Out Now: Werewolf 50 - The Election Issue

Enter The ‘Wolf

From Werewolf Editor Gordon Campbell:

Hi and welcome to the 50th issue of Werewolf which is a landmark of sorts, for me at least. Also, this is the last edition before Election Day 2014. Given the state of the polls, it seemed timely to haul back and reconsider whether a third term National government really is such a good idea. In the end, our cover story found 19 reasons why it isn’t – and since that’s obviously a minority view, feel free to write in and put us right, as it were.

Elsewhere in this issue we report on the relative failure of the HPV vaccination programme, set up in 2008 as a key initiative to protect adolescent girls from one of the main risks in getting cervical cancer later in life, once they’ve become sexually active. Currently, New Zealand is lagging well behind Australia with this programme - for reasons that seem to include (a) parental denial that their children will become sexually active one day, and (b) a fear of vaccines among European New Zealanders. In his film essay this month, Philip Matthews writes about Under The Skin, the extraordinary Jonathan Glazer film in which Scarlett Johansson plays an otherworldly being who lures men to untimely ends, even as she gradually picks up inklings of what this being human bizzo is all about. In the final instalments of her travel series, Rosalea Barker writes one story about her experiences in Bratislava, and in another story she passes on tips for travellers in eastern Europe.

James Robinson is a New Zealand journalist now living and working in San Francisco. With the help of a Kickstarter fundraising drive, James recently self-published Voyages in America, an annotated collection of his blog posts about his coming to grips with American customs, and becoming conscious of his legacy issues as a New Zealander. This month, Werewolf features a chapter from James’ book, about the cultural mores surrounding the vexed matter of tipping. Elsewhere in this issue… satirist Lyndon Hood takes Colin Craig to heart and turns to the Good Book (key chapter: Ecclesiastes, which has disappointingly little to do with Eccles and the Goon Show) as a guide to voting. The carnage in Gaza provides a backdrop for Stephen Hopgood’s essay about the limits of online activism. In our Complicatist music column this month, Werewolf offers some tracks by the greatest-band-ever (ie, Sleater-Kinney) and a bunch of other stuff including Zola Jesus, FKA twigs and Buddy Holly. Finally – and since this is the 50th edition – I’ve chosen to re-publish one story, a with-extras version of an earlier essay about The Moomins.

Thanks once again to Lyndon for helping me post this 50th issue online. And to everyone who’s shown an interest in reading Werewolf or has written for it ( esp. Alison, Philip, Lyndon, Brannavan, Rosalea, Anne, Rory, Tim B. and James R.) or who has otherwise kept it going these past five years …thanks a whole lot. If anyone out there ever wants to be involved and talk over some story ideas, contact me at gordon@werewolf.co.nz

Cheers,
Gordon Campbell
Editor, Werewolf
gordon@werewolf.co.nz

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