yes. And still guaranteed the pensions.
Those of us born in 1961 are facing a minor version of this. My best friend was born in 1959, and is 21 months older than me – less than a couple of years. Yet he will be getting a state pension in 2025, while mine won’t be until 2028. I wrote a little rhyme for him in his birthday card a few years back:
Now you’ve reached sixty, I think we should mention
The date on which you’ll be getting your pension.
You’ve got another six years in front,
While I have got nine, you jammy old friend.
Richard,
“Not paying the train drivers was costing the country money – lost revenue from passengers plus having to pay the remaining employees. It was just that the revenue goes directly to the Treasury whereas the costs go to the Department for Transport, so the latter was happy with the strikes. It is why there were rarely strikes either when the train companies were privatized, or in London, where the mayor gets both the revenue and the costs.”
This is why politicians should be in charge of as little as possible. Because only politicians would organise things as stupidly as that.
The problem we have with rail now is all the routes and services that don’t pay for themselves. Pre-Covid, you had a load of profitable routes like Reading to London that subsidised the Titfield to Mallingford train that 5 people with a railcard paid £3 to use. But after Covid, the Reading to London train lost a chunk of business, because of people working remote. Which means there’s less spare for all the useless rural trains. So the government is now blowing billions of taxpayer’s money on keeping all this rubbish going.
You could close all of this and there would be plenty of money for a good driver’s pay rise, especially as there would be a lot less drivers.
Jim, Paul – as a slightly younger older chap*, my generation’s retirement plans are:
* The sweet release of death while you’re still at your desk so the missus gets the “Big Tuna Goes Tits Up” money
* The National Lottery
* WW3
Mind you, at least we could afford houses and cars and sex with women. Young people today are omnifucked.
*I feel like Young Bernard in Yes Minister among all you Humphrey Applebys
Waspi women overplayed their hand and as Labour has just realised, their cause isn’t very popular outside their own small echo chamber. My son’s generation were outraged when they heard about the payment because most of them don’t think they will ever get a state pension, they see it as selfish boomers looking after themselves again.
Trying to compare themselves with the Post Office victims hasn’t really helped cause.
“Trying to compare themselves with the Post Office victims hasn’t really helped cause.”
Having an argument that is fundamentally ‘I was too dumb/self absorbed to notice what was plastered all over the media for ages, or did notice but did nothing about it, and now expect everyone else (including all the people who will have to put up with a retirement age that I find unacceptable) to pay for my mistakes’ doesn’t exactly endear you a great deal either.
Very smart move by the Labour government.
More women than men voted Labour.
Women live longer than men.
Women do not like men going back on their promises (We can award Rachel from Customer relations honorary masculinity for this one)
Women bear grudges.
There will be another General Election coming along.
Meanwhile, good luck in the by elections.
“ Feigned ignorance is not grounds for compensation.”
There’s a difference between not knowing about the rule change and not being informed about it. I suspect that many of these women were told about it but either ignored it because it didn’t seem to relate to their lives at the time or because they didn’t understand it.
Nobody mentions the other pension fiddle where women could pay a reduced rate of NI with the catch that they would also receive a lower pension at retirement. Those (like my missus) who decided to pay the full stamp in order to get the full pension were mugs (as it turned out) because the pension they eventually got was no better than those who had paid the reduced rate.
Train drivers? Would they be any harder to automate away than bus drivers?
Here’s an experimental autonomous bus service that seems to have worked for nearly two years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q0lg3j1exo
I see that the Glasgow Subway (i.e. “underground”) is converting to driverless trains. I gather that the DLR has always been driverless. Come on, Kemi: promise to automate the buggers into oblivion!
@ dearieme
Last time I rode on the Docklands Light Railway it was driven by a computer and I lived to tell the tale.
But computers don’t pay union dues, complete with political levy to fuind the Labour Party, to Mick Lynch
The DLR (and the Clockwork Orange in Glesga) are closed systems that don’t have to interact with the rest of the network. But in reality, automation of train driving is relatively trivial. Drivers just operate to a schedule of stops, and obey the signals which are controlled by someone else (in a shed, possibly hundreds of miles away). There’s some skill in stopping at the right place at a station with greasy rails and a heavy train, but that’s exactly the sort of thing computers are good at.
Automation of railways is an order of magnitude easier than automation of road driving (in no small measure because it’s a one-dimensional rather than a two-dimensional problem)..