Committee

For a number of years now, this section of my Report has started by saying that the Committee is unchanged. As recently as 2022 we had a Committee of seven, and had done for years. But we now have a Committee of five. Two of our most longstanding members - Jeremy Agar and John Ring - have died in the past 18 months (Jeremy in December 2022, aged 80, and John in June 2023, aged 64. Both of cancer).

That is a significant loss - Jeremy had been on the Committee for the best part of 20 years, including a number of years as Chairperson; John had been a Committee member for 30 years. My obituaries of Jeremy and John are in Watchdogs 162, April 2023,, and 164, December 2023, respectively.

So now the five members are Colleen Hughes, James Ayers, Murray Horton, Paul Piesse and Terry Moon. And two of them were overseas for a chunk of 2023 - Paul for two months and Terry for nearly six months (she did CAFCA, Watchdog and CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account work from the other side of the world). Only three Committee members were present at the 2023 Annual General Meeting (or, indeed, in the country).

It is not that many years ago that CAFCA had a Committee of ten (albeit, some of them were "distance" members who no longer lived in Christchurch but kept in the decision-making loop via e-mail). We definitely want some more members on the Committee but our one - so far - appeal to our Christchurch members garnered exactly zero response. It is a reality that our membership is aging (if not aged) and it is my experience over many decades that nobody is queuing up to join committees. We have approached one potential candidate. He has told us he is too busy at present but will think about it, later in 2024.

We will keep working with what we've got and will keep scratching our heads as to how to get one or two more Committee members. We continue to work with former Committee members - from both recent and long-ago times - in other campaigns. For example, Brian Turner and Denis O'Connor are very actively involved in Keep Our Assets (KOA).; Lynda Boyd is on the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) Committee.

Incorporated Society: Compulsory Rules' Rewrite & Reregistration

I don't think that I've ever previously included a section in my annual Report on the subject of CAFCA being an incorporated society. I've never had to; it has simply been part of the status quo for longer than I've been the Organiser (which dates from 1991 - CAFCA became incorporated in 1989. Watchdog became a separate incorporated society in 1997, with its own set of rules, members, annual general meeting, and annual accounts).

However, the 1908 Incorporated Societies Act has been replaced by the 2022 Incorporated Societies Act, and some key provisions have changed (I won't go into the details). Meaning that every incorporated society in NZ has to reregister under the new Act and rewrite their sets of rules (constitution). The reregistration period runs from October 2023 until April 2026. Any societies not reregistered by that deadline will legally cease to exist. CAFCA has just embarked on the process. Incorporation has advantages - it makes a society a separate legal entity from its members and gives the members limited liability.

Some of the advantages were not foreseen when we first incorporated 35 years ago. For example, CAFCA was able to get the file held on it as an organisation by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) - in addition to SIS files on individual CAFCA members, such as me and Bill Rosenberg - precisely because being an incorporated society makes CAFCA a "legal person". To the best of my knowledge, CAFCA is the only organisation to have secured its' SIS file. I'm also the Organiser for the Anti-Bases Campaign, which is not incorporated and therefore not legally entitled to apply for its SIS file.

The last time we faced anything like this situation was in the first decade of this century, when the Charities Act was updated, involving a similar exercise of reregistration, etc. CAFCA had to work our way through conflicting advice as to whether we did or did not qualify to be a charity. And the answer was emphatically no. If an organisation's primary function is political advocacy, then it cannot be a charity, which ruled us out and suited us fine. We had never claimed to be a charity and had no wish to operate as one. So that was a false alarm, albeit a time consuming one. By contrast, we will have to go through this exercise if we wish to continue as an incorporated society.

Membership

It is in the 270s, which is down from the 290s of my previous Report (and this is being written before the annual removal of long-overdue non-payers). It has definitely dropped over the last few years (460 is the highest it has reached in recent years; it is quite a few years since it threatened 500; 550+ was our absolute zenith, many years ago). For any number of years now, the numerical trend has been gradually but steadily downwards.

Every year we remove non-payers but only after they have ignored two of the dreaded red slips and final, e-mailed, reminders. And every year we pick up new members, or former members re-join, so that we make up some, but by no means all, of the number lost. We lose members for a variety of reasons - death, old age, retirement, financial reasons, or simply deciding not to renew. That reflects the aging demographic of our membership.

With cheques now gone, nearly 100% of subs and donations come to us via online banking. People can still deposit cash into our account at a Kiwibank branch (if there is one in their area). Or, they can post us cash - at their own risk. Some members have done that for years. A few give me cash in person. So, I still have to make occasional trips to Kiwibank to physically deposit cash.

Gaining new members is a permanent project. We have some wonderfully evangelical members who set out to recruit others. Some members pay gift subs for new members. One very enthusiastic new member (decades younger than the usual demographic) paid a sub for three copies of each Watchdog to be sent to him and said that he will distribute them himself.

Members are very generous - falling membership does not equal falling finances. Quite the opposite. We insist on a paying membership, because we have no other source of funds. We don't charge much and - except in the case of our handful of overseas members - haven't reviewed or increased our sub for a very long time (not since the 20th Century). If we had retained all those who stopped paying, we could claim a "membership" of thousands. We reach a much bigger audience than our actual membership.

Finances

Between them, our operating account and three term deposits hold $108,000, in round figures, which is considerably more than at the time of my previous annual Report. There is one explanation for this impressive boost - the very substantial bequest we received from Jeremy Agar in 2024. See my article elsewhere in this issue for more about this. Despite our membership gradually dropping year after year, CAFCA's bank balance has held steady, even increased a bit (even without taking that bequest into account) due to regular donations. And, the interest rates for term deposits have got up off the floor - two of our three term deposits now earn 6.05% (the other one earns 5.75%).

There are plenty of small organisations like ours who would give their eye teeth to have $108,000 in the bank. By contrast, the other group for which I am the Organiser - Anti-Bases Campaign - has $7,000 in round figures. So, this is a very good position to be in for the future, considering that we're not a business seeking to make a profit. Basically, CAFCA is financially independent.

We continue to be in a very healthy financial situation and don't have to devote any energy or time to fundraising beyond our own ranks, being entirely financed by the annual subs and donations of our members. And, as I've already pointed out, we haven't increased our modest $20 sub (except for a grand total of two overseas members) since the 20th Century. In fact, the sub is only $15 for unwaged members.

Twice in the past 18 months I have had to secure death certificates (for Jeremy Agar and John Ring), which Kiwibank requires before it will remove someone as a signatory to a bank account. Jeremy and John were both signatories for the CAFCA and Watchdog accounts, plus CAFCA's term deposits. Our account signatories dropped from five to three.

