Speaker by Various Artists

There are mere hours until the first voting in the 2008 US elections – with the long process of selecting the nominees beginning on January 3 (Friday our time). It may be even longer than usual this year – with an open race for the Democratic nomination, and a wide-open race for the Republican nod – we might not know until the nominating conventions (late August Democrat, early September Republican) who will be fighting it out in November.

I'm sure there'll be enough New Zealand electoral law to keep me going the entire year, and there'll be some ... um ... disappointed my first post of the new year isn't on the Electoral Finance Act, but this seemed a little more timely. With voting beginning so soon after Christmas, there hasn't been much of break in the US (well in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, anyway), and the blessed down-time in the New Zealand political cycle allows our thoughts to wander abroad.

If you're interested in US politics, you might have a fairly good idea about how the president is elected: you'll remember __Bush v Gore__ – so you'll that the person with the most votes doesn't necessarily win, the phrase __electoral math__ might have crossed you – alerting you to the idea that elections get decided in certain swing states – the Florida's or Ohio's – because of a peculiar construction called the electoral college.

But all that's months away.

The voting this week, and over the coming months is about choosing the nominee – and it's a lot more open than New Zealand. How did Grant Robertson get to be Labour's nominee in Wellington Central? How will National decide whether Stephen Franks gets to be theirs? They've got a process, but we don't get any input. They destroy the ballot papers after the decision is made. We find out who won, but not how, or by how much. And though the information is out there, it's only in rare circumstances the public is even aware who the other potential candidates were.

But how do Americans do it differently? You'll be hearing about primaries and caucuses, and even if you're fairly conversant in the American political system, no-one can blame you if a lot of it flies right past you.

As we'll see, Americans don't just do it differently from New Zealanders, and the rest of world, they even do it differently from Americans. Each party has its own rules, each state has its own rules, and each state party has it's own rules – but let us start first with the basics.

The basic structure of the Republican and Democratic nominating race is the same. Delegates at the nominating conventions vote on who get to be the nominees. The nomination goes to the person who commands a majority of the delegates' votes. Note that it is a majoritarian system – it's not the person with more votes than any other who wins – someone has to get over 50% of the votes cast at the convention to get the nomination (at least 2184 votes out of 4367 votes for the Democrats, and at least 1,259 votes out of 2,516 for the Republicans).

If someone doesn't have a majority, then the delegates vote again and again until someone does. That doesn't happen very often, and delegates really just turn up to the convention as the cheering section.

The voting in the primaries and caucuses is about deciding who most of these delegates will be, and as you've probably determined, they don't all happen at once. The contest starting today and over the next weeks and the first of many, with sometimes very few actual convention votes at stake, but lots of coverage and "momentum" up for grabs. The delegates elected via these contests – known as pledged delegates – are generally party faithfuls, and they've slotted in behind their favoured candidate. They pledge to support their chosen candidate in the first round of voting (which is all it usually takes – front-runners will emerge, the race will narrow to two people and someone will secure over half the delegates – often well over – months before the convention vote takes place).

Spaces for pledged delegates are divided between the states (and territories – even some of those that don't get to vote in the Federal elections) based on a fairly complex formula. States with bigger populations get more delegates, but the strength of support for the party within the state is also taken into account – for example, a state that voted for Bush at the 2004 Presidential election will get more delegates to the Republican Convention than an otherwise identical state which voted for Kerry (but less at the Democratic convention – which has a rule of similar effect). Party control of a state legislature, and the existence of a majority delegation in the Congress, or US Senators are among other matters taken into account.

There are also a number of unpledged delegates to each convention – called superdelegates by the democrats (who've had them for a while), and automatic delegates by the Republicans (who aren't big fans of the idea, and have far fewer). A delegate place at the Democratic Party nominating convention is allocated automatically to each Democratic congressman, US Senator, State Governor, member of the Democratic National Committee (the "DNC"), former DNC chair, former President, former Vice-President, former Senate leader, former Speaker, and former House minority leader. They can vote for whomever they want right from the beginning, but many of them have already announced their initial support. The only Republicans given automatic slots are each state party chairman (and their equivalents in non-states like Washington DC), and each state's two members of the Republican National Committee(the "RNC").

