I am not very active her but value the site. I contribute with a modest monthly payment that mirrors my appreciation of keeping advertising out.
I’ve just got an email from one UK GA “echo chamber” (from where I was banned for posting about the CAA infringements policy; they don’t like it because of the heavy loading of NATS/CAA staff under pseudonyms) that they are going behind a £52/year paywall.
How many will pay that, I have no idea, but I would expect the place to implode. Most of their participants are already in the “one-liner echo chamber” known as Facebook. It’s a tricky game to play, and the only way is downhill. All other subscription sites are struggling, losing a big chunk of their membership every year and having to do quite a lot of promotion to regain a similar number.
I am sure we have the right formula here.
Apart from donations, the only thing I ask is that people make the fairly minimal effort to distribute our leaflets. I’ve just sent out a mailing about this, so if you didn’t get it, please check your signup email (not the public email which should be left blank) is valid and your email preferences are enabled.
There is a lot of this going on. This guy, Faith Lopez, keeps contacting me. They buy up loads (hundreds) of forums, stick adverts on them, and in the process trash them.
Actually there are plenty of people in finance who do the same with small family businesses. The proprietors have no easy exit; the company is too small to be floated on the stock market. The business is generally destroyed in the process.
As a small business owner, I do find the idea of these takeovers upsetting. A salutary tale, and a reminder of what Peter does.
I think it is a leveraged MBO of some sort.
It is a real issue for a small business proprietor, who has been running his firm for 200 years, and is getting bored / getting old, and wants an exit, with a bundle of cash. In some countries in particular this is tough; my father had a business association with a German firm whose owner could not afford to make anybody redundant because they (about 50 of them) were all working there for 30-40 years and the redundancy payments for such long time employees would have killed the business, so when the owner retired he just shut the whole thing and walked away, destroying 50 jobs and a lot of value in the process. With these newer deals he can get a bundle of cash out and the financiers destroy it 5-10 years later so nobody blames him 
Fortunately EuroGA is not making any money 
so the only way to make an exit from it would be by selling the site to one of these cowboys.
What I would like right now is for more people to leave leaflets around. So few want to help in that way. And thank you to those who responded to the recent mailing; I hope you have all received them.
