• Women of a certain age are widely assuming they will be compensated for not being properly informed by the DWP of changes in their retirement age

• The pensions industry is busy sorting through the nations pension washing with no idea about what spin cycle to put GMP reconciliation (let alone “equalisation”) on!

In short, with respect to April 2016 and the introduction of the new state pension and to this Treasury Statement, we can join Jo Cumbo- that plain-speaking Aussie in pointing out it’s a

Bit of a balls up …, to be frank.

And what are we doing about it?

But before we deride the senior civil servants at the Treasury and DWP , let’s remember that we have a responsibility in this. The DWP’s “Workie” campaign is costing  £40m of our money and there are many who deride that. But Workie is raising awareness among the wider public in a way that all those brown envelopes to women approaching state pension didn’t.

We may be fed up with the ad but we know about it. People know about auto-enrolment, I spoke to a whole load of start ups last night -all knew what auto-enrolment was.

It seems that we moan about effective communication because it costs and we moan about ineffective communication because it wasn’t on the Corrie ad break.

Ros Altmann made it clear in her comments to the Work and Pension Select Committee that what was passed in 2011 is the law and the law was made by a proper democratic process. It may be a bad law but it is the law. When a law is passed-it is up to the Citizens under that law, to obey it- up to the Departments of Government to enforce it.

Crowd justice?

I have started to see the hashtag #crowdjustice appearing alongside #WASPI on social media. There is nothing new about crowds influencing Government and doing it in a positive way, take Ghandi.

But to suggest that justice can be sourced, as finance is sourced, by a group of individuals getting together and campaigning stoutly, is a nonsense. There is a fine line between crowd justice and mob rule and the moment those in the crowd think they have an entitlement, then that line has been crossed. WASPI is now at 120,000 women, rather less than the numbers that rioted from Trafalgar Square against the Poll Tax.

The Poll Tax was not repealed because of  rioting, but because of reasoned debate and that took time. The WASPI debate has been successful , partly because it has been dignified and followed the correct procedures. It will – I am quite sure – influence policy. But WASPI cannot make policy, the crowd cannot overturn the processes of state – ask Wat Tyler (and take Ghandi).

WASPI is raising big issues about entitlement, the Work and Pensions Select Committee want to widen the debate by looking at “fairness” in an intergenerational sense. I have rubbished this idea as I do not think that this debate should happen in a parliamentary committee room.

The importance of WASPI is that it brings questions about what is to be paid and who pays for the nations later years into the living rooms and the pubs and most of all onto the smartphones of the millions of people who are going to get old – or are old. Out here’s where the debate on intergenerational fairness should be going on.

Now you’re talking!

Whether it’s the Treasury and the DWP, tPR and the FCA or big Government and big Society, we have to find new ways to talk.

Brown envelopes get dropped through the wrong letter boxes, get shoved in rubbish bins and their contents get read and never understood. We are not having a conversation between Government and Citizens by sending another 3m brown envelopes by Royal Mail.

We talk in different ways, my son describes his younger brother as “talking in pictures”. Text is not relevant to the Instagram generation. My mother was sent a video of her new car taken by the salesman- so she could see it before she bought it- he sent it by phone to her phone-he made it in 2 minutes.

It didn’t matter that my mother didn’t know how to activate the link, my brother showed it. Now I have the video- it all works!