So it's ordinary delegates that are up for grabs now – and every state divvies up its delegates by it's own rules – rules made by both the state (through the state legislature) and the state party. And these sometimes conflict with the national rules made DNC or RNC (we'll get back to that later). The DNC requires that each state's delegates are divided proportionally between candidates getting at least 15% of the support, and that affirmative action be taken into account (each states' delegation must be half-male/half-female and meet affirmative action guidelines relating to minorities). The RNC doesn't __require__ proportional distribution of delegates, and some states give all their delegates to the state-wide winner.

The delegate election process varies markedly from state to state, and the first state to go to its citizens is Iowa. In just a couple of hours. Next is New Hampshire – five days later, and the first state to hold a primary – the most popular method used to decide the membership of a state's delegation. A presidential primary is a state-wide election – over the course of the day the state's residents turn up to polling booths where they vote for whom they want to have as the nominee.

Except in Louisiana – which does a lot of things differently – voters at a primary can only vote in either the Republican primary or the Democratic primary (they're also voting in primaries to determine candidates for for other office as well – state governor, senator, etc.) – they cannot cast a vote in the Democratic presidential primary, but the Republican gubernatorial primary (you can get used to that word too – it means related to a governor).

An important point to note at this time, is that when registering to vote, Americans have the option of declaring their party affiliation – they can tick a box saying whether they are a Republican or a Democrat (or they can leave it blank or opt to be an unaffiliated voter or independent) – this can have important effects – many statutory bodies – like the Federal Election Commission – require equal numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans.

Some primaries are what are called "closed primaries" – limiting voting to people affiliated with the party. The opposite are naturally "open primaries" – allowing voters registered as Democrats to vote in the Republican primary and vice versa. A few states have open primaries for one party, and closed primaries for the other.

New Hampshire operates what is known as a mixed, or semi-closed, primary. Registered Republicans can only vote in the Republican primary, and registered Democrats can only vote in the Democratic primary, but independents can choose to vote in either. Other states operate semi-open primaries – the voting is only open people registered with the particular party, but registration can be changed on the day.

Iowa doesn't hold a primary, but conducts caucuses – these need a little more explanation.

A caucus isn't an election as we'd think of it, but more like a series of town meetings conducted throughout the state.

In Iowa that's a Republican meeting, and a Democratic meeting, conducted in each of the state's 1781 precincts – public meetings conducted in schools, church halls, or in libraries.

The Democratic process first – these meetings not the state's delegates to the national nominating convention, but delegates to conventions in each of Iowa's 99 counties. In turn these county conventions caucus to choose delegates to conventions held in each of the state's five congressional districts – which choose most of the state's delegates to the national convention, and other delegates to the Iowa state convention, which chooses the remainder of the state's delegates (and Keith thought Hong Kong was complicated).

Voters caucus in the early evening, starting at 6:30, in a process that can take 1-2 hours. There's no ballot, and no secrecy. There are designated areas on the floor, and voters stand with their like-minded compatriots. For 30 minutes, caucus-goers can try to persuade those who haven't yet made up their minds to join with them, or try to convince those who have to switch camps. The numbers are added up, and those people in groups which don't make a certain threshold (usually 15%, but it can be higher in the smaller precincts which elect only a small number of delegates to a county convention) get the opportunity of giving their support to another candidate.

This is an important point: in a primary, it's only the first choice that matters – you vote for the person you want to win; in a caucus, you can support the person you want to win, but your second choice can matter too – and it can have a big impact on the final vote. Once the final tallies are taken, each precinct's delegates are apportioned between the groups that passed the threshold according to their levels of support, and most people go home. The die-hards remain, and determine who exactly will be the delegates appointed by each candidate's supporters to the county convention, perhaps voting for local party offices, or debating items they'd like to see on the platform in the election. Then, in March, the County conventions are held.

Weird, huh?

