CAFCA is sending Murray Horton on an election year national speaking tour (something he last did in the 2002 election year). The title is New Zealand Not For Sale, providing an overview of foreign control (a hot topic at present, specifically the perennial issue of land sales); free trade deals, specifically the one with the US being negotiated now via the Trans Pacific Partnership; and what people can do about it. The aim is to raise grassroots awareness of these issues and CAFCA’s work in election year. The plan is for it to take place over two to three weeks in April, starting at the Roger Award event in Auckland at the beginning of that month, then heading south, getting home to Christchurch in Easter week.

Thus far, he has confirmed invitations for: Auckland, Whangarei, Hamilton, Thames, Whakatane, Gisborne, Napier, Whanganui, Palmerston North, Wellington, Blenheim, Nelson, Golden Bay and Dunedin. There are one or two other possibilities still being explored. Some venues may have to be done as separate one-off trips; just because they can’t be fitted into that time frame and they involve a long journey to get there (this is what Murray did during his 02 tour). It looks like a busy itinerary, so it may need to be done in more than one bite. If you would like to organise a meeting for Murray in your city or town or be otherwise involved with the tour, please contact CAFCA ASAP, either by mail to Box 2258, Christchurch or by e-mail to cafca@chch.planet.org.nz.The itinerary will be worked out early in 2011 and publicity started shortly thereafter.

Thanks, Greg

Watchdog Webmaster Steps Down After More Than A Decade

There has been one change in the Watchdog team in the past year and that was the replacement of Webmaster Greg Waite with Cass Daley. A heartfelt vote of thanks is needed for Greg who offered to set up the Watchdog Website and ran it (for no reward other than a free copy of each issue) from 1999-2010 inclusive. Greg has been a good friend and colleague since the late 1970s and long before he was our Webmaster he helped both CAFCA and Watchdog in his capacity as a printer. He continued to run the Website despite moving firstly to Wellington and then to Brisbane, where he and Julie have lived for years. But he was finding that the demands of a busy life and demanding job were leaving less and less time for him to tend to the numerous and time consuming jobs involved in getting each issue uploaded, then going back through it to painstakingly add the corrections (proofreading, to a nitpicking degree, both the online and hard copy editions is the editor’s job). He offered to resign if we could find someone to replace and we did – namely Cass Daley (who just happens to be the mother of Lynda Boyd, the youngest member by far of the CAFCA committee). Cass had already put in an enormous amount of voluntary work two to three years previously setting up CAFCA’s new membership database - plus the ones for the Anti-Bases Campaign and Philippines Solidarity Network – and she still maintains those if any problems arise. She volunteered to take over the Watchdog Website for the indefinite future and the August 2010 issue was her first solo online edition. One immediate issue was what title should she have? For obvious reasons she didn’t want to be called the Webmaster, and definitely not the Webmistress. We settled on Web Content Organiser. So, welcome aboard, Cass. Just as the CAFCA Website (run by Bill Rosenberg) attracts considerably more readers and visitors than CAFCA’s actual members, so it is with the Watchdog site. Our online presence has become a more and more important part of our work.