A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Pensions, pain and passion: The Chronicles of Kelly
Meet Kelly, a spirited WASPI woman whose life took a life-altering turn after a carjacking incident. We caught up with Kelly about being at the mercy of government sudden shift in pension age, the aftermath of a traumatic event, chocolate blancmange and side hustling on the small screen.
Welcome back to a slice of bread and butter with Alex and Mark from the bread and butter thing. And today we have a special guest. It's Nat Hello, our PR and comms exec. How are you, nat, today?
Speaker 2:Exec exec.
Speaker 3:How are you, nat today? Exec. Wait, when did wow? That was a fast apprenticeship.
Speaker 2:It's got to be said. I always call her exec?
Speaker 3:She does. Should we get back to the intro?
Speaker 2:Yes, hello, it's a lovely blue sky Friday morning and it's great to be sat here chatting to you both. Do we want to say who?
Speaker 1:we are. So we're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of deprived neighbourhoods, to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members get to save money on their shopping, feed the families as well as access other support too, right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1:And this is where we share a slice of life of somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us.
Speaker 2:And this week I met Kelly, and Kelly is a WASPI woman. Her pension was affected because she was one of the 3.6 million women that were financially affected by the government back in 1995 when they changed the state pension age for women from 60 to 65. So she can't get her state pension at 60, she has to get it at 65. She's a ton of fun and I'm surprised she had time to sit and chat. A word of warning Kelly does describe a life experience that's a bit shocking but let's have a listen.
Speaker 4:I'm Kelly Taylor, I'm 66 years old and I'm a WASPI woman as soon as I started work for the GPO, as was my pension was to be withdrawn when I was 60. And so I've always had that in my head when I'm 60, I will be retiring. I'd worked since I was 17 because I'd been to college and that was my expectation, and I was lucky working for the GPO, which I did when they changed to British Telecommunications for 34 years and we parted company after I was carjacked and decided no, this isn't something that I want to do anymore.
Speaker 2:Carjacked is part of your job.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'd been over to Newcastle and, bearing in mind, I live in Manchester, so we had to get up at the crack of dawn and then spend the day at the meeting and then drive all the way back. This particular day I arrived home at quarter past nine and I rang Gordon, my partner, from the top of the road and I said have us a glass of wine ready, love. So quarter past nine I pull up and there's a kid there with a balaclava on and I looked at him and he said something and I said what Next thing? He punched me in the mouth, unbeknownst to me. He had a monkey wrench, so I got a split lip. He tried dragging my keys off me, which he got no chance because I used to ride a horse. Immediate response for me I pulled back, so I nearly had him in the car.
Speaker 2:Bit of muscle memory.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I couldn't help it. Well, you don't know how you're going to react, do you? No? You know the fact that he'd pulled, I'd pulled back, the key chain had broken. The keys went flying. He then went to look for them. I started screeching. Gordon came out and another four guys got out of a car, so there was five of them chasing Gordon around. I know it was surreal. I wasn't being you know clever, I just it's what I thought that's Harvey you can hear.
Speaker 2:By the way, you're having a good meow now oh yeah, he talks he.
Speaker 4:He likes to get his bit in.
Speaker 2:He's been silent all the time I've been here, but now we're recording. He's decided he wants a voice.
Speaker 4:I tell you I just pay all the bills. These cats, they rule the house. Anyway, the long and the short of it with this, I guess it sort of started making me look at my life. These were a known gang and they'd done over 100 of these robberies. They were stealing the type of car they could use for getaways. I was a prime target.
Speaker 2:So what age were you then?
Speaker 4:I would have been in my 40s. The weird thing is with memory I don't remember going to the hospital and I don't remember coming home. I had no idea how I got there. My head does not get that at all. They'd stitched me up at the hospital but I needed plastic surgery at a later date. That was a very dark time and it did actually take me a while to get over that. But then, ironically, I wanted to get back in work as fast as I could and they wouldn't let me go back for three weeks. Interestingly enough, after we'd made the arrangement for me to leave, I was offered a position with what they called a BT local business, and the BT local business was senior managers within the company they paid money in and they started their own little pockets for small, medium and enterprise businesses. So I went and joined one of those and I worked for them for 10 years.
Speaker 2:So you've had a long-term career with the GPO, BT and some of the offshoots of BT. Let me bring you back to WASPI. Yeah, so during all of this time everybody's paying into your pension. Yeah, Did you go all the way to what you thought was pensionable age?
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. I did, without a doubt. So I had a BT pension that I'd started when I was 17, and and you can imagine, can't you? Well, I'm 17, why do I want to talk pensions? But you know what, thank god, I did, because that's the way I've survived. It's the only way I've survived. For me, the talk about, oh, you need to manage your pension, you need to do this. Well, hello, I did. And then I found I wasn't. Well, my late 50s I started with diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, all the usual suspects, and then in my 60s, I got something called diverticulitis. For anybody, if they're listening, look it up. I'm not explaining it.
