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Readers respond to the recent announcement that the government won’t pay compensation to women affected by the rising pension age
I’m furious at the government’s decision to ignore the advice of the ombudsman and refusal to compensate Waspi women (Anger greets UK government decision not to compensate ‘Waspi women’, 17 December). What’s the point in having a lengthy and expensive review if you don’t pay it any heed? I along with many others have been waiting a long time to hear what our compensation would be, even though it would go nowhere near the £50,000 many of us lost. I didn’t imagine they would so easily dismiss our suffering as a result of government failure to give us time to plan. Labour has already removed the winter fuel allowance. One wonders what it will hit us with next.
When you’re close to the edge of a precipice, every kick brings greater jeopardy. It’s almost as if they want pensioners to suffer, that we are their scapegoats. This is a last straw for me when it comes to Labour. I will never trust it with my vote again. I’d leave the country and go and live close to my daughter in New Zealand, but I can’t because the government then freezes your pension and you’re effectively worse off every year. I wrote to the pension minister about that, but it seems I’m not even important enough to warrant a reply. Maybe the government thinks we don’t matter because we’re not powerful, or that we’ll be gone before too long. It underestimates us.
Cathy Preston
Heathfield, East Sussex
Surprise on discovering your retirement pension age is certainly not limited to Waspi women. Just a few weeks ago, my hairdresser announced that he was going to be 60 soon and would be getting his bus pass. I work at Citizens Advice, so explained he won’t get a bus pass (in England) until he is pension age, at 67. He was astonished he would have to wait that long, and a whole salon-full of people suddenly tuned in to the conversation. None of them, from people in their 30s to 60s, knew when they would get their pension, and after I guided them to the gov.uk calculator, they were all anxiously on their phones finding out the bad news.
Sheila Hutchins
Truro
I do appreciate that financial problems have been inherited by the current government and that it doesn’t feel that it can “ask the taxpayer to bear the burden”, but I am a taxpayer!
Does Labour not realise that I paid tax for six more years than I had expected to? For those six years, the government didn’t have to pay me the winter fuel allowance. I retired from work at 66 in August this year and now I feel like retiring from voting for a Labour government.
Karen Scott Thompson
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
For women like me, born in March 1953, who finally received our state pension three years late with no warning, we now receive £169.50 a week, not £221.20 as stated in your article.
Val Woodward
Plymouth
Of course there should be no compensation for the Waspi pensioners as the raising of the pension retirement age has been in the public domain for many years. The logic of their argument is that anyone affected by a change in social security or tax should receive an individual notification of how the change will affect them.
John Martin Berry
Ormskirk, Lancanshire
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Waspi decision will lead to voters deserting Labour | Letters