As all our transactions require two signatories, this was cutting things a bit too fine. Colleen Hughes, one of our other Committee members, has been added to the signatories. One of our existing signatories (Terry Moon) spent several months in London in 2023. So, she was kept busy setting up and/or authorising CAFCA, Watchdog and Organiser Account payments from the other side of the world.

Expenses & Donations

CAFCA has routine office expenses. But our single biggest cost every year is the postage for Watchdog. Every year NZ Post increases the price of the pre-paid big envelopes we use, so we stockpile a large quantity and lock in the current price, to keep our costs down for as long as possible. In 2023 we bought several thousand dollars' worth of envelopes, which will last us until well into 2024 (when the price will doubtless go up again). We have no plans to change Watchdog to an online-only publication (although the option is there for members to get it that way and more than 10% of them do).

The great majority of members want a good old-fashioned hard copy Watchdog. CAFCA has enough money to be able to make donations to other campaigns. For example, we have made a $500 donation to the Anti-Bases Campaign whenever it held a Waihopai spy base protest. We did so most recently in 2023. And we receive plenty of donations (exclusive of Jeremy's bequest) of up to $1,000, in one recent case.

CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account

The trend, for several years now, has been of a steady decline. So, in 2021, for the first time, my paid hours were cut from 40 to 30 per week, with a matching reduction in pay (but not the Living Wage hourly rate). Plus, the Organiser Account still pays, as it has done for decades, my monthly mobile phone and landline rentals, plus the bulk of my monthly Internet rental. I won't starve - I get the pension as well (for which I pay a higher tax rate). I spent 30 minutes on hold waiting for ACC to confirm whether it defines 30 hours work per week as full time or part time. The answer is full time, so my ACC levy classification stands (it defines anything less than 30 hours as part time).

To quote from the latest monthly bank statement, at the time of writing (March 2024): the balance was $6,918.58. That March statement showed that there was one donation, of $100. $7,174.06 came in and $3,275.00 went out. So, the Account doesn't lack for support from pledgers and donors. Usually there is more going out of the Account than coming in on a month-by-month basis. The long-term trend is down or no better than holding its own and there are two reasons for this - firstly, the commitment to pay the Organiser (me) the Living Wage (which significantly increased in 2023 to $26 per hour).

And the drop in the number of pledgers and donors - for the same reason that CAFCA membership is dropping. People die. People retire and can no longer afford it. In some cases, regular pledgers have been doing it since the Organiser Account first started, back in 1991. I never cease to be amazed by their generosity.

It is remarkable that it has lasted continuously for more than three decades without having been a drain on CAFCA finances (up until 2020, when CAFCA had to make substantial donations to keep it going. And then my hours were cut). After that, CAFCA's only regular contribution had been to donate the interest from our term deposits to the Organiser Account (which it has done for many, many years). But, in March 2024, CAFCA felt that the Organiser Account had dipped too low, so kicked in a further $5,000 donation. And that was what made up the bulk of the $6,900 balance as of the March bank statement.

For nearly 30 years the Organiser Account was entirely dependent on the generosity of pledgers and donors. Recruiting new pledgers and soliciting more donations is a permanent project. I've written the Account off more than once in the past and it just keeps going. Once again, I thank James Ayers who does a very good job of looking after the Organiser Account.

Watchdog

I am the Editor; it is our flagship, our "face", our voice to our members and the world at large. To use the jargon, it is our "brand". It looks the best it ever has. The three 2023 issues were, respectively, 96 112 and 92 pages. 2023 was our first year in 20 years without Jeremy Agar as Reviews Editor. Reviews are now split between Greg Waite and Linda Hill (both of whom have previously written for us for years), with Dick Keller also doing the odd one. This issue also has a review each from Makareta Tawaroa and myself.

The Reviews section of Watchdog has burgeoned - it comprised the single biggest portion of all three issues in 2023. Dennis Small also finished up after decades as a writer for us. I don't expect that we will find a replacement for his geopolitical blockbusters. I did a bit of writing about geopolitics in 2023, but only as time allowed.

Watchdog will always be a niche publication - we now have only one retail outlet, which regularly sells all or most of the copies it stocks (plus one Christchurch cinema lets us put a few copies there as giveaways. In 2023 it doubled its' order, due to demand). We don't have the resources to compete with mainstream magazines. Nor the intention. Watchdog is a journal of analysis, not a newspaper. But you will find plenty of news in it that can't be found elsewhere.

Editing Watchdog takes plenty of my time but I also write some of each issue, usually the lead article. I've written obituaries for decades. In 2023 I had the sad job of writing ones for Jeremy Agar and John Ring, Committee colleagues for 20 and 30 years respectively. Apart from any other articles that I might write, I'm also responsible for writing up one Decision from each batch of monthly Decisions from the Overseas Investment Office. We've never managed to find a replacement for Linda Hill, who wrote up every Decision for five years. So, I do one per month as a token sample, plus a list of all the Decisions for that month. Sometimes I do a few more, if they're related to each other.

Thanks are due to Layout Editor Marney Brosnan. She does a very professional job and it's a lot of work (she reckons it takes her a week to lay out an issue, including doing two lots of corrections after I've proofread it twice). Marney persuaded me to learn how to electronically send files to her in bulk, so no more dropping USB sticks in each other's letterboxes or handing them over at a coffee catch up. Ian Dalziel has provided the wonderfully quirky cover graphics for many years now.

Watchdog attracts high-quality, high-profile writers. In the three 2023 issues, those writing for us were (in addition to myself and the regular writers): Makareta Tawaroa, Bryan Gould, Jane Kelsey, Catherine Delahunty, Marilyn Yurjevich, Torfrida Wainwright, Brian Turner, Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, Mike Treen, Warren Thomson, Greg Waite, Linda Hill, Peter Richardson, Manu Caddie, Sue Bradford, Geoff Bertram, Dick Keller, Paul Corliss, Jill Hawkey, Robert Ireland, Sue Newberry, Harry Robson and Linda Conning.

The number of writers was most evident in the August 2023 issue - 17 in all, which must be a record. In 2023 we had writers on behalf of campaigns, such as Coromandel Watchdog, EcuAction, the Living Wage Movement, Aotearoa Water Action, Tapatahi, No Water No Future, Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti and Why Waste Waimate.

Some had never written for us before. And none of them gets paid anything. CAFCA is a pakeha organisation, so it is great that Watchdog can attract articles about issues and campaigns with a strong Māori component, such as the Whanganui River water bottling issue and the East Coast forestry slash scandal. Watchdog always gets a response, positive or negative. That's what we want - it shows that people are reading it and care enough to tell us they agree or disagree with it.

