“I am a person who also needs to survive.”
And why the BackTo60 Facebook crowdfunder is essential to bring these sad facts for many more to light
This is a tragic tale that I suspect is being repeated across the UK now we have the largest number of deaths in Europe. It gives a little glimpse into the human cost behind the cold harsh statistics of the daily death toll. Her daughter contacted me and she agreed to be interviewed.
Ray and Lesley Myers thought they had their retirement well planned. He would get his pension at 65 and one year later she would get hers at 60.
He was a successful self employed builder in Cheshire. They had a comfortable four bedroomed house and two lovely daughters.
Then at 60 Ray developed cancer and was unable to work. They downsized from their four…
View original post 657 more words
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 
I am a fifties woman who won’t receive her pension until January 2021 when I will be 66. I paid full NI contributions and worked from leaving school at 15 until I had to stop to care for a husband who has had two brain tumours and now Lewy Body Dementia. We have no savings and live off his State Pension, Carers Allowance and Disability Living Allowance, my pension for the last five years would have been a massive help. The point is, why are figures being bandied about regarding the cost of paying us the six years we are owed? We paid in and they should pay out when it’s due. Self-employed are being helped more in the current crisis than we are, the forgotten fifties women who nobody cares about. I understand the need to raise the pension age but because a high percentage of women received no notification of the rise, they didn’t make alternative arrangements. Keep the age at 66 for equalisation purposes as has been stated, but give us our rightful pension. I’m 65, have Emphysema and am a full-time carer for my husband yet my GP told me I can get a job, who is going to employ me and who is going to take care of my husband. Should I put him in a home and cost the government thousands of pounds a year?
Raising the pension age was an ideological choice, not an economic necessity. They have systematically robbed our pension pots for decades and it amounts to robbery, a crime. I hope we can get justice for fifties women and all who stand to be robbed in the future.