And that's the simplified version. I could have told you about the arcane rules that are used to determine how many delegates each county gets, and each precinct gets, that favour smaller, rural areas (to encourage candidates to campaign in rural areas). Some smaller caucuses have very low turnouts – a single family can sway the vote – whereas larger caucuses (which do get more delegates, but not in proportion) can have several hundred attendees. In 2004, some caucuses were one by the candidate supported by the single voter who turned up, apparently there were four caucuses to which no-one turned up at all.

The Republican process in Iowa is simpler – it's more of an informal primary. People go along to the Republican caucuses – they listen to campaigning from other caucus-goers, they get a blank sheet of paper, on which they write the name of their favoured candidate – the votes over the whole state are combined together and are announced. When the state party holds its convention to determine who gets what delegates at the national convention, it remembers how well everyone did.

The vast difference in the process between an Iowa caucus and a New Hampshire primary create very different campaigns. Turnout in New Hampshire is much higher – if you want to help them choose the nominee it takes a couple of minutes to vote, which can be done at your convenience throughout the day – if you want to have your say in Iowa it has to be in the early evening, and it takes a couple of hours.

Because of the intense localisation of the Iowa campaign, organisation is incredibly important – candidates wishing to do well need someone organising their support at every caucus, and preferably a team to back them up. In a primary election, that's not nearly as important – those few people in an area where a candidate's support isn't strong can just vote, and help the overall.

I might get into the politics of it all, and the effect the staggered election races have on the nomination, at a later point (I'm sure there can be robust discussion in the comments) – Iowa is a statistical three-way tie for the democratic nod and could pretty much go to . Suffice to say that Hilary wants to win in Iowa, but would prefer Edwards to win than Obama. McCain also wants Hilary to win for the Democrats in Iowa – so that independents in New Hampshire – where he's making his first stand – will be more likely to choose to take part in Republican primary; and he wants Huckabee to win the most Republican votes in Iowa so that Romney – his major opponent in New Hampshire, can't get any momentum. And political junkies everywhere want three-way races to continue throughout the campaign season so that no-one has a majority come August, and there can be a real floor-fight at the nominating convention.

After Iowa and New Hampshire come primaries in Michigan and South Carolina, and caucuses in a bunch of other – mostly smallish – states (run, of course, differently to those in Iowa). There is likely to be some movement as the lesser-knowns fare poorly or run out of money, and it's possible that a candidate for one the parties will emerge as almost the presumptive nominee, but on Tuesday February 5, the biggest collection of presidential primaries in US history will take place. Historically, a month or so into the race – which used to start later (the Iowa caucuses were around three weeks later in 2004) – a number of states (including some substantially larger than the initial small contests) held their races on the same day, and 4 weeks later, another large batch of contests was held. In 2004 it was 7 on February 3 (called Super Tuesday I, or mini-Tuesday), and then 10 – including California and New York (dubbed Super Tuesday or Super Tuesday II) – in early March

This year it's 24 states. It's getting all sorts of stupid names – I think Super Duper Tuesday is the most widespread (it's the name of the wiki page, anyway) – and over half the delegates are up for grabs. They've all got their own rules too – open, closed, or mixed primaries; open, closed or mixed caucuses – but I think I've probably written enough on that by now.

A final aside – the rules adopted by both the DNC and the RNC set dates at which the earliest primaries and caucuses can be held, and this year they both chose February 5 (with some leeway for the traditional early starters). But various states, perhaps annoyed at the large influence given to small or not terribly representative states like Iowa or New Hampshire passed state laws that would move their contests into January. And as one state crept earlier, states that had traditionally had their contests earlier than that state retaliated, by moving their even earlier. New Hampshire law requires that their contest be held at least a week ahead of any similar nominating race (generally considered to be any state primary or a state caucus other than Iowa). And Iowa law requires their caucus to be 8 days ahead of New Hampshire's primary (they got some sort of waiver this year, though losing a tradition of Monday Night caucuses).