Online Watchdog

Terry Moon is in charge of this. She does a very good job and has introduced some innovations. There was one unique feature in 2023 - as I've already mentioned, Terry spent several months in London. So, the online August Watchdog was done from the other side of the world.

Our online-only members receive each issue as a PDF but the actual online edition on the Website is a plain, text-only affair. We get free Web hosting for both Watchdog and CAFCA but the trade-off is that there is a size restriction on the total amount of cyberspace we can have free of charge. The reach of the online edition is much greater than the hard copy one. Courtesy of former Committee member Warren Brewer, you can read online the most recent issues as (semi-coloured) PDFs, on Watchblog.

Key Facts & CAFCA Updates

Our Key Facts, are uploaded to our Website. They are a vital CAFCA resource and one which has led to mainstream media articles in the past. In recent years, they have been researched and produced by Edward Miller, Researcher and Policy Analyst with FIRST Union, which is a long-standing union supporter of CAFCA. But sadly, Ed has been too busy to do it anymore. He is phasing out of the First Union job, and there is a possibility that his replacement will take on doing the Key Facts, but that's all it is, a possibility. So, the 2022 update is the most recent edition on our Website and may well be the last.

I have continued producing CAFCA Updates, although not as regularly as I would have liked. These are simply a collection of links to online mainstream media articles about subjects of relevance to CAFCA and its members. They have been well received. You can find them at the top of the CAFCA Home Page, under Latest Updates.

Website & Other Digital Outlets

In addition to the Watchdog site, Terry Moon is also in charge of the CAFCA site and does a meticulous and very thorough job. In my previous several annual Reports l said that CAFCA is taking steps to upgrade and modernise our Website. This was done, up to a certain point, by our Webhost (a small local company, the only Webhost we've had since we first went online in the 1990s). Sad to say, it has become a seemingly never-ending story.

In addition to the CAFCA site, we have the separate Watchdog one and the Historic Watchdog site, set up by former Committee member Lynda Boyd, which stores online all issues from the mid 1970s until 1999, when the actual Watchdog site was created by Bill Rosenberg. Sadly though, these historic issues are no longer accessible free of charge. The site host now requires visitors to it to open an account. Warren Brewer runs the Watchblog site and the Keep Our Assets (KOA) site.

Colleen Hughes has done a very good job of running the CAFCA Facebook site for years now. It has more than 1350 members, which is considerably more than our "real world" membership. But the trick is to get any of those Facebook members to become actual CAFCA members, let alone paying ones. It's the same issue faced by innumerable other organisations.

I mentioned in my previous Report that CAFCA set up our own account on what used to be called Twitter and is now called X (thanks to its megalomaniac owner Elon Musk) and entered the weird and wonderful world of tweets. It is my only venture into social media and I have to say that I use it very, very infrequently (it's a modern version of talkback radio i.e. people talking nonsense about inane trivia and shouting insults at each other. Life is too short). CAFCA has a very small number of followers. You can follow us on X @CAFCA_NZ.

Overseas Investment Office (OIO)

This is a continuous CAFCA campaign that dates back to the 1980s (when the relevant body was called the Overseas Investment Commission). We never did manage to find a replacement for Linda Hill to write up the monthly Decisions of the OIO (Linda is not lost to us - she's now a very much appreciated reviewer for Watchdog). As a purely token gesture, CAFCA has decided to highlight one Decision (occasionally a few more) from each month of Decisions plus a list of all the Decisions for that month. I'm doing that.

There was one unique OIO event in 2023 - phone calls from the OIO have been extremely rare in the decades of our "relationship". An unscheduled one was unprecedented. The OIO recalled and reissued the June 2023 Decisions because it had accidentally released commercially confidential material in one Decision. It had asked recipients (by e-mail) to delete the original version, which I had done.

The call was to ask if I had read the original Decision. No. And to ask if I'd forwarded it to anyone. Yes, I forward all OIO Decisions to Bill Rosenberg, who wrote them up for CAFCA for decades and wants to be kept in touch. The OIO wanted me to check that Bill had deleted it (yes) and whether he'd read it (no). So, maybe we missed a scoop. But if we did, then so did everyone else, because I've seen no media coverage of any accidentally released and confidential OIO material.

2024 has seen (so far) one bizarre manifestation of our very, very long "relationship" with the OIO. For background, I refer you to my article "A History Lesson" in Watchdog 159 (April 2022) Specifically, the subsection headed "The OIC's Stephen Dawe". He was the head of the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC, now the OIO) for more than a decade, straddling the turn of the century. Then he went off to a high-flying job with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in the US.

Here's the relevant extract: "And that was that. Until New Year's Day 2022, when I was astonished (to put it very mildly) to receive, by e-mail, the Dawe family generic Christmas letter, full of news and photos of him, his wife, kids, parents, family, even the cats. It contained detailed descriptions of his health issues, work, travels, family achievements, you name it. In short, it was a completely private communication intended for his family and friends. There was no explanation of who any of these people were, it was obviously intended for insiders who already knew that".

"I very much doubt that CAFCA was among the intended recipients. Considering that it had been 16 plus years since we'd had dealings with him in his OIC capacity (we've never dealt with him in his IMF one, let alone his personal one), I'm surprised that we were even still in his e-mail address book. Presumably, it was sent by mistake and he's probably unaware that it went to us. It served as a reminder that we're all human. And it provided a specific answer to that universal generic question: 'I wonder where old (insert name here) is now?' I definitely now know more about my old adversary Stephen Dawe than ever before".

But in 2024, astonishingly, for the second time, CAFCA has been included on the mailing list for Stephen Dawe's annual family New Year's report. This was not simply an e-card but an extremely detailed account, with several photos, of what has happened to every family member of every generation (several older ones died) in the past year.

So, I now know that our old mate is working three days a week at the IMF in Washington; how pleased he is to be able to regularly travel the world again on IMF business; how pleased he and his wife are that two of their kids are now US citizens. Why? Because when Dawe retires, his Green Card lapses and if they want to stay in the US, they will have to rely on one of their US citizen children sponsoring them. And lots, lots more. Very strange. I suppose it will come in handy for the obituary file.

Keep Our Assets (KOA)

I am the Convenor, and three current or former CAFCA Committee members are also very actively involved with the KOA Committee - namely, Paul Piesse, Brian Turner and Denis O'Connor. Former Committee member Warren Brewer remains in charge of the KOA Website. The other KOA Committee members are John Minto, Kay Robertson, Dot Lovell-Smith and Mike Newlove.

It is the biggest Committee with which I'm involved. KOA meetings at the home of John Minto and Bronwen Summers are very social and I can highly recommend John's scones which he makes for every meeting. Sadly, the Committee suffered a major loss in 2023 with the resignation (due to serious ill health) of KOA founder and key activist, Steve Howard.