Speaker 2:I can't spell it.
Speaker 4:You'll manage. So I had all these things and really I went from having a really well-paid job and my career plan at 60 was when I retired. I thought I'll go and work for Astor Stacking Shelves and that was my career path.
Speaker 2:I was really looking forward to it so you could go and get a low-paid job, but it would be subsidized by the pension yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:But what I ended up doing was then withdrawing from my BT pension a lump sum. So I had to because I actually thought that I would continue till I was 60 in the employment that I was doing. It didn't work out that way, so I went to work for Alstern. I had 18 months of fun, it was great. But then I realised, you know, like this isn't going to last forever and I thought, right, I need to do something now. And, um, I was very lucky. I became a manager at British Gas, a team manager on a contact centre, and what age was this now?
Speaker 4:crikey, would you believe, but I was actually 55, so I know um. So my salary increased so it meant I was okay and I took out another pension. I got five and a half years with a good company. Things changed and sadly they made redundancies and I put my hand up.
Speaker 2:So, five years on, you're 60 at this point. Yeah, you're thinking I can get my pension.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but I knew WASPI was going on and I thought, well, you never know, because there were so many positive things being said about, oh, it could change. Anyway, it didn't. And now for anybody who knows anything about it, the last government had gone in front of the board and they'd said, yeah, you've got to compensate these women. But in actual reality, if I'd have got my pension at 60, they would have owed me about 46,000 pounds Today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked it out.
Speaker 4:So you're looking at £46,000.
Speaker 2:So if you had your chance to say anything to government, what would you say?
Speaker 4:Get your finger out and do what's right and just remember you will be 66 plus one day and think would you like to be treated like this? Because if the answer is yes, then you're a weirdo, ok.
Speaker 2:That brings us on to you retiring. Yeah, you retired. You don't strike me as somebody that's just going to sit still.
Speaker 4:No, I'm not. I also work when I can. Somebody that's just going to sit still? No, I'm not. I also work when I can, if there's anything going on telly or on a film or what if I send you in? I've been in happy valley, alma's not normal holly oaks as an extra yeah, they'll know me on Alma's Not Normal doing the Zumba. They'll see me at the front because all you can see is me.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to have to get a screen grab of that. I was going to take a photo of you for the podcast, but scratch that. I'm just going to take a screen grab of Alma's Not Normal doing Zumba, yes, and you'll see me there, but I did have a good run of almost three weeks on.
Speaker 4:Everyone else burns now every. I don't know if anybody's right. I love that, but you'll see me on it. This is why I love it so much. It's exciting. It's not dull I mean, for god's sake, for 34 years telephone equipment. It's not sexy five and a half years british gas energy.
Speaker 2:You're beyond dull. Okay, it's not in your this is my time okay. So when we first started chatting off, mike, what you did say well to me was waspy woman, lovely home, but the reserves are running out, yeah I've never been tight with money.
Speaker 4:I've always been lucky, because when you work in a sales environment you can earn bonuses. I've saved my money and I'm now at a point where the money I'd saved is running down very, very fast. And what do you think is doing that? Bags of crisps. So you get a bag of walker's crisps 99p for six when they're on offer, I understand, and this isn't that many years ago. And now you can get two packets for three pound fifty. You know warburton's bread was a pound one. Pound forty is the cheapest you'll find right, so food is really expensive absolutely, and I just buy now whatever's on offer.
Speaker 2:And this is how you come to bread and butter right.
Speaker 4:Well, actually it was a neighbour over the way. Her daughter lives up near where the Scout Hut is, yep, and they'd seen it, which is one of the hubs. Yeah, she'd gone, enjoyed it, and we were just chatting and she said about the bread and butter thing and I said never heard of it. So, with no more ado, I googled it, I signed up and then I became a regular and you know what there's? For three bags of shopping for £8.50. It's fantastic. And even if there's stuff that I don't eat, I've got my sister, I've got my neighbours here, so there's always somebody well, you're using it beautifully.
Speaker 2:That's the way we always say share, yeah, share food, or share ideas. If you don't know what it is, people will tell you how to cook it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's nice because we've got a community plot as well on the allotment. So we try and do things within the community. So if there's ever anything that we can share, well we do.
Speaker 2:So what is the weirdest thing you've had from a bread and butter bag?
Speaker 4:Oh my God, that's easy.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure. I want to know now.
Speaker 4:Oh no, it was amazing. I've never seen anything like them in my life. It was two large plastic bags filled with something brown and I took them home. I put them in the freezer. I thought, well, I've got no idea what these are. Anyway, a day later, an email comes out. It was frozen chocolate blancmange. Wow, I just thought I'll put it in the freezer, it'll be all right.