The DNC and RNC are a little miffed at all this. They told just about everyone that the first Tuesday in February was the earliest they could go, and they've been largely ignored as states fight for prominence (in 2004, 2% of the delegates had been selected before the first Tuesday in February, in 2008 it will be around 40%). And they're retaliating. The RNC has decreed that the errant states in the Republican contest have lost half their delegates, and the DNC as well as taking half the delegates, is threatening to remove all state delegates from candidates who campaign in those states (which include Florida – and important state in the Democratic nomination race). And it's not entirely sure what will happen, if the numbers for the convention are close enough for it to matter...

Two ticks ... how boring is that?

[And if you don't feel like discussing electoral rules in the comments, feel free to expound on whom do you want to win? Or think will win. Or want to lose...]

I have to admit right off the bat that when Russell asked me to do this, my first thought was, ‘dude, how poisoned can you make a chalice?’. Fresh from the ‘why don’t nice girls like us’ agonising over System’s demographic make-up, it’s impossible not to be aware that I am, for the first time in my life, writing as a member of the Vagina-ed Classes.

I make a terrible Token Woman. I’m mistaken for a man in online discussions so frequently that I’m starting to develop a complex about it. The first time I ever wrote anything that appeared on Public Address, it was for Damian’s story competition, two years ago. Despite that story touching on the excellence of my breasts, I was still mistaken for a man - in an incident I may one day be gracious enough to stop raising. But not yet, Haywood.

So it may be that I speak with such an unconscious masculine energy that I don’t have a recognisably female voice. And perhaps this is Russell’s fiendish plan. "Ha, I’ll get that chick who sounds like a dude, that’ll fcuk ‘em."

The whole question of why more women don’t write or comment on political blogs is one I find odd. Pol-blogging is a hobby. Nobody ever asks me why more women don’t fish, or collect stamps. (This may indeed happen, but nobody asks me.) It’s one of those odd truths that people don’t understand each other’s hobbies. My partner programs for fun. My son obsessively collects Duelmasters cards. I think they’re both insane. Me, I indulge in co-operative writing. In theory this involves people creating characters and writing stories together. In practise, it means a bunch of women spending hours chatting and producing terrifying amounts of porn.

But given the discussions of the last couple of weeks, and given I’m one of the people somewhat overlooked in those discussions – women who do feel comfortable at System – I feel sort of obliged to discuss it.

So I tried to be diverse. I’m a woman and bisexual and from Timaru, though apparently that last may be one Diversity Initiative too far. The things that make me different, though, that sometimes make me feel jarringly out of step with the flow of System are nothing to do with demographics. It’s more the times I wonder if I’m the only one here who’s ever sat in a gang house and listened to guys talk about killing people. Who’s ever been taken captive by an ex-boyfriend, or walked out of home holding the policeman’s hand because anywhere else has got to be better. I may be the only one who doesn’t talk about it, or there might be a whole bunch of you here not talking about it as well.

But I don’t want to talk about it. The heavy shit can wait for another occasion, and get here on merit. I’m just keeping Speaker warm until they find a lesbian midget.

Those of us who find the System experience to be positive overall – not perfect, but positive – run the risk of speaking in platitudes. I’m particularly not good at being nice. I’m the one who instituted Attention Whore as an official admin term at work. I use my breasts to get attention. I’m just not a good person.

Maybe, though, I can have one go at being today’s Platitudinarian. I know a few people who read System but seldom or never comment, and it’s not because they’re afraid. Intimidated, sure, because this is an intimidating place. When they speak, they want to feel they have something worth saying, and they want to make sure it’s exactly right. You just know, whatever the subject, someone’s going to pop up who does it for a living or wrote their thesis on it.

I don’t know what System’s lurker to poster ratio is, but I’m pretty sure it’s normal. And it’s not the only site in the blogosphere looking to insert some tokens. But I know what it’s like to struggle to write something, and know when you release it into the wild, absolutely everyone’s going to feel they have the right to judge it. I think about how intimidated I was writing this, and wonder how much it’s like that for the people who write here all the time, knowing any little mistake they make’s going to be picked up and proclaimed instantly. I get this weird, unaccustomed feeling like maybe it would be nice to take a minute and say, you guys (including the guys who are actually women) do a bloody great job.