Even worse, within only a few months, Steve died (my obituary of him is elsewhere in this issue). He'd been on the Committee since KOA started in 2012. Along with John Minto and myself, Steve was one of the spokespeople for KOA, he did a lot of its' public speaking gigs and he wrote all the submissions. He will be sorely missed.

His resignation and death followed the resignation from the KOA Committee, and death, of Jeremy Agar, both of which took place in 2022. KOA is a paying community supporter of the Living Wage Movement. Brian Turner and Steve Howard were KOA's representatives on the local Living Wage Movement. Steve's death means that Brian is now the sole representative, backed up by Paul Piesse.

My previous Report detailed that asset sales were back on the agenda again at the Christchurch City Council. The subject had not been mentioned by the Council since it tried and failed to sell Citycare several years ago - which was a major and successful campaign by KOA. But, lo and behold - just weeks after the October 2022 local body elections, the City Council announced that a confidential report on its publicly-owned assets by investment bankers had been commissioned by the previous Lianne Dalziel-led City Council.

And, guess what - the report recommended selling them. It never used the word sell - it talked about "recycling" assets. And it tried to soften the blow by recommending only partial sales. The Council voted to investigate this further. The rationale was the same as when the Christchurch City Council first tried to flog off assets last decade - it is short of money (last time, the excuse was the post-quake rebuild cost). This time around, the Council that says it is short of money is the same one that, in 2022, blithely voted an extra $150 million towards the ballooning costs of the white elephant stadium it is building.

KOA immediately pointed out the obvious - not one Councillor nor the new Mayor had campaigned to sell assets during the 2022 campaign. Indeed, the Mayor promised not to do so. So, not one of them had a mandate to sell assets. KOA told the Council it is buying a fight - John Minto and Steve Howard told Councillors that to their faces at a February 2023 full Council meeting, while other KOA members displayed a "Keep Our Assets" banner in the public gallery (that turned out to be Steve's last public appearance for KOA). We told the media what we were going to do, and it got coverage in both print media and on commercial radio.

An encouraging development in 2023 was the creation of the CCHL Asset Sales Committee (CCHL = Christchurch City Holdings Ltd, which handles the City Council's commercial assets). This was at the initiative of Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, the Christchurch organiser for the Living Wage Movement. He has developed excellent working relations with local unions and expanded his activism into campaigning against asset sales, bringing a different perspective to that of KOA. I represented KOA at their meetings and I was one of the only ones there who was not a union official.

In August 2023 a KOA deputation of myself, Brian Turner and John Minto met Mayor Phil Mauger to personally stress to him why asset sales are a bad idea. He didn't seem to have got the message. Afterwards he talked about the City Council's "dilemma" as being to either "sell assets or provide less services". The media reported that a lot of work was going on behind the scenes to soften up Councillors to vote yes to selling assets.

Victory!

KOA went into campaign mode, producing a leaflet; Committee members met with individual Councillors; I met with one of the co-leaders of The People's Choice (the Left bloc on the Council); plus, I wrote to every community board. KOA and the CCHL Asset Sales Committee combined forces in November to hold a very well attended, very successful and very positive public meeting. John Minto was KOA's speaker; the other speakers were Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, former Christchurch Mayor Garry Moore, Councillor Melanie Coker, and two union officials representing workers who work for some of the assets under threat of sale.

In a stroke of genius, John Minto invited the leading light of the local School Strike 4 Climate campaign to chair the meeting. The 17-year-old schoolgirl did a brilliant job, even though she had to leave early because she had an exam the next morning. The CCHL Asset Sales Committee arranged people (local residents in every case) to speak to their local community board - I spoke to mine, not as a KOA representative, but as a local resident of more than 40 years.

At very short notice, in December, the City Council met to decide whether to proceed with the process to sell the city's public assets (several billion dollars' worth - the port, airport, power company, broadband company, maintenance company, etc). KOA and the CCHL Assets Sales Committee worked together and we got people along to pack out that meeting - it was a diverse crowd, including pensioners, school kids and workers. We put up two speakers - former Mayor Garry Moore and Nathaniel Herz-Edinger. It was a very passionate and boisterous meeting.

And, to our pleasant surprise (and the great displeasure of the business community and its' political and media mouthpieces), the Council voted - 8/7- to stop the asset sales process there and then. The capacity crowd gave them a standing ovation. Sometimes you win one. But we're not naïve enough to think that this is the end of the story. I've written a more detailed article on this subject and the campaign, elsewhere in this issue

Relations With Other Groups

In the KOA subsection (above) I mentioned the Living Wage Movement. CAFCA has been a paying member for several years, ever since it made the decision that the CAFCA/ABC Organiser (me) should be paid the Living Wage. Our first representative was Brian Turner, when he was a CAFCA Committee member, then he was succeeded by Colleen Hughes, who has been on the CAFCA Committee for many years. Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, the Christchurch organiser for the Living Wage Movement, regularly wrote for Watchdog in 2023.

Since 2018 we have developed a productive working relationship with Aotearoa Water Action (AWA), which started off by fighting the Chinese-owned water bottling plant in Christchurch and has branched out into looking at the whole spectrum of water issues, not only in Canterbury but nationally. They have provided regular updates in Watchdog for several years now, most recently in the December 2023 issue. In late 2023 they scored a great victory by winning a major court case in the Supreme Court on that Christchurch water bottling plant.

Since the 1980s we have been friends with Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki and they usually provide an annual update in (our) Watchdog. Written by Catherine Delahunty, (a former Green MP), it appeared in the August 2023 issue. Much more recently we have developed a relationship with Tapatahi: Coalition for a New People's Aotearoa, and featured it in the August and December 2023 Watchdogs. In all three 2023 Watchdogs we ran articles from No Water No Future, a Whanganui group campaigning against the bottling and export of water.

In the August 2023 issue we ran an article from Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti, an East Coast group campaigning on issues such as the destructive and deadly problems caused by forestry slash. In the December 2023 issue we ran an article from Why Waste Waimate, a group campaigning against a plan to build a giant rubbish incinerator in Waimate. All these campaigns have one thing in common - the involvement of transnational corporations or foreign owners. I have participated in several of the schoolkids' climate change rallies and marches, including one which ended in an hours-long occupation of the City Council Building's foyer.

CAFCA has had a long and ongoing productive national relationship with a number of unions and individual unionists. We have an ongoing very friendly relationship with FIRST Union, which is the only union to regularly pledge to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account. Not only that, until very recently it was the single biggest pledger (it is now the second biggest). In 2023 I participated in a FIRST Union picket of striking Westpac bank workers and was invited to speak to them. It helps that for decades I have been a personal friend of Paul Watson, that union's Southern Region Secretary (plus we were colleagues for decades on the committee of the former Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa).