Speaker 2:Frozen chocolate blancmange okay.
Speaker 4:But, it tasted all tasted alright, but there was a lot of it chocolate bemonge.
Speaker 1:Yum, it's a bit of a marmite thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:chocolate bemonge yeah, it just reminds me of school dinners it reminds me of my grandma's house in the rabbit mould so 80s. So, alex and Nat, what have you seen? Any weird food in our hubs or in our bags? The giant bratwurst oh, arca said about the. She described it as the big sausage yeah she described it as the big sausage.
Speaker 3:I mean, I haven't seen anything like that no, what have you seen?
Speaker 2:that's weird and wonderful when you've been beetling about over there the thing that I've seen is there used to be catering packs of milkshakes and they were like one and a half litre, two litre can't remember, but they were big. They obviously went in a machine so it was just like a plastic bag, like a bag of sick almost. But because they wobbled about in your fridge and they were kind of brown coloured, all the members call them Jabba the Hutt.
Speaker 1:The chips, the chips from Wellerks. They aren't bizarre, but they were big and they were tasty yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know how much you know about those, but Wellerks are a food processor, high-end one, catering for restaurants. So if a Michelin-starred chef wants his chips precisely cut to a particular size and shape, or potentially blanched or whatever, that's what they do for him, so they kind of do all the prep on them and then they backpack them and send them to him. Him somehow they've got a specialism in it and all the chefs know and they all ring them up saying I want it this way, that way. That is a weird one. But kelly, a car jack, that's a first.
Speaker 1:That's horrific horrible, that's horrible. I mean, that's life-changing, isn't it? I mean, she retold the story with a smile on her face.
Speaker 2:But that's Kelly right. It just seems to be a smile on her face, no matter what happens in her life.
Speaker 1:That's got to be life-changing and I want to know how it affected Gordon, poor Gordon.
Speaker 2:Poor Gordon, yeah Came to the rescue.
Speaker 1:That is a hideous thing to happen.
Speaker 2:And that would really knock your self-confidence and just you trust in the world, wouldn't it? Yeah, she seems to have a way and it feels, like our members, this she just has a way of putting a skip in a step and just saying, right, that's happened, let's just carry on definitely.
Speaker 1:One thing that really stood out was when she was talking about retiring and being so accepting of having to get a job stacking shelves, like that was the norm. You get your pension and you get a side hustle because you have to top up your pension. That does seem to be the new norm now it does, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:and again, waspy woman.
Speaker 1:So tell me, what does waspy stand for?
Speaker 2:waspyPI stands for Women Against State Pension Inequality. So these are women that have been affected by moving the pension age. So historically, when Kelly was paying all her contributions in, she could have got state pension at 60. That was the natural retirement age until 1995 for women. And then the government could see that actually there was an inequality between genders because men it was 65, women it was 60 and budgetary wise it saved them a ton of money to move that state age from 60 to 65. I mean kelly said herself she she's lost 46 grand in pension from government. Right, just just criminal. She is one of 3.6 million people. So do the math and just you suddenly see how much money they've saved by doing this yeah the difficulty is same with all pensions.
Speaker 2:You think about it. You get a pension, like kelly said, when you're young. I'm sorry the inner accountants out at me now We've unleashed the beast We've unleashed the beast, but you know, when you're 17, 18 and you start making contributions. Oh God, why am I doing?
Speaker 3:this sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But the people that are taking that money off you as well are making predictions about how long you're going to live, to work out how much pension you're going to get. And over the decades what's happened is medical science has improved and we just live longer and longer and longer and longer, and the pension companies haven't kept up and the difficulty is now everybody's living so long. I mean public sector pensions just as bad. So employees get, or did get, a lot better pensions than people that work in private. But they're all slowly but surely making problems for the government as well, because they've got to find the ways to pay them and the calculations are all wrong because everybody's living a lot, lot longer than was calculated. So the money's running out.
Speaker 2:So, they're robbing Peter to pay Paul. So the stuff that's coming in for the younger people is actually being used to pay for the older people. Something's going to happen in that public sector as well, and there's a lot of industrial action and arguments that have happened over the past 20 years about it as well as the government's trying to reform it. But in essence it's happened because everybody's living longer, and because everybody's living longer, you have to cut your cloth or you have to pay more money into the pension, and it's like that Same with welfare state right Now into the pension. And it's like that same with welfare stay right now you've got me on a rant.
Speaker 2:Right, we really have yeah, so welfare stay is the same problem, because there are a growing number of people that need support, even working people. We've seen this, right. So how many of our families have somebody working in there? Right, yeah, but they still need support because of the cost of living, etc. But we don't want to pay taxes at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, if we don't want to pay the taxes, we can't pay the welfare, and nobody's going to vote in a high tax government. So it's a proper rethink needed around that entire space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have we got the right people in charge to do it.
