{"id":3125,"date":"2019-11-26T13:45:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T13:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=3125"},"modified":"2021-07-30T16:50:24","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T15:50:24","slug":"waspis-and-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=3125","title":{"rendered":"WASPIs and Votes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll\nscream and scream \u2018til I\u2019m sick!<\/em>\u201d, quoth Violet Elizabeth, William Brown\u2019s\ntiny nemesis. It seems that strategy for getting one\u2019s own way is still\nfavoured in some quarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parity\u2019s last News Briefing<\/a> reported on the failure of the \u201cBack to 6o\u201d campaign\u2019s judicial review. This group of women had sought redress for what they claimed was unfair treatment in the raising of the State Pension Age (SPA) for women from 60 towards equalisation with men. The WASPIs (Women Against State Pension Inequality) are a similar group campaigning for compensation to be given to women born in the 1950s. The exact arguments and objectives of the WASPIs have morphed over time (see Coppola\u2019s The WASPI campaign’s unreasonable demand<\/em><\/a>). The latest incarnation of their claim centres around inadequate warning given to these \u201c1950s women\u201d about the SPA increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this claim being emphatically rejected \u2013 not only by Government<\/a>, but also by judicial review<\/a> – in the current election campaign Jeremy Corbyn has committed to giving the WASPIs what they are asking for, calling it a \u201cmoral debt\u201d. Some sources put the cost as high as \u00a358B<\/a>. The reader may think that this is just another instance of bribing people for votes, I couldn\u2019t possibly comment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us leave\naside that men have had a later SPA than women for many decades prior to last\nyear. Let us leave aside that, even with the same SPA, men will typically enjoy\nfewer years of retirement due to shorter longevity (a life-gap of 3.6 years on\naverage). Let us instead examine whether the specific WASPI claim of inadequate\nwarning about SPA increases is valid, and particular to women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter and verse on the time-line of changes in SPA can be found in House of Commons Briefing Paper CBP-7405 (15 October 2019)<\/a>. This time-line is nicely summarised by Figure 1, taken from Political Quarterly<\/em>, 88(3), 510-516, WASPI’s is (mostly) a campaign for inequality<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 1995\nPensions Act was the first to recognise equalisation of the SPA for men and\nwomen as the objective, and undertook to raise the SPA for women from 60 to 65\nin a phased manner starting in 2010 and completing that process by 2020. Hence\nwomen had between 15 and 25 years warning of the intended SPA increase in 1995.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Brexit is\nalso topical, it is worth noting that this 1995 legislation was, in part, a\nresult of EU pressure. The ruling by the European Court of Justice in 1986 that\nthe UK\u2019s gendered approach to retirement ages was incompatible with the 1976\nEuropean Commission\u2019s Equal Treatment Directive required \u2018progressive\nimplementation\u2019 of equalisation of pension rights. Ironically, this landmark\nEuropean Court ruling related to a case brought against HM Government by a\nwoman. She had complained that the Area Health Authority for which she worked\nrequired her to retire at the age of 60, despite her desire to go on working.\n(Just when you thought it was the EU being nice to men, eh? Not at all, just a\ngood illustration that the globalist\u2019s advocacy of \u201cwomen\u2019s rights\u201d is actually\na cover for getting women working more hours). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2007 the\n(Labour) Government first instituted a planned rise in SPA, for both sexes,\nfirst to 66 by 2024 and then to 67 by 2036, and then to 68 by 2046. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was\nsuperseded in 2011 by the (Con-Lib Coalition) Government which made two changes\nto the timetable. It accelerated the final phase of the equilibrating of the\nSPA for the sexes by accomplishing the increase in women\u2019s SPA from 63 to 65\nbetween 2016 and 2018 rather than between 2016 and 2020, i.e., bringing its\ncompletion forward by two years. But the 2011 Pensions Act also brought forward\nachieving the SPA of 66 from 2024 to 2019. Hence, this change was brought\nforward by 5 years and was to be implemented in a single year, 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1 is\nthe clearest depiction of all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women\nmost severely impacted by the 2011 changes are those who turned 64 in 2018 who\nmight have expected to receive their state pension that year, but will now have\nto wait two more years, receiving their pension at age 66 in 2020 (along with\nmen of the same age). Note that the greatest impact is a two year delay, not five\nyears. These, most impacted women, therefore had 7 years warning that they\nwould not receive their pension in 2018 (the changes having been enacted,\nrecall, in 2011). Is this not reasonable warning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case,\nmen were in a similar position. A man turning 65 in 2018 would have expected to\ndraw his pension that year, but the same 2011 Act meant that he would have to\nwait another year until he was 66 to do so. Such men also had the very same 7\nyears warning of this change. This is sufficient to obliterate the WASPI\u2019s\nclaim \u2013 unless the same claim of inadequate warning were to be made for men \u2013\nbut the WASPIs are entirely blind to the position of men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[As it\nhappens, the author of this article is a case in point. I was 65 this year but\nwill not get my state pension until next year. However, there is no WASPI\ncampaign for me, I note \u2013 not that I want one].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the 2011\nAct were implemented for men \u2013 but the situation for women remained as it was\nin 2007 under the Labour Government – Figure 1 shows that equalisation of the\npension age for the two sexes would have been pushed out to year 2036. This\nillustrates graphically how fraudulent is the WASPI claim to be based on\n\u201cequality\u201d. It is actually inspired by \u201cwomen\u2019s equality\u201d, which surely by now\nwe all know is actually code for preferencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having\nstarted by ignoring the starkly obvious state pension inequality which has\nprevailed for decades prior to last year, namely that to men\u2019s disadvantage, it\nis perhaps relevant to note that it is men who continue to pump the\noverwhelming bulk of the monies into the exchequer which pays for pensions, and\nindeed all public expenditure. The taxation, benefits and pensions systems form\na mechanism for the transfer of money from men to women. That is the rather\nlarge elephant which goes unnoticed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raises another, and more egregious, pension inequality: that between the public and private sectors. The disparity between the two is now quite obscene<\/a> as the public sector continues to live in a never-never land of unfunded \u201cdefined benefit\u201d Ponzi pension schemes, underwritten by the taxpayer. With twice as many women as men in the public sector, this is another aspect of the men-to-women money syphon. But this one is unsustainable, and public sector workers are in for a shock as inevitable as arithmetic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally,\nall this highlights yet another genuine equality issue: that between the\ngenerations. Just as all Government promises, funded by borrowing or taxation,\nare a burden upon the younger generations, so the WASPI claim is also. I doubt\nthat Corbyn would deliver on his promise, even were he to become PM. But if he\ndid, even the most cursory attention to balancing the books would require\npassing the bill onto younger people, of both sexes, in the form of further\naccelerations in SPA increases.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ll scream and scream \u2018til I\u2019m sick!\u201d, quoth Violet Elizabeth, William Brown\u2019s tiny nemesis. It seems that strategy for getting one\u2019s own way is still favoured in some quarters. Parity\u2019s last News Briefing reported on the failure of the \u201cBack to 6o\u201d campaign\u2019s judicial review. This group of women had sought redress for what they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3130,"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions\/3130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}