Other unions we work with, or have worked with, are the Maritime Union of NZ (MUNZ), Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU), E Tū and Unite. Mike Treen of Unite (who retired in 2023) has been a regular and greatly appreciated Watchdog writer over the years. The August 2023 Watchdog featured an obituary of a veteran Christchurch railway unionist written by fellow veteran unionist (and veteran CAFCA member) Paul Corliss.

Media Work

In January 2024 I was interviewed by a mainstream (online) journalist, for the first time in a long time. He wanted CAFCA's comments on the proposed changes to the Overseas Investment Act. ACT got this in its Coalition Agreement with National: "Amend the Overseas Investment Act 2005 to limit ministerial decision making to national security concerns and make such decision making more-timely". Currently two Ministers or Associate Ministers sign off on some decisions but this will put virtually all OIO Decisions back into the hands of the bureaucrats again. More-timely, eh. Hand me that rubber stamp.

The circumstances of the interview were hilarious. The reporter rang me when I was having my daily coffee in my typically noisy café. In order to hear what he was asking me, I had to conduct the interview in the toilet. When I came out, I discovered the staff had been frantically looking for me, thinking that I'd had a senior moment and absent mindedly wandered off, leaving my bag behind. I've also done media interviews on behalf of KOA.

In my previous couple of Reports, I mentioned that I had started writing for the excellent US publication Covert Action, which is an online magazine. This led to an invitation to write for them (there's no pay - just as with Watchdog). In 2023 I had three articles published: on AUKUS; Te Pāti Māori's foreign and defence policy; and on Nicky Hager and Owen Wilkes. I simply provide the text and they do a very good job fleshing it out with illustrations. There are spinoffs - my AUKUS article led to me doing an hour-long interview (by Zoom) for the Covert Action podcast, talking to a guy in the US.

This relationship is continuing in 2024 and (at the time of writing) I have had two articles published in Covert Action - one on NZ's growing entanglement with NATO; the other about the 2023 election result, the return to power of Winston Peters (I've written about him before in Covert Action) and NZ foreign policy. You can check these out at Covert Action.

CAFCA Priorities

Much the same as they have been in recent years. As I've already mentioned, we are in the process of upgrading our Website. This is taking much, much longer than we expected, literally years, in fact. This is all part of a never-ending project to spread the word wider and build our membership and support base. CAFCA has always worked best in partnership with likeminded groups, for example, Keep Our Assets (see the KOA section, above).

Both Watchdog and our OIO work are major and ongoing long-term projects in their own right. We need to get our message out to more people, using both traditional media and social media We have an aging, indeed aged, membership, so recruiting new - hopefully, younger - members is a constant project. With the deaths of two of our veteran Committee members within a matter of months of each other, this has become more urgent. So, CAFCA can't put our feet up just yet. We've got plenty to keep us busy.

We will have one special project to work on in the next year. It's crept up on us virtually unnoticed but 2025 is our 50th anniversary (when we started as CAFCINZ. The name-change to CAFCA came in the 80s). We celebrated our 40th in 2015 and that was a very memorable occasion, over the course of a weekend. We've got as far as provisionally setting the date - Labour Weekend 2025. But - of necessity - it will be different from the 40th. For example, that one included the annual event to announce the winner of the Roger Award, which finished a couple of years later. We'll keep you posted.

And we have one very "good problem" to resolve, namely what to do with Jeremy Agar's very substantial bequest. Before we got it (or knew how much was involved) we decided not to use it for operational costs, but to do something special with it. Like what? At the time of writing, we haven't started the process of deciding what project or projects to use it on, but we're on to it. And we'll keep you informed. For the time being, the whole sum is safely parked up in a term deposit.

Anti-Bases Campaign

I am, of course, also the Organiser for ABC. And I am the Editor of ABC's Peace Researcher. Becky is the Layout Editor, so it's a family business, but because she was away in the Philippines with her family for the second half of 2023 (dealing with matters arising from her mother's death), the most recent issue (66, November 2023) was laid out by Leigh Cookson. Leigh, of course, was Watchdog's Layout Editor for 20 years.

PR is not a mini-Watchdog, there is plenty of material that only appears in it, such as Warren Thomson's regular Spooky Bits series. It has some other different writers than Watchdog - the most recent issue included articles by Kay Weir, Liz Remmerswaal and Zak Rudin. PR has much more international material than Watchdog. It is the nature of ABC's issue. And PR covers events and issues that don't appear in Watchdog. The most recent issue (November 2023), is available online here.

Waihopai Spy Base Protest

Due to circumstances beyond our control (covid and everything arising from it), there was a two-year gap between Waihopai spy base protests by ABC. We had to cancel the January 2022 one at a few days' notice, the first such cancellation since our regular protests began, way back in 1988. But we promised to be back and, in February 2023, we were.

As we said in our publicity: "Since our last protest (2021) the look of the spy base has drastically changed, with the 2022 removal of the two giant domes and the satellite dishes they concealed. They were officially deemed obsolete. But although the domes have gone, Waihopai is still a spy base, albeit a less conspicuous one, and the spying by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) goes on. Our campaign has always been to call for the closure of the base. We started the campaign in 1988, when Waihopai was an empty paddock yet to be built on. The spying goes on, so ABC's campaign goes on".

When contacted by the media, we reiterated that point: "Protest organiser and ABC Secretary Murray Horton said the group's protests had 'never been, for example, about the domes, but the whole place... For 35 years Waihopai has been New Zealand's most significant contribution to Washington's global effort to manipulate world business and diplomacy. And for 35 years the Anti-Bases Campaign has protested at Waihopai, calling for its closure ...'".

"Anti-Bases Campaign has always consistently called for Waihopai to be closed down, as not serving New Zealand's national interests and effectively being, in all but name, an American intelligence gathering establishment operating on New Zealand soil, staffed by New Zealanders, paid for by New Zealanders taxpayers, but effectively working at the bidding of the biggest of the Five Eyes," Horton said. 'Anti-Bases Campaign has always said that Waihopai is New Zealand's most important contribution to the military/intelligence alliance with the US'" (Stuff, 17/2/23).

It's worth pointing out that, no matter how small our numbers, we always got mainstream media coverage when we went to Waihopai. And I must pat myself on the back that the Stuff report came out as coherently as it did. The phone interview with the Marlborough Express journalist was the day before we travelled to Blenheim and coincided exactly with five arborists working all around our place (which is also the ABC office) with chainsaws and a wood chipper. I struggled to find somewhere in the house away from the noise, and where I could actually hear what the guy was asking me.