Speaker 2:I'm not answering that question. I'm saying we haven't got the right Mark for Prime Minister. No, no, no, God, no. But I'm definitely saying we haven't got the right structure. I don't feel we have the right structure in government, rather than the right people.
Speaker 1:Is there a country out there that you think has got it licked?
Speaker 2:This is not supposed to be an interview for me. Why don't we do a separate one for you? The Scandis seem to do it right.
Speaker 1:Oh, the Scandys do everything right, don't they?
Speaker 2:They always come out as the ones that look after everybody more fairly and are happier generally. So I think we've got to have a good hard look at places like Finland and see what's going on.
Speaker 1:Definitely Back to Kelly, back to.
Speaker 2:Kelly.
Speaker 1:And her glittering TV career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am not surprised that she's a TV extra. That fits with her personality, really, and you've done a bit as well, haven't you? Nat?
Speaker 3:Oh, just a little bit. I mean coming out of Port Lou on cold feet. I thought I'd made it with James Nesbitt.
Speaker 1:And weren't you pregnant on Coronation Street? And I was pregnant on Corrie, and weren't you pregnant on?
Speaker 3:Coronation Street and I was pregnant on Corrie. Oh yeah, I've been around.
Speaker 2:And you don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3:No, Well, I do acting classes, but I don't do extra work.
Speaker 1:no, Can you tell she can project?
Speaker 2:Nat doesn't need to project. Nat's like the female equivalent of Brian Blessed, who.
Speaker 3:I don't know who that is.
Speaker 1:Now he is a theatre lovey. Oh, really, yes, we have another extra, don't we At Gores Hill, lovely Hazel? Anybody who's listening, who doesn't know Hazel at Gores Hill, which many of you won't- oh yeah, she's on something that's coming out.
Speaker 3:I can't remember what.
Speaker 1:She was in a zombie film. Yeah, she's an outgoing member at one of our food hubs. She's amazing. Who likes donning tomatoes for earrings? Yeah, watch out for a picture of it soon on your nearest social media channel.
Speaker 2:Kelly has worked all her life and had a relatively successful career as she said herself. When I went to see her you could see that she was comfortable. But at the same time her money's running out and it just goes to show after a career with BT and being management and so on and so forth, even her pension's running out and even her kind of savings are running out. That's scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what will happen?
Speaker 2:I think it's fascinating, though, because it just shows that this isn't just a tiny minority of the country. Right, we've had this on episodes before, haven't we? Who was the one that Kim Kim? Middle class self-employed, but it doesn't take much, and it really doesn't take much to feel your life become volatile.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my other half, his father. He was quite high up in the agricultural industry in Spalding Way is where he lives and he's retired and is still working a five-day week as a sort of handyman for extra income.
Speaker 2:You said it earlier it just seems to be the norm now that if you read the government history of the state pension etc. It was never meant to be something that you relied on. It was supposed to supplement your income and you're supposed to have some other sort of pension to help with it, but it doesn't seem to be. Either the state pension or your private pension is actually filling the gaps nowadays scary scary.
Speaker 3:You've got a long way off younger but my grandparents, they have a flat that they rent out and that helps them pay their pension because they, I think, would struggle without and they, you know, worked their whole lives. My grandma was a district nurse, my granddad was in the navy and then he was an engineering lecturer, but yeah, that's really helped them. So I don't want to think about it when I get to their age, and then the other things coming through kelly again demonstrating that word of mouth. That's really helped them.
Speaker 2:So I don't want to think about it when I get to their age. And then the other things coming through. Kelly, again demonstrating that word of mouth is the most powerful method we have of communication, he says sitting here with the marketing manager and the PR apprentice.
Speaker 1:Word of mouth is free. That helps our budgeting massively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know where we'd be without it. And when we go to new hubs etc. A lot of people say, oh, can we do leaflet drops and all the rest of it. And there's nothing more powerful than people coming home with bags of shopping and people just saying where'd you get those bags?
Speaker 1:yeah, recommend a friend, but free well, such common threads always right.
Speaker 2:So all about community as well, and word of mouth, but then sharing as well. Sharing's caring, sharing's caring and not wasting yeah, which is fab everything that we approve of.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thank you, kelly so if you'd like to know more about Bread and Butter Thing and what we get up to.
Speaker 2:You can find us at team tbbt, on instagram and twitter, on linkedin or online at breadandbutterthingorg and I think nat likes to do a bit of tiktokking as well she does tiktok, I can't remember the username team tbbt.
Speaker 1:Team tbbt and if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast, you can get in touch with us by email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 2:Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs, so if you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub on the Become a Member page of our website.
Speaker 1:And please do all those things that we always ask you to do Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your pals and chat about us on social.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and tell your mum, because word of mouth works.
Speaker 1:See you next time. Bye.
