David Locke

David Locke is the Director of Finance at The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI). He is a member of our Pension PlayPen linked in group and he’s a widely respected commentator on pensions – in particular the financing of charity sector pensions.

I had been hoping to find out more about his views when my reading was cut short by a paywall asking me to find £270 for a subscription to a magazine I had never heard of

The greyed out page rather summed up my mood. To understand Charity Finance of Pension Schemes , I had to pay.

You may have noticed that this blog does not have adverts, nor is there a subscription needed to read it. Readers of this blog can generally access Pension PlayPen events for free using free links I share on it. I do not believe in subscription for content unless that content is professional.

But all too often, the views of those considered expert, including myself are freely given and then charged to the public via a pay-wall. This argument is that this encourages us to pay for independence since “getting it for free” leads to a wall of advertorial on free sites such as Facebook, Linked in  , twitter, Instagram and Tik-Tok.

I don’t agree. There is an army of people who donate their time to curating information for us through excellent sites such as Wiki. People write and publish special interest blogs, such as the one you are on now. There are debates that rage in comment threads which help us to understand the dialectics of an issue much better than any professional press release.

The news this morning that Google is considering making AI driven searches “paid for”, suggests to me that oligopolies are exploiting the web and look only for new ways to extend the paywall to the information we need to make good decisions about our lives.

Google is hugely successful already, it derives its revenues from the clinical use of data to maximise its value to advertisers. It uses AI to generate profits, now it is trying to generate direct revenues from punters by asking us to pay for that self-same AI directly. How many ways can you skin a cat.

Whether you are google or “Charity Finance“, the line between monetisation and exploitation is fine.  Those of us who believe in the use of the internet as a debating chamber rather than an echo chamber, should be concerned to ensure that the voice of David Locke and others – is not stuck behind a pay-wall.

David appears to be arguing for improved DC pensions for those in the Charity Sector, I’d like to debate what he means by that.

At the same time  professional editor Ian Allsop is arguing behind the same paywall that the “future is bright for charity defined benefit pension schemes”

It would have been great to have compared the differing views on Ian and David on this blog, it would have been great to advertise Charity Finance and its parent Civil Society on this blog.

I am left the poorer for not being able to and I fear you have had to read me rather than David and Ian, as a result!