The Marlborough Express was our only media appearance in connection with Waihopai 2023, but that's fine, because it means the report is up on the Stuff site, which has a reach far beyond the local paper. I was also contacted by a Māori radio station and, in a first, they wanted an interview in te reo. Sadly, nobody on the ABC Committee speaks it, so we had to decline. For the first time in years, no reporters were at the actual protest - which is a pity, because they missed a good story and photo opportunity (see below)

Blenheim Meeting

We decided to start our day of activities with a gathering in Blenheim called "The Changing Face Of Spying". Over the previous two years covid had wreaked havoc with our plans to get people together at Waihopai. We were determined to try again. In 2022 we had three speakers lined up - Green MP Teanau Tuiono; Sonya Smith from Rocket Lab Monitor, Mahia (to talk about the campaign against NZ's newest US military base); and May Bass, a leading figure in the very earliest Waihopai spy base protests in the late 80s, specifically the 1988 women's camp.

In 2023, we invited those same three people back again, with mixed results. Teanau got there but Sonya must be jinxed. Covid stopped her from coming to Waihopai 2022 (and a planned 2021 Christchurch public meeting - although she did get to a 2022 Christchurch public meeting). Sonya lives in Gisborne and just days before Waihopai 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle ripped through that part of the country, obliterating any chance of her flying to Blenheim.

May Bass and her partner Bill McAulay did make it, but only after a nightmarish journey on the Cook Strait ferry "service", which saw them arrive many hours late (they also endured a similar delay on the return trip). Waihopai Domebuster Adi Leason was another scheduled speaker but he couldn't even get a booking on any ferry run by either company.

So, our Blenheim meeting had to go ahead without two of the advertised four speakers, namely Sonya Smith and Adi Leason. Nevertheless, it did go ahead. It was a smaller than usual gathering, with 20 plus people taking part. ABC's Warren Thomson kicked it off with a very detailed and informative analysis of the subject matter - the changing face of spying, complete with an accompanying handout.

Green MP Teanau Tuiono was the one North Island speaker who did make it to Blenheim, and he gave an engaging talk about the realities of the political context for any discussion of defence, intelligence and foreign policy (specifically relating to trying to get them onto the agenda for the 2023 general election campaign).

Teanau first came to a Waihopai protest in 2021 and I'll repeat what I said about him then - I can't recall any other Green MP (and ABC has had dealings with a lot of them over the decades) who talks about "American imperialism". In the absence of Sonya Smith, I filled in with an update about Rocket Lab but I couldn't speak about the campaign against it, because I don't have that information. It is a great pity she couldn't make it - covid and a cyclone have been our curse in recent years whilst trying to organise Waihopai protests.

And in Adi Leason's absence, we had a free ranging discussion on campaigning and what to do next. A particularly valuable reality check was delivered by senior union leader, Paul Watson, on the subject of the involvement of the trade union movement with the peace movement. Waihopai gatherings always throw up at least one surprise person and 2023 was no exception, with the participation of Phillida Bunkle, who'd been an Alliance MP and a Minister in the Helen Clark government. I hadn't seen or heard of her in decades.

Over The Fence

After the meeting we headed out to the base, where we held a low-key protest, with placards, banners and big posters which we attached to the base's outer fence. I was the MC and one of the several speakers. Nobody has been allowed onto the base land since the Domebusters' non-violent direct action dome deflation in 2008 (before that we used to have permission to protest at the inner gate). So, it was no surprise that when ABC's Warren Thomson (Waihopai Warren, of many arrests in years long past) went over the outer fence to plant a placard - as he does at every protest - the cops told him to get out.

What was a surprise was that the cops agreed to a request from a number of the women present for them to go over the outer fence and to go to a mutually agreed point on the farmland surrounding the base. May Bass had never been back to Waihopai since the 1988 women's camp, at which she was a leading figure (meaning that she had never seen the domes - they weren't in place in 1988 and they were gone by the time she next came back, in 2023). So, the women, plus one small dog, went onto the base land with police blessing. I ended up working with a cop, each of us on opposite sides of the fence, both physically lifting 80-year-old May back over that fence. I shook the cop's hand to thank him.

2023 marked 35 years of protests at Waihopai, which must be some sort of record for a campaign against a spy base, starting from before it was built. Without the domes, it now looks dramatically different - but it is still very much a spy base. As for the GCSB, it is still busy spending taxpayers' money. In April 2023 it was revealed that the Government has been secretly building a $300 million data centre at Auckland's Whenuapai Air Force Base. Once it is completed, it will be run by the GCSB on behalf of a range of Government agencies for at least 25 years. The covert State continues building its' empire.

End Of Camping After More Than 30 Years

Logistically, the 2023 protest marked the end of a very long era. As I wrote in my report of the previous (2021) protest: "For decades ABC has taken responsibility for organising a three-day camp, which has served as a gathering place for those participating in the protest. It was very enjoyable, but an awful lot of work, particularly for those in charge of feeding everyone. We also used to hire a van and shuttle-type trailer, taking responsibility for transporting people between Christchurch and Marlborough and back, plus transport around Marlborough on the weekend of the protest".

"Quite often the people doing all that driving were also heavily involved in the running of the camp and the feeding of the campers. We also used to charge a registration fee, which meant that ABC took responsibility for paying the overnight camping fees for all those who camped with us. We also stopped doing that in 2021".

"The numbers camping has dropped sharply in recent years, with people now preferring to make their own accommodation arrangements. That might have something to do with the 'mature' demographic of those attending, plus the fact that our campsite gets decidedly cold once the Sun has dropped below the ridgeline and stays that way until it climbs back above it the next morning".

"This is regardless of how hot the place gets in the day time. In 2021 we dropped virtually all of that. The ABC Committee did camp in our usual spot - and we were virtually the only people to do so. Everyone else stayed elsewhere. We did not hire a 12-seater van and trailer, but a basic four-seater campervan, for transporting the Committee only".

2021 was the end of all that. 2022 was going to mark the start of the new era, with the ABC Committee booking Blenheim accommodation for ourselves and a couple of our scheduled speakers. Covid put paid to that (but we did get a 100% refund). In 2023, we once again booked Blenheim accommodation for ourselves and several others (nine of us stayed together). And we did not hire a rental vehicle, travelling by private car (big thanks to CAFCA Committee member Terry Moon who, at short notice, supplied the car and herself as driver).

