Pension No Gender ?

[EDDIE51]

I am due to get my state pension next week at age 65 (straight100% male)
Someone in the pub suggested I could have got it 5 years earlier ifI had a sex change!
It was only a joke but is it true?
Also what is the pension date for someone who says they are 'gender neutral' or transexual ? Has anyone even given thought to this?
I know it will not matter within a few years as pension dates are being harmonised but it could be important to a 62 year old transexual.

[Tilly2]

I doubt it very much. They look for all sorts of ways to delay paying out the state pension. I don't think a sex change would wing it!

[murraymints]

i believe there is a test case going through now....but it all hinges on your birth certificate I think, for now anyway

[EDDIE51]

^^ Yes that's what I thought,but there are cases where birth certificate have had to be changed.

[murraymints]

think that is where mistakes in clear identification of gender have been made though..not a life choice to change gender from birth

[Old_Geezer]

Then if gives the lie to the idea of changing sex. One can mimic but not change. B daft to treat genders differently at pension age anyway. Should have moved everyone down to 60, or less if more job positions opening up would help unemployment figures, and left it like that.

[Dogsbody2]

OG. Brilliant idea of yours that unfortunately fails to account for the astronomical cost to the public purse of funding the State Pension five years early.

[Old_Geezer]

And the astronomic saving of getting folk off welfare and into jobs five years earlier ? Folk ought not get misguided into considering pensions in isolation.

[Dogsbody2]

The two opposing sums of money don't even start to balance each other out, I'm afraid.

If it were that simple, even ex-Chancellor Balls wouldn't have (lived up to his name and) messed that simple one up.

[Old_Geezer]

Can't be. Both requires a living income to an individual. If they are not the same then that is something else that needs looking at.

At present all we have is decent worker abuse. If you have been employed in the past and have done your bit we'll renege on our promises and keep your pension from you for years longer, whilst those unable or unwilling to get jobs can be supported by the tax we get off of you whilst forcing you to remain unemployed.

Not only do the figures have to balance or be made to, it's morally imperative that they do.