Nae wonder the Waspi women are revolting.
Were I one of them, I too would be absolutely furious with Keir Starmer’s latest snub to older folk.
Coming on top of our lost winter fuel payments, suspicions he’s got it in for us are rife.
I’m one of the lucky ones who qualified for my pension at 60. However, when steps were taken to equalise up to the men’s qualifying age of 65, these peer wifies born at a certain time in the 1950s missed oot big-time and not given enough time to save for the lost pension years.
It’s nine months since the Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled they should be compensated, reckoned to be between £1,000 and £2,950 each.
But the Tory government continued to ignore the issue. The reason these women feel so betrayed by Labour is because – up until they came into power – party leaders had been supporting their campaign.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Deputy PM Angela Rayner, Starmer himself and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall are all on record in the past pledging compensation for these victims of the system.
So you have to admire Ms Kendall’s gall when she stood up in the Commons on Tuesday and said: “Sorry craiters. We canna afford to pay ye a penny.”
Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the WASPI campaign, it’s the pure hypocrisy of it all that beggars belief in a party which the PM vowed would be above such behaviour and empty promises.
It’s barely six months since the country woke up to what we thought would be a new, honourable era of politics and a government which would stand up for the “working” man and woman. Well, Sir Keir, your six-month report must read: “Dismal failure and bitter disappointment.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal and started her journalism career in 1970.
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