‘We’re not whiners’ Woman’s message for Widdecombe
WOMEN have hit out at new Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe for branding members of the WASPI generation as “whingers and whiners” during a visit to Gloucester.
Thousands across Gloucestershire are awaiting the outcome of a critical court case this week when top lawyers will claim they were not given enough notice about raising the age women can claim their state pension.
But 71-year-old Ms Widdecombe, who helped bring in the equalisation, was dismissive when a group of WASPI campaigners demonstrated outside her Gloucester Brexit Party rally.
She denied they did not have enough notice and branded some of them whingers and whiners.
Ms Widdecombe has since been elected to the European Parliament
with Nigel Farage’s new party, The Brexit Party.
Jane Hunt, 64, from Bishops Cleeve, was one of the many women upset by Ms Widdecombe’s comments as she lost out when the pension age was rapidly equalised.
She said: “I take exception that I am being classed as a whinger and whiner.
“Having started work on Saturdays and during the school holidays from the age of 14-and-a-half, I have worked full-time since I was 17. “Because I married late I did not have any career breaks to have children so I worked full-time until I was 60. We had to look for new jobs when we moved to the Cotswolds and that’s when I went part-time.
“I retrained and at 65 next month I am still working one long day a week standing in a pharmacy.
“I’m not in bad health but, like it or not, age does gradually creep up on you.”
Outspoken Ms Widdecombe made her comments at Gloucester Guildhall and dismissed arguments that older women cannot get jobs or struggle to work beyond the age of 60.
She denied she was lucky to be able to fall back on a lucrative TV career on programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and said: “I am 71 and I am applying for one hell of a job. I don’t want to hear about people needing to retire at 60, they don’t.”
But Jane pointed out that she retrained several times over the years so she could carry on working after being made redundant and has worked in offices, department stores, a dementia home and now a chemist.
Although she will be 65 this month, she will have to wait until March 2020 to claim her state pension but says she is one of the lucky WASPI women.
“I am luckier than most because I have my health and a younger husband who is still working, but you hear horrendous stories about women who have to carry on even though they have cancer or others who have had to sell their homes to make ends meet.
She added: “I am so pleased that Ann has a new job at 71. She is very lucky to be getting her state pension and choosing to work.
“I wish the rest of us had that choice, personally I feel I have done my bit for this country and have well and truly earned my pension and retirement.
“She has the cheek to to call us selfentitled. I used to read her column and follow her but now I don’t. My blood pressure would take it.”
For many years men could claim their pension at the age of 65 and 60 for women but this was equalised in 2010 by the the Pensions Act 1995.
All women born after April 1955 had to wait until they were 65 to pick up their state pension and further increases mean it will be 66 for men and women by 2020, and 67 by 2028.
The Treasury say the changes are needed because of a large increase life expectancy but WASPI say the rapid way it was brought in discriminated against those close to retirement age who either did not know or have enough notice to plan for the drop in income.