Post-2023 protest, we made the end of the Waihopai camp era a reality. For decades most of the camping and cooking gear had been stored at ABC HQ (i.e., our garage). That was divvied up among the Committee. Some of it was beyond salvation and was binned (but not very much of it). More than a decade ago, we'd been gifted a great big 1988-vintage canvas tent, which took four people to erect.

That big old tent had served us very well (I'd slept in it several times). It proved surprisingly easy to re-home - one of our neighbours snapped it up and I delivered it to her by wheelbarrow. The last thing to go was a big gazebo which ABC had bought new a few years ago. That was given away to people even closer to ABC HQ i.e., the family next door came over and took it away.

From 1988-2021 inclusive, we camped in a number of places. For years it was the Wairau River bank; occasionally a precarious site right at the base gate; a nearby farm; way up the Waihopai Valley; several years on a vineyard just walking distance from the base; and, since the turn of the century, it had been shared between two Department of Conservation camps, at Whites Bay and Onamalutu. Remarkably, Waihopai camps spanned half my life and I have many fond memories of the good times, the great people, the camaraderie, the beautiful settings and the many adventures and stories that have arisen from them (not to mention heat, cold, wind and rain).

ABC didn't organise a Waihopai protest in summer 2024. I put out a brief statement saying: "It is a major commitment of time, energy, resources and money, and the Committee has decided that it does not have the energy at present to do it justice. We are considering other projects as a use for our resources and money. We welcome suggestions about the best way to communicate our core message. This doesn't alter our decades-long demand that Waihopai be closed. Nor does it necessarily mean that ABC won't organise Waihopai spy base protests again in future". We did receive some suggestions from members and supporters and we are working on some ideas.

AUKUS; Rocket Lab; Gaza; West Coast

Waihopai wasn't ABC's only activity in 2023. In July we hosted (and I facilitated and spoke at) a well- attended and successful Webinar on AUKUS. At this stage, AUKUS is an Australian issue (although NZ, under both the Labour and National governments, has expressed interest in joining its' non-nuclear Pillar Two).

So, we were delighted to have two senior Australian peace movement activists take part, namely Bevan Ramsden (Sydney) and Shirley Winton (Melbourne), both leaders of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN). I'd met both of them when I went to Melbourne in 2017 to speak at IPAN's national conference. You can access the recorded Webinar and speeches here.

ABC has been involved in the campaign to expose and oppose Rocket Lab for several years now. In 2022 we organised a public meeting and small picket of the first NZ Aerospace Summit, held in Christchurch, with Rocket Lab a major player at it This Summit is annual and in Christchurch, so we were back there in 2023.

This time ABC didn't organise it, that was done by other people, with participants coming from all around the country for a lively and colourful protest, one which attracted good media coverage (unlike ABC's 2022 effort). I played a very limited role because it clashed with my first visit to the dentist in five years (courtesy of a broken tooth). I was invited to speak but reluctantly had to decline, as my mouth and speech were still under the influence of local anaesthetic.

I've been regularly attending some (not all) of Christchurch's weekly rallies and marches in 2023 and 24 against the US/Israeli genocide on the civilians of Gaza. I've been attending just as a foot soldier; I'm not involved in organising them. I was invited to speak at one rally on behalf of ABC and I spoke about US imperialism, in exactly those words. The time is right for that old school language, the crowd of several thousand people roared. Among other things, I told them about NZ's membership of Five Eyes; Waihopai; and Rocket Lab.

I singled out the top-secret US spy base/warfighting base at Pine Gap, just outside Alice Springs in central Australia. For many decades (I went to an international conference at Alice Springs, with a major Pine Gap protest, in 1987), it has been one of the CIA's most important bases anywhere in the world. Pine Gap is currently helping Israel select targets in Gaza. I highlighted the role that Pine Gap played in the 1975 bloodless coup that overthrew Australia's Labor PM Gough Whitlam (the rally was taking place on the November anniversary of his dismissal).

And I talked about the US military transport base that has continuously been at Christchurch Airport since 1955 and which, in decades gone by, used to play a vital role in servicing and supplying Pine Gap on a weekly basis. Afterwards, I had people come up to say: "That was interesting, I didn't know that". A young Saudi Arabian woman in full regalia walked alongside me in the march, talking to me about it.

I should also mention that I always attend the annual Christchurch event to commemorate the 1945 US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were, without a doubt, two of the greatest war crimes ever committed. And not ones that can be comfortably confined to history - the threatened use of nuclear weapons is still current, whether by Putin in Ukraine or by some of Israel's most extremist ministers in Gaza.

In March 2024 I paid my first visit to the West Coast since 2000. I was invited there, in my ABC capacity, to be the resource person at a couple of sessions of a weekend-long workshop of around a dozen activists. I talked about subjects such as the connections between trade and national security policy in the case of NZ; and about what an independent NZ foreign policy would look like in the global context. It was held in the middle of nowhere in a restored historic school and it was something of a reunion.

It was organised and run by West Coaster Paul Maunder, who was actively involved with the Roger Award for years, as both a judge and report writer. My driver was Leigh Cookson, who was Watchdog's Layout Editor for 20 years and is one of the key figures in the group running both the series of workshops and the venue where they are held.

Another key participant was Gillian Southey. For decades I worked closely with Leigh and Gillian on the Roger Award, and we all served on the Committee of the former GATT Watchdog, plus Leigh and I were on the Committee of the former Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa. The workshop started two days after my (73rd) birthday and Gillian had made a cake with which to surprise me. Paul led the singing of "Happy Birthday". It was all a lot of fun.

My Ancient Past

I was supposed to be interviewed for the updated official history of my old alma mater, the University of Canterbury, marking its 150th anniversary, but covid buggered that up. However, I was invited to the book's December 2023 launch, in the Arts Centre's Great Hall (the centrepiece of the University, when it was in the central city during its' first 100 years), because I contributed one photo - of me, with fellow CAFCINZ founders Bill Rosenberg, John Christie and others picketing the old Town Site Registry Building in the early 70s.

That photo appears alongside one of the rock-strewn road to the top of Mount John (near Tekapo). The University rented land to the US Air Force for a military observatory. I was one of the organisers of the 1972 national protest there. Hundreds of us climbed the hill at night; the cops attacked and injured people. In retaliation, we wrecked the single access road, trapping the cops up on the mountain top with the US Air Force boys. The University promptly quit as landlord; the Government took over that role; the US Air Force closed it down in the 80s.

Just before Christmas I had a coffee with a University of Canterbury Art History lecturer. She had been doing a tour of the University's various outlying research stations from an artist's perspective and whilst staying at the University's Mt John observatory, learned of the 1972 demo for the first time ever. Fascinated, the lecturer tracked me down and asked to meet.

