You may have seen the above post appearing on social media this week. Or should I say reappearing. And, quite understandably people, particularly women people, are excited about the possibility of reversing the government’s decision to raise the pension age for women from 60 to 66. There is only one small catch. It isn’t true.
This case was heard in 2019 and, sadly, it was lost. Michael Mansfield QC, who would be a KC today had he nor retired some years ago, isn’t unretiring anytime soon.
Sadly, this is yet another example of things being shared by people, well-meaning like this one or not, who haven’t checked to see if they are true. Someone else shares it and the next thing is people have their hopes raised until some misery guts – me in this case – comes along and points out that this is fake news.
I was pissed off at having one year of my state pension stolen by chancellor George Osborne when the nasty right-wing, austerity-heavy Tory government in which some Lib Dems shamefully took jobs, bumped up the pension age early in that parliament, following the golden rule of politics that you get the nasty stuff out of the way early on and people soon forget about it – until they come to retire and it’s too late then. In reality, many people who would be badly affected by these changes decided to vote Conservative again in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
Mind you, I don’t remember David Cameron in the 2010 election campaign saying, “Ladies, vote Conservative – we will steal six, maybe even seven years, from your pension pot. And in the next 14 years we will fuck the country over so badly you will still probably vote for us”, but that’s what Tories do. They take away with one hand and take away even more with the other.
I rather doubt that Labour, if they win, will be able to undo the pension age changes because of the mess they will inherit from Rishi Sunak, Number 10’s latest useless incumbent, but I do feel that they are far more likely to keep to do what they promise and won’t shaft us royally by doing things they somehow didn’t get mentioned in the party manifesto. Like – oh, let’s think – jacking up the pension age and stealing thousands of pounds from us.
If you were looking forward to the court case on 5th/6th June 2024, I am sorry to disappoint you. I am only the messenger. For many women, six more years in the workplace must feel like a penance, an actual kick in the teeth, a middle finger from the government. Rich people like David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and especially Rishi Sunak, who is almost certainly the richest politician, never mind prime minister, of modern times can retire whenever they like, Sunak to any one of his four homes. Many people will have to work until they drop. It’s a scandal, it happened in plain sight but when we were looking the other way. There’s no press blackout, as the post suggests, because there is no story.
I left the wacky world of full time work some nine years before my state pension age and don’t regret a thing. No one knows what’s round the corner and people retiring at 67 may have many years ahead of them, but the odds are they may not be quite as jolly as when they were, say, 60.
The only pension age changes in the future will be to make them still higher, even though life expectancy in Britain has now stalled and is even falling in some areas. Think of someone you knew and maybe loved who died before they even reached pension age and then imagine what you are going to do. These bastard politicians want you to work until you drop and they’ve already stolen your money, as they have stolen mine. My view, for it’s worth, is enjoy this life because there isn’t another one. And enjoy as much of it as you can. Every extra day in work is a day wasted. In my opinion, obviously.
