Teresa Hunter: Craven MPs caving in to vocal minority over retirement age

I have yet to catch up with all the U-turns, but all I can say is temperatures must have been bitterly icy in my absence. Frogspawn, like politicians, can't survive cold snaps. They both turn lily-livered and die.

But you can't run a nation like this, if it means citizens go away for a short summer break believing the country is heading in a certain direction, to come back and find we've headed off along an entirely different path.

If this is the best they can do, it's high time politicians took themselves off to some remote island to escape the 24-hour news cycle.

There's nothing like getting away to help you think clearly and get your brain back in gear.

Like it or not, and I know a huge number of Scots detest the fact, the Conservatives won more seats than any other party at the last general election.

They didn't get many votes north of the Border, but that's all right. Their most controversial proposals will not be implemented here.

But across the UK a majority of people did support the Tories at the ballot box, which means they voted for change and a tough approach to sorting out the financial crisis.

You don't vote Conservative and expect to be ruled by Frank Spencer, living in fear of every Betty with an axe to grind.

Truly, I was astonished on my return by the scenes in the Westminster parliament last week where MP after MP stood up to plead the case of a relatively small group of women who believe they are being unfairly treated by moves to speed up the raising of the state pension age.

The argument is that whereas everyone else is having to work one additional year, they face a two-year wait for their pension.What polliwog!

Millions of women, many also in their 50s, are having to wait not one, not two, but six years for their pension, and few will see any reason to make a special case of those just a few months older than them.

I have spent a career fighting for women's rights, but when students are facing the prospect of huge increases in their tuition fees (and Scotland won't be exempt forever), families are losing child benefit and tax credits, and the disabled are seeing their income squeezed, I can see no grounds for making this particular group a special case simply because they have orchestrated a powerful lobby.

They have already benefited enormously from other pension reforms, which will see them retiring on a state pension they, until very recently, could only have dreamed of.

Aged 56 to 57, they belong to a generation where women still expected to stay at home and look after husband and children, and as such typically have poor work records.

They needed 39 years of full national insurance contributions to get a basic pension. Almost none had anything like the full stamp, so most were on course to receive only a tiny fraction of a state pension, perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 a year at the most.

Or at least they were before Labour, to its credit, reformed the system by improving protection for years spent caring, reducing the qualifying hurdle to 30 years, making it easier to fill gaps in your record, and softening the system for clawing back pensions where gaps still remain.

Thanks to Labour, most of these women, few of whom have spent their lives paying taxes, will qualify for a full state pension. And that is absolutely right and proper.

On top of this, the coalition has restored the link with earnings, to ensure the state pension not only keeps pace with inflation, but will probably rise faster than prices.

It has also promised a citizen's pension of around 7,500 a year, which will again benefit this group more than almost any other.

Those who have worked all their lives will gain little, if anything.

But instead of being grateful that they are now on target for an index-linked pension of 7,500 instead of maybe 1,500, they are screaming blue murder because they are not prepared to wait until 66 like the rest of us will have to do.

Having worked all my life, I would like a state pension at 64, as I'm sure would most men.

If we can't have it, I can't see any reason why these women should be made a special case.

I'm all for listening, and U-turns when justified by the facts. But this government has to stop giving in to those who can shout the loudest.