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MACRON MUST APOLOGISE

John Redwood
@johnredwood
·
2h
Offering us a loan of the Bayeux embroidery reminds us of the invasion and the way so many English were forced into serfdom by the Normans. It depicts the violent deaths of English soldiers.

https://x.com/johnredwood/status/1942807774389256453

Trying to get people outraged or emotionally invested in the outcome of events 1000 years ago is a bold move.

I often think society can be weirdly specific about which historic sins we are supposed to still feel guilty about on an individual level and which not, but that one may be a stretch.

Tommy R has 'light touch' endorsed Advance UK which might push their membership up a bit with his followers (they sit at a bit over 10,000, largest UK party with no elected representatives)

The RSPB has 1.2 million members and no elected representatives.

Wot? You are ignoring Angela and Maria Eagle.

And Jodie Gosling.

One Swallow. And a couple of Martins. Two Reeves (which are female Ruff). Plus a Woodcock.

Oh, and a Peacock

And a lot of tits of various colours...

Tsk. Everyone knows most tits are blue.

Various shades of blue.

True. Anyhow I'm now sitting at the bottom of the largest puffin colony outside Iceland, on a glorious day, me and the dog watching all puffins buzzing back and forth, forever busy

Irony is we have many MPs and public figures queuing up to demand compensation for the WASPE women who don’t deserve a penny.

The Waspy women thing was entirely without merit but had the politically critical quality of being easy to understand. Hence the number of MPs and others lining up behind it. And hence the fondness for issues involving calculable amounts of free money to a readily identifiable group. See also WFA and last week's benefits shambles and two child cap which have the same quality.

Surely the WASPI issue is simple.

I have had my retirement age pushed back several times. The changes were decades into the future and made no effect to my plans.

Some of the WASPI women were told that instead of being able to retire and draw your pension next year, you now have to wait 6 years. That's a massive difference.

"But the law changed in 1995" seems to be the defence, Sure. Who goes around proactively checking Hansard in case the government have changed the law against you? They started writing to the affected in 2009 about the change coming into effect the following year. Not much notice if you'd planned to retire and now couldn't.

That is simply untrue. The claim is that they were not individually notified when the law changed. I.e. no letter, phone call etc. But it was on the news. In the papers. They have not a leg to stand on.

No-one had the rug pulled from under them at the last minute and its ridiculous to say it was.

I would say WASPI Women had one leg to stand on, but not two. There were two major changes in the state pension as they affected women. The 1995 Pensions Act increased women's retirement age to match men at 65. The increase would be tapered over ten years from 2010 to 2020. The 2011 Act accelerated the 65 age to 2008 and also introduced a new 66 age for both men and women starting in 2020.

Pensions aren't always fixed for all time but they are a promise that you shouldn't break casually. If you do change your commitment you should do so equitably and give people reasonable notice so they can adjust.

I would say the 1995 Act satisfied both those requirements, but the 2011 Act did not. Some women in effect would have to work three years extra under the 2011 legislation, with less than five years to adjust. I don't think five years is enough notice anyway but in practice it's less than that as it takes time to get letters out to everyone. The legislation was challenged and the government implicitly acknowledged it was unacceptable by capping the extra period of work at 18 months. By this point, the original notice period had been used up so the affected women had to work up to a further 18 months with no notice at all. At the very least they should have restarted the five year countdown.

How much difference would the 18 months have made to their overall pension? The argument always seems to be them claiming for having to work longer, not the financial loss to their pension.

It was a long overdue correction and frankly that they even make the claim betrays them as sexist. Equal rights, as long as it favours women.

For all the approbation against WASPI Women, the fact is, the government screwed up. The WASPI claim was drawn way too broad but nevertheless they have a very legitimate narrower grievance.

The government should have let the original tapered increase run to 2020 for women's retirement age at 65 and then introduce the new 66 age for men in 2020 and women in 2022, or both in 2022. Then there wouldn't have been a problem.

I don't believe that this is true. Peoples circumstances change all the time. There was ample time to plan. This is about sexism, at heart. Women live longer than men and were being allowed to retire earlier. That was changed, and not over night. Sure some changes may have been brought forward but so what? The way they talk its as if on their leaving do they were suddenly told to work 5 more years, which is a fiction.

MACRON MUST APOLOGISE

John Redwood
@johnredwood
·
2h
Offering us a loan of the Bayeux embroidery reminds us of the invasion and the way so many English were forced into serfdom by the Normans. It depicts the violent deaths of English soldiers.

https://x.com/johnredwood/status/1942807774389256453

Trying to get people outraged or emotionally invested in the outcome of events 1000 years ago is a bold move.

I often think society can be weirdly specific about which historic sins we are supposed to still feel guilty about on an individual level and which not, but that one may be a stretch.

Personally, as I've said before, I'm still bitter about the Norman Conquest. But I suspect this is a niche position and those who are relaxed about it will get no less so based on the inanity of John Redwood.
And even I don't want the French to apologise. The amount of responsibility born by the current generation of French people is exactly zero.

The people who would need to be dealt with about the Norman Conquest aren't the French who are over there, it's the Normans who came over here and have been lording it over the subjugated people of England ever since.