Miscanthus
VIP Member
The difference is that pensioners have paid in all their lives.Pensioners on the basic SRP will get most of their rent and Council Tax paid anyway through Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. So £221.20 per week seems a reasonable amount for a single pensioner to live on, especially when you consider the single person rate of UC for an under 25 year old is about £72 per week, or £91 per week if aged over 25.
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While we are talking about lived experience..after my mother died of cancer I was presented with a bill for £12,000 by the care home where my father was suffering from Parkinsons and the associated dementia. He lived another 2 years.
My parents were both 64 when they died. They always worked and paid in all their lives. They saved hard but were never well off.
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Thank you for this post. I was going to say the same, although probably not so well. Many women who had to take lower paid jobs due to raising children did not have the resources to save and any employee pension contributions were reduced.I disagree with this part of your comment personally.
They were always expected to retire at 60 and thus made financial plans accordingly. This is a cohort of women who were disadvantaged in the workplace already due to the era they were born (many women weren’t allowed to join company pension schemes until the 90s, etc). Women face unique obstacles to building pensions compared to men and have done for decades - they often take time out to have children and look after them, they are the ones who often taken on the burden of being unpaid carers to ill relatives, and on average women outlive men.
The changes were brought in and they didn’t adequately inform women - the government didn’t write to any woman affected by the rise for nearly 14 years after the law was passed in 1995. It was not until 2009 to 2013 that the DWP sent people letters about the 1995 and 2011 changes. And in 2011 the government sped up the pension reforms.
Whilst I understand that the government has hardly any money I think it’s unfair that Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves supported these women when they were in the opposition yet changed their minds when they got into power. I was the year when the university fees just for England went up and I remember so many of my cohort voting for Lib Dems especially when Nick Clegg signed that he would not raise tuition fees. Seeing him and others then vote to raise the fees felt like a slap in the face and was very disheartening.
Also women can continue working past pension age now but at that time you were forced to retire at pension age so had no chance of making up the shortfall.
I suggest the OP reads up on the subject before making throwaway comments.
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