Underestimate Waspi warriors at your peril

FOR A minute there it looked like those gutsy, lion-hearted Waspi women had finally triumphed. After a ten-year compensation battle – after having had their lives devastated by botched state pension age changes – the parliamentary watchdog at long last ruled that the Government HAD been wrong.

The ombudsman – a woman in this case – said that these indomitable Waspi Warriors could be owed up £10.5billion in payouts – not an unreasonable amount considering the Government saved £181million by enforcing pension age changes in the cack-handed way it did. She also said the women were owed an apology by the Government and an acknowledgment of its failings.

But of course, that’ll never happen because the minute it apologises, the Government will be compelled to pay up. What possible excuse would it have not to?

What’s happened to these women IS a betrayal. I’m a Waspi (Woman Against State Pension Inequality), born in the 1950s, and even as a journalist with all the research I do and the access to information I have, I literally wasn’t aware of those pension changes made back in 1995 or what they would mean.

And if someone like me – whose job it is to know what new laws are being passed and how they will affect people – didn’t know, it’s not surprising millions of others didn’t. Up to 3.8 million women should have received letters years in advance warning them of the changes so that they could prepare. That didn’t happen.

Which is precisely why the Government needs to pay up – and a damn sight more than the pathetic £3,000 per person the ombudsman has recommended.

I’m lucky because the changes didn’t affect me. I love my job. It’s (reasonably) well paid and I never want to retire. I’m like an old workhorse who’ll go on till I drop or till I’m put out to pasture. But it wasn’t like that for millions of women.

Many wanted to retire – they expected to,

I CAN’T claim to have worked this out myself, but the next time you hear that the vacuous, under-achieving, not very bright Penny Mordaunt is yet again trying to steal Rishi Sunak’s job, just remind yourself that her name is an anagram of PUNY ADORNMENT. Says it all…

they needed to, yet these changes meant they lost out on up to £60,000 in state pension income.

The Waspis are already sensing that this Tory Government is going to kick this can down the road until it gets kicked out at the election, which will then make it Keir Starmer’s problem.

And it’s why the Waspis have been very smart in asking Sir Keir what HE intends to do for them if or when he gets to be PM. He’s been non-committal, of course – as he is on everything. Maybe he also thinks he can kick this “problem” into the long grass.

Well, if he does, he really doesn’t know or understand these women.

Yes, they won a moral victory this week but they want justice and they won’t give up until they get it. They’ve fought for nearly ten years and it’s clear they’re ready to fight on – shaming successive governments and politicians as they go. I’m sure down the years, both Labour and the Tories dismissed the Waspis as an ageing band of women who would eventually run out of steam.

But despite the fact that one of them is dying every 13 MINUTES – 270,000 have passed so far without ever having received a penny in compo – the warriors that remain still have the bit between their teeth and don’t intend to roll over.

Over the years I’ve had some experience of the Waspis and rarely have I come across a more determined, more committed band of campaigners than them.

I have every confidence they WILL get justice in the end. Of course, no amount of compensation they get will make up for what they’ve lost but I feel now that this isn’t just about the money any more.

It’s about righting a cruel and serious wrong that was perpetrated against a group of women the Government believed to be so weak they would just go quietly.

Well they haven’t. And Keir Starmer should understand that they won’t.

So he’d better steel himself and have some kind of “fix” in mind otherwise these brave girls will – quite rightly – make his life hell!