News OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from Dorothy Gregory, Ed
I am one of almost 10,000 1950s women who live on the Isle of Wight who have suffered at the hands of successive governments who thought it a great idea to equalise the State Pension for men and women to the same retirement age.
Unfortunately for this cohort we have been totally shafted, as like myself we were forced to work an extra five years and ten months longer to bring us in line with men’s pension age.
Long-running inequalities
Life was not equal for 50s born men and women, equal pay and employment rights were virtually non- existent. Therefore there were huge inequalities between men and women working in the 60s/70s and beyond.
Of course there’s a cut off date and once we all had numerous years added to our pension it is now law that men and women now retire and receive their state pension at 66 years of age currently and it’s now widely publicised that this will increase as time goes on.
There are long and protracted stories about how this was done, safe to say most of nearly 3.8 million 1950s women were not advised personally of these changes, it was carried out by stealth.
Early Day Motion
There is what is called an EDM – Early Day Motion that MPs can sign and once there is a majority they can bring the subject matter to parliament.
Our MP, Robert Seely, regularly does not sign EDMs or abstains, in fact, in my view, his voting record is abysmal when it comes to people matters.
Held accountable
I have written to him in total three times (again yesterday) to ask him to sign an EDM ….. and I know what his answer will be, there’ll be no change to his last two replies.
In this an election year I would appreciate if Mr Seely could be publicly called out to respond to this injustice of the 1950s women on the Island, as his current record shows no interest whatsoever.
There were 3.8 million 1950s women when we first started fighting for justice about the swingeing changes to our state pension age (many have since passed away) suffering at the hands of Government ministers.
Osborne: Probably saved more money than anything else we’ve done
In fact George Osbourne is quoted as saying,
“I’ve found it one of the less controversial things we’ve done and probably saved more money than anything else we’ve done.”
To say that his statement infuriated 1950s women is an understatement.
Crowdfunding to fight our case
1950s women have crowdfunded various legal representations on our behalf to no avail, we’ve brought our case to the ombudsman to very little avail and now we’re crowdfunding to get more legal representation through CEDAWinLAW which specifically represents discrimination against women to fight for our cause all over again.
Our fight for justice has gone on for over seven years we are tired of negative outcomes and just want what was ours as expected when we started work.
In this an election year it might stir Mr Seely into some action.
Extra info
For those interested in reading more, see:
- Revealed: The £271 billion “rape” of the National Insurance Fund that deprived 50s women of their state pension by David Hencke
- Exclusive: Now 9.8 million men over 60 had their national insurance contributions paid by the state by David Hencke
Article edit
11.50am 6th Feb 2024 – Quote from GO added along with additional reading links
