In a relatively short podcast , Nico, Darren and Will Sandbrook send 80 minutes discussing the happiness that can be created by helping people save money.

This was a very happy experience for all three of them but as a listener I was not too happy,.

I was bored because I want things to get done and since 2015 when Nest Insight got started, precious little has been done. I was asked to feel happy that Will Sandbrook, this think tank is CEO to 35 people and at this point I remembered what I pay to have my money managed by Nest and what we all are paying through the various levies to have regulatory policy, MaPS experimentation and goodness knows what else is paid for though the charges on our pensions.

The Pensions UK has similar numbers of researchers and there are numerous think tanks out there producing abstract reports that bet published and forgotten.

Will Sandbrook is an earnest man who has worked since he came out of college in the Civil Service. He has no world of work that is based in commercial reality and his 35 strong “Centre for Inclusive Money” has little to point to that has actually been done as a result of its work.

I can think of a lot of failures for its flagship idea “the sidecar”. BT tried it and failed, others too. The only success was when the ever pragmatic Michelle Sutton of SUEZ introduced it under auto-enrolment to staff. It is clear what works and the sidecar works when like everything else in workplace saving, it uses inertia.

So we had an hour and twenty of Will’s career from DWP to Nest , from Nest to Nest Insight and from Nest Insight to the Centre for Inclusive Money”. Will is a trophy speaker and appears at all the best conferences granting the event a credible do-gooding to whatever the rest of the day is.

Because no one can deny that “happiness ” is a good thing and Will Sandbrook’s ideas can make us happy. But it’s when the ideas get into the vicious world of commercial reality that they run into trouble. He should be reminding everyone of what SUEZ has done and focussing on turning good ideas into reality but in 80 minutes I neither heard Will or Nico of Darren discussing where all this research has resulted in things happening.

This week, Will has been in Oxford organising a conference that has seen thinkers fly in to Britain from all over the world to discuss pension policy. Here is something that he has done that gives Nest, Pensions UK and all the sponsors , a chance to show off in front of politicians who can justify the enormous costs incurred by staying at the Randolph Hotel or similar.

It has allowed a lot of financial services C-Suite leaders to discuss things under Chatham House that will no doubt make them feel happy. It has been largely paid for out of the profits of the following sponsors

Tata . who administrate Nest, creep in as only a “Gold sponsor”.

Here is my question. How can all this money being spent by Will and the other Thinkers” be credited as “value”. Can it be justified as “happiness” and if so- to who?

Did the planes that flew in people from around the world run on fumes or were they contributing to the climate crisis?

I am not the only one asking these questions. I have dubbed this multiple day event “Gleneagles II” and “elitist games”. Things are not getting done for all this talk, charges are staying higher than they ought to , on the products we use to save for our retirement.

Will Sandbrook needs to get more done and spend less time promoting his think tank. It is not value for money in my book.