Today: the decision on SPA embezzled 1950s born women is due at 10.30 am BST. At stake here is the removal of a basic civil right. Will the judges do the Right Thing….or the usual thing?
Whatever today’s decision brings for the Backto60 Waspi cause, widespread MSM coverage hasn’t been one of them so far. The Times has ignored the story since October last year, the Daily Telegraph since January this year, and the Daily Mirror’s search engine more or less answered, “Wot?”
The main regional paper in Gloucestershire is, however, on the case.
This just about reflects the original communication of the SPA changes, which was – as these columns have established many times – eccentric in its media choice, mendacious in its content, changeable from year to year, and inaccurate in its predictions of how and when the changes would be phased in.
Three years ago, the Ombudsman finally got around to sifting through the complaints received for the best part of a decade, and then released a number of updates explaining why, for umpteen reasons, they couldn’t comment sub judice, the details were sketchy, the cases were complicated, and the wind direction wasn’t always favourable.
Two years on, we await further developments. The silence has been ear-splitting.
The SPA Victims case deserves massive highlighting in this Five Freedoms Week at The Slog, not least because it demonstrates the callous and disinterested tone of the State these days, and its willingness to dismiss charges of unfairness….in the certainty that no limb of the State will step out of line. The overwhelming feeling among those determined to oppose liberty-erosion is the total lack of any meaningful media, judicial, political or Executive redress available. As with the Constitution of the USSR, it all reads very well, but it can neither speak nor walk.
The injustice of the sly and opportunistic way UK government began, forty years too late, to correct its own past cowardice and stupidities, has been at times breathtaking. The hypocrisy of ‘it’s all about gender equality’ or ‘austerity demands it’ or ‘everyone knew really’ has been equalled only by the refusal to accept that – had the State been a private pension provider – giving notice that it couldn’t deliver 45 years into a 60 year contract would have found all those concerned heading towards prison for fraud. The feeble nature of ‘the payments could never have covered the cost of the pension’ is an almost surreal example of saying “We were incompetent, but it’s your fault for not spotting that”. Caveat emptor, eat your heart out.
15 hours ago on Twitter, the Backto60 campaign tweeted that they were expecting “full restitution of their rights”. The DWP told the FT a year ago that this would cost £181 billion, and was thus unaffordable. It then blew £1.4 trillion on Covid19 Lockdown, and proposed a complete infection testing system for the UK at a cost of £100 billion.
And, as I write, The Express (very old age profile) has reported that expectation.
So a virus that has killed no more than a few thousand citizens aged under 60 is worth eight times more than the poverty of 3.65 million women. The ability of the Conservative Party to plant vast swathes of land with money trees, and bring them hyper-rapidly to fruition, is truly amazing.
The Slog 