Norfolk women stage ‘suffragette’ protest over increased state pension age
![[Image: Eastern Daily Press.]](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160920-Norfolk-WASPI-protest-Eastern-Daily-Press.jpg)
[Image: Eastern Daily Press.]
Women from the PAIN [Pension Action In Norfolk] – WASPI [Women Against State Pension Injustice] Norfolk Group symbolically ‘chained’ themselves to the bandstand at Chapelfield Gardens, wearing garb reminiscent of the suffrage movement and holding signs saying: ‘I have my vote, now I want my pension!’
“It’s raining today but if we don’t get what we want it’ll be raining for 40 days and 40 nights,” Helen McDermott, a host on Mustard TV, said during a speech at the protest.
Changes in 1995 and 2011 to the state pension age mean women born on or after April 6, 1951 can expect to retire up to six years later than they had originally planned.
Some 45,000 women in Norfolk are affected by the decision. To add insult to injury, the protestors said, successive governments sent some women letters about the change in policy, but gave others no warning at all.
Source: Norfolk women wage war over increased state pension age – Politics – Eastern Daily Press
ADVERT
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
The real people are beginning to speak loudly at last. This whole pensions saga
has been a crock of cack since day 1 and just seems to have developed into a nice little earner for Governments to save and continually reduce their liabilities and their debt mountain. .
Well it is about equality, why should women, who generally speaking live longer than men retire 5 years earlier than men? Equal pay equal rights equal retirement age.
Looks like people are at last seeing the light and with Jeremy’s help get the respect they deserve
Re letters from the government about the changes in pension policy. I am sure there are millions of us still waiting for the mythical letters. I would have been retiring in 8 months from now (at 60) but have still not been informed. It is not as if the DWP/govt. don’t know my address as I am in contact with them for other reasons.
What makes it even worse is, I asked for a pension forecast about 4 years ago. I received the info. that I had the full number of years of NI contributions, but no mention of any change of when I would receive the pension.
I would say this makes the government guilty of deliberately hiding the truth.
It’s interesting that 30 years on from the radical feminists drive for equality, they are now griping about it, especially as it’s rumored females live longer. The age increase is of course unwelcome for any sex and I must agree that this is inequitable for this age group, as these are the very people who have paid their due’s and expect better treatment. The workplace pensions are another travesty waiting in the wings, in my view, nothing short of embezzlement.
It’s nothing to do with equality and all to do with the DWP saving money. Many women have been robbed of a few years of their expected pension.
After which, the argument has never been about equalisising the age, but the unfair way that what was to be a gradual transition to equalising and then raising the retirement age was accelerated by the last government, giving less than the ten years warning which they are meant to give, as well as not officially communicating this to many women at all.
Therefore the government are in the wrong about accelerating it to that extent and not giving proper warning about it.
This has led to many women now in their early sixties left in a financial limbo land, with some cruelly dragged into employment offices and harassed about getting jobs that hardly anyone is going to give them.
As for the increase of longevity, between the nasty tactics of the DWP towards the working-age population, and the undermining privatisation (for the profit of a few) of NHS provision, our government is doing all that it can to reverse that trend.