Pensioners ‘win’ £23k
MORE than 74,000 married women are set for a
£23,000 windfall due to underpaid state pensions.
They are part of a group of 200,000 pensioners, including widows and
over-80s, who are owed a total of £3billion.
The cash fund has been announced after the Government found systemic failures to automatically award pension pay rises stretching back over
30 years.
Some widowed retirees are owed an average of
£17,000, rising to £23,000 for married women, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
And 72,000 over-80s are due refunds of more than
£10,000 on average. The Government will dole out the money in lump sums totalling more than £570million every year until 2026.
SUSPICIOUS wife Lucy Batchelor “catfished” her husband – and shocked him as he prepared for a hotel sex tryst.
Lucy, 46, posed online as glamorous “Lorraine” after finding Allan Coates’ active profile on the dating website Plenty Of Fish.
She set up the hotel meeting – and left him gobsmacked when he answered the door.
She said: “We started off chatting and I wanted to see how far he’d go. But he fell for it hook, line and sinker. I could never have dreamed it would end up with me catfishing him.”
Lucy, who has two children from a previous relationship, wed Allan, 48, in 2016. Later, despite still loving each other, they decided they needed “time and space”.
But she had a gut feeling something wasn’t right and started searching dating sites for Allan, a food and beverage manager.
She said: “I set up a fake profile. I used a photo of a random attractive woman I found on the internet and called her Lorraine.
“I created Allan’s ideal woman – European looks, works in hotels, basically nothing like me. Within just a few swipes I’d found him.”
It wasn’t long before the messages turned flirty. Lucy was horrified when Allan sent explicit pictures and videos.
She said: “Tears streamed down my cheeks as Allan told Lorraine he should never have married me because he didn’t love me enough.
“I was heartbroken, hurt and humiliated. When Lorraine asked Allan to meet at a hotel for sex, he jumped at the chance.”
Lucy added: “When I knocked on the door of Allan’s hotel room that day I was truly terrified. I was shaking from head to toe.
“His face was a picture when he opened it and found me standing there instead of Lorraine.”
Allan refused to believe he’d been fooled and messaged Lorraine to say he didn’t want to lose her. Then Lucy turned her evidence into a shocking video, detailing every message he’d sent.
A caption read: “Every word, every photo, I was watching.”
The couple, who lived in Daventry, Northants, are now divorced. Lucy said: “I’m better off without him.”
Allan confirmed the “catfish” was called Lorraine and admitted it was a shock to be confronted by Lucy at the hotel.
He said: “I regretted it. We were going through a bad time. I wandered, shall we say.”