General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Tonker , your posts are confusing folk and totally respectfully totally totally wrong in your opinion of what SERPS is . Serps only started in 1975, the earnings related part of commencing April 1978. Prior to that and still with SERPS from the start of issuing National Insurance numbers in 1948 and always afterwards there was the invented BASIC pension - consummate with the flat rate for no. of years paid in national insurance. If u earned the 'lower earning limit' cat A for an year as an employee, or were self employed and bothered to pay 50 out of 52 of your weekly 'stamp' you got credited for that year's worth of BASIC pension. If you got child benefit you were entitled to home responsibility Protection lowering the amount of years u had to get the basic pension. If you were a student 16 to 19 years old or a male aged 60 to 65 u got auto national insurance credits similar to paying class 3 contributions. U cannot get a pension based on class 3 alone. It's called the 2nd contribution condition to getting benefits / pension. All of this is zero to do with the 1975 / 78 introduced serps. Also if you got invalid care allowance by being aged under state pension age and caring for someone 30 hours a week a more you were uniquely awarded rare class 1 national insurance credits...... Class 1 = work for an employer, class 2 = self employed, class 3 = voluntary stamp, class 4 was a tax from inland revenue if u had a business and did bugger all towards yr pension.