CAFCA is sad to announce that Dennis Small has resigned from the committee and told us that he will not be able to do any more writing for Watchdog until further notice. I hasten to add that there is nothing wrong with Dennis, nor have there been any hissy fits within the committee. After a decade of unemployment, under-employment and semi-employment, Dennis has got a fulltime job, which involved moving from Christchurch. It all happened very fast.

Dennis had been a highly valued committee member since 1991 and a regular Watchdog writer for at least that long. Personally, I hope that we haven’t seen the last of Dennis’ wonderful book reviews (which always threatened the actual book for length), his polemics against the likes of the execrable Mike Moore, and his erudite articles on all manner of domestic and international topics. I always had to have my dictionary, atlas and Encyclopaedia Britannica CD ROM close at hand when editing his articles. As editor, I can report that Dennis never took directions about what he should write but always contributed what he felt should be covered in Watchdog, whether it be the Kurds or the turds (Mike Moore again). He had his own fan club of highly appreciative readers. And he was one of the reasons why I sometimes couldn’t fit all the copy into an issue (the printer’s limit is 80 sides). So you might actually get shorter issues – but don’t hold your breath.

I suspect that he will resume writing for us, because he has one goal left to achieve – he has never had a Watchdog cover story for as long as I’ve been editor. He did gleefully tell me that, while cleaning up his vast pile of papers preparatory to shifting, he discovered that his very first article was the cover story in that issue, but that was before I was editor. The committee, and I’m sure all CAFCA members and Watchdog readers, wish him all the best in his new career, out in "the real world".

Welcome To Joe Hendren

And all is not lost. Dennis has been replaced on the committee by Joe Hendren, which drops the average age by several decades (Joe is 27). He has a background of political activism in the Alliance, its youth wing, Staunch, and worked as a Parliamentary researcher for Alliance MPs until that party disappeared from Parliament at the 2002 election. Joe brings welcome skills with him. His first Watchdog article (the Iraq one) appears in this issue, and he wrote the leaflet, about the Government review of the foreign investment review, that you have received with this issue. So, welcome aboard, Joe.

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Foreign Control Watchdog, P O Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa. August 2003.