Your editorial (Pensions: This generation of women deserves better, 11 October) highlights the continuing unfairness of the 2011 changes in the state pension age for women born in the 1950s.
One of the worst aspects for some is the cliff over which those of us born in 1954 fall. A cause of real hardship for many, as you reported, I know it contributed to one dear friend taking her life. Having worked and contributed all her life but now over 60, unemployed and frustrated, the lack of her own pension for years to come compounded her feelings of despair and powerlessness.
School friends in the same class born at the end of 1953 get their state pension years earlier than those born a few months later. A fairer transition scheme is urgently needed.
Pam Alexander
London
• Judith Abbs (Letters, 9 October) wonders how she can use the 25p-a-week increase in her state pension on reaching the age of 80 to enhance her quality of life. Her pension, like mine, is paid every four weeks, so I suggest she buys herself a £1 scratchcard on pension day (the kind that pays top prize of £100,000). I’ve won £2 lots of times (nice bar of chocolate) and £10 several times (decent bottle of red). And then, of course, there’s the pulse-racing business of scratching off the numbers to see if maybe – just maybe – one’s won thousands.
Helena Newton
Ilford, London
• If I ever get to 80, and if the extra 25p per week described by your correspondent is still going, I would save up for a year, then on my 81st birthday I could probably use the £13 to get a coffee and a chocolate croissant in a cafe, to celebrate my birthday! Depending on inflation.
I would be miffed if I didn’t get to 81, but I would stipulate in my will that however much savings I had amassed (£3.25, £6.50, maybe £9.75?) be divided between my three grandchildren, so it wouldn’t go to waste.
But I must ask, can anyone at the Treasury tell us how much it costs to implement this increase?
Henrietta Cubitt
Cambridge
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