We had a long chat about the Mt John demo and the broader context of those times. She invited me to come, as a resource person, on a day trip of Fine Arts students to Mt John sometime in 2024 (preferably not in midwinter). I accepted, subject to my availability. She asked me if I still knew anyone else who took part in the demo. I said that an old friend of mine was the Police dog bite victim (bitten on the penis), who told me he's happy to talk to her.

In November 2023 I was invited to speak at the screening of a documentary made to mark the 50th anniversary of the successful campaign to end compulsory military training. The friend who organised that specifically asked me to speak about "your church" i.e. Pantheism. I couldn't remember very much about it, then I realised that I've had my Security Intelligence Service Personal File for 15 years. Sure enough, it has pages on it. I used that for my talk (I was the comedy act). If you don't know what I'm talking about - I applied for exemption from military service on the grounds of being a minister of religion. I was unsuccessful but the court case was a lot of fun.

I spent 2021/22 working on my contribution to "Peacemonger", the book of essays about CAFCA and ABC founder Owen Wilkes (see my previous Report). In 2023 I was approached about one other long forgotten book project, namely the biography of famous painter Tony Fomison, who has been dead since 1990 (Tony was a personal friend and a CAFCA member for years. Small world - he was a mate of Owen Wilkes long before I ever met Owen; and he came on the 1972 Mt John demo. You can read my most recent Watchdog article about Tony in issue 146, December 2017).

I had to ask the writer to remind me when we had met (it was in 2012!). He contacted me again more than a decade later because he was now at the stage of seeking photos. Could I help him find Walter Logeman and Tony Webster? I contacted them both. I had been through a similar exercise with Walter regarding historic photos that he'd taken of Owen Wilkes, one of which ended up in "Peacemonger".

Tony Webster is a friend whom I've known since high school. Tony spent weeks hunting through old negatives until he found the wonderful 1973 photos that he took to accompany my planned NZ Rolling Stone feature on Fomison. It never happened, as the publisher went bust - so, I published that article and photos in Canta, when I was its' 1974 Editor. It is still regarded as one of the definitive profiles of Tony Fomison.

The book projects keep on coming. In January 2024 I was contacted by a stranger who wrote: "I'm getting in touch because I am in the process of writing a biography of Wolfgang Rosenberg. I found your obituary a great introduction to the man many years ago, and have recently come to the conclusion that he needed and deserved a full-length bio. It would be great to interview you for the book at some point". I'll keep you posted. You can read my obituary of Wolf in Watchdog 114 (May 2007).

In 2022 I reported that I'd met that year with an old friend and colleague who wanted access to my Security Intelligence Service Personal File, as part of research for a book on State surveillance. This person spent hours studying my file. Then there was a long pause because of difficulty finding a publisher. That has now been resolved and the book will be published in 2024. Most recently I was asked to contribute photos for it from my young activist days. That was a fascinating exercise wading through physical photos (virtually no photos in my possession have been digitised) before I submitted a couple of "action shots" from the early 1970s.

My Health

I always include a section on this, because I believe that members are entitled to know about the state of health of the Organiser. Usually in this section of my Report I say (rather smugly) that my health is pretty good and I haven't even had as much as a cold. I can't say that with regards to 2023. Every few years I get asthma (the last time was during John Minto's 2016 Christchurch Mayoral campaign). And, so it was in winter 2023. With me, asthma manifests as a continuous hacking cough. In June/July I had a month-long bout of asthma and coughed non-stop for three weeks (which meant no sleep for three weeks).

I went to my doctor's surgery weekly for those three weeks (at $62 a pop) and was prescribed an inhaler, antibiotics and steroids. In order to make my first visit, I had to undertake my only ever covid test (it was negative). Eventually the medication did the trick. I don't use the inhaler for any longer than necessary. It's so strong it makes me lose my voice (some people might think that's a good thing). It didn't stop me working - that's one of the beauties of working from home. But I lost appetite, I lost weight, I lost energy, and I lost strength. It was interesting, in an alarming way, to see how quickly I became debilitated. I don't need to use anything for asthma on an ongoing basis and I was quickly back to normal.

I only found out in January 2024 that I may very well have had covid recently without realising it. In November 2023 I was visited, out of the blue, by long-lost relatives, with whom I spent a very pleasant day going with them on a tiki tour. He had a bit of a cough and, a couple of days later, so did I. It hung around for a couple of weeks and I thought no more about it, dismissed it as a cold. I had no other symptoms.

It didn't stop me working and going about my normal life. Becky was in the Philippines, so I was already isolated. The relative's wife told me six weeks later that they'd found out that he had covid, and that they were "too scared" to ask me if I'd caught it from him. Oblivious to that, I had my 6th covid shot just before New Year. So, I need no longer have FOMO about not having had covid.

Becky's had it twice, once each on each of her two most recent trips to the Philippines. Neither of us has had any adverse effects. In 2023 I also got a booster for a vaccination that I last would have had as a baby or a very young child - namely for whooping cough. It's free to over 65s. Becky and I knew someone who died of it in recent years, aged in his mid-50s. It's not a nice way to go.

I pride myself on my elephantine memory. However, in 2023 I got a rude reminder that it is not as sharp as I thought it still was. I was well advanced with envelope-stuffing for the August Watchdog mailout, when I realised, with a shock, that I'd completely forgotten to get the Annual General Meeting notice and CAFCA's annual accounts printed to be sent out with Watchdog (which is what has happened with every August issue since time immemorial). No excuses - maybe it was a senior moment? I atoned for it by sending the AGM notice and accounts to members by e-mail (only a handful of members do not have e-mail addresses, and I apologise to them).

No Plans To Retire Yet

I've always said that I will keep on as the Organiser as long as the members want me to continue, and subject to my health continuing to be good. I actually got involuntarily "retired" (via redundancy) in 1991 and have been getting paid to do what I love ever since. I'm both a worker and an old age pensioner. And what I do is exactly the sort of thing that a lot of people say that they'd like to do if they had the time. It's not physically demanding; it gives my brain a good work out.

My paid hours have been cut by 25%, so I have more free time and I have retired from various other aspects of my life, ranging from international solidarity work to mowing my own lawns, so yet more free time. In 2023 I used that free time to do things like: go to several Crusaders' games (Becky came with me to the Super Rugby semi-final); go to a movie virtually every week (always on Cheap Tuesdays); make my first visit to live theatre since before covid; and go to several art exhibitions.

We went to a symphony orchestra concert in the Town Hall (a first for Becky, and only the second time for me). Life and work remain both stimulating and interesting. And the work is very important. So, I have no plans to quit in the foreseeable future. Why give up something that is both immensely worthwhile and enjoyable?

Watchdog - 165 April 2024