Then my normal tendencies kick in and tell me it’s probably not as bad for the ones who are clearly drunk all the time. You know who you are – at least since your partner sewed that name-tag on you.

Emma Hart is a Public Address reader who administrates Bardic Web as an actual day job.

I've just got back to New Zealand from a three-week overseas holiday. At least, I think it's New Zealand. Reading people's comments about the Electoral Finance Bill, I can't help wondering if my return flight somehow crossed into the Twilight Zone.

It's an attack on democracy, thunders the NZ Herald, suggesting that the revised bill is only slightly better.

No it's not -- it's worse! -- contends table-thumper-in-Chief David Farrar. Struggling to compete in the battle for a tendentious quote, Rodney Hide lost his marbles completely:

The Electoral Finance Bill is the most serious assault on free speech and political expression ever seen in the developed world - and the recent amendments to it have changed nothing.

In the New Zealand I thought I knew, most people figured this bill was trying to achieve something important: to remove the corrupting influence of big money in politics. To make parties tell voters who is behind the huge donations they receive. To make sure the public could find out who's behind the swag of pamphlets, billboards and ads they're exposed to at election time. To limit the power of a few to swing elections using the sort of wealth the rest of us can't hope to compete with.

The New Zealanders I thought I knew only needed to remember the 2005 election to remind themselves why these things were important. Almost until the eve of the election, no-one knew who was behind the Exclusive Brethren's million-dollar pamphlet campaign -- or about National's involvement in that campaign.

Nor do we have any idea who provided Labour and National with hundreds of thousands of dollars to bankroll their electioneering - or what those people might hope for in return.

It was clear that our electoral system needed a healthy dose of transparency. And that we should have listened more closely the Royal Commission on the electoral system in 1986 when they warned of the need to minimise the effects of economic inequalities on public debate for democracy to prosper.

Still, the Electoral Finance Bill as originally drafted was a horrible disappointment. There was nothing restricting secret trusts and anonymous donations to political parties. On the other hand, the restrictions on the speech of others who wanted to be involved in the debate were far too tight. As drafted, that bill was an attack on democracy.

There was an outcry, and a chastened government publicly announced that changes would be made. Sensible people responded by grumbling about the closed-door process being followed, but resolved to wait for the changes and see whether they really made things better.

Non-sensible people continued to rail against the bill as if the government had announced it was going to pass the bill in exactly the same form.

Well, now we can all see the changes. And as someone who's spent his life studying, writing about, and arguing free speech issues, I think this bill is much better. It shortens the net capturing "election advertisements". It doubles the amount that people can spend on them. It scraps the onerous statutory declaration regime. It restricts overseas donations. Best of all, it introduces new controls on secret trusts and anonymous donations.

I am mystified by the people who are claiming that the changes aren't significant and that the bill is still "draconian". Bill English: this means you. Why are you telling people that this is about silencing Labour's critics? Shouldn't you point out that it equally restricts Labour's cheerleaders, and National's critics?

How can you justify calling this "heavy regulation" of free speech? Shouldn't you mention that no more than a handful of people want to spend more than $120,000 on electioneering? And that hardly any of us even spend the $12,000 that would require us to register our identities with the Electoral Commission so that everyone knows who's behind our ads? Most of us exercise free speech by talking to each other, writing letters to the editor, and talking to the media. Those things aren't regulated at all.

What's that you're saying about the regulations applying one year in every three? Shouldn't you point out that political speech in the early months of the year is very unlikely to be calling for people to vote one way or another - so it won't fall under the Act?

For example, if the Sensible Sentencing Trust runs an ad in March calling for MPs to vote for the More Prisons Amendment Bill, that speech won't be affected. If they run an ad in October calling for the public to vote against the parties who refused to support the More Prisons Amendment Bill, it will count as an election advertisement. As it should.

Is the bill perfect? No. There are still some flaws. I'd like to see the limit for anonymous donations reduced still further, for example. Why should parties be able to get $10,000 donations each year from people without telling voters their identities?

And the bill should be tweaked to make it clear that people with loudhailers and placards don't have to put their names and addresses on them (the government has announced it will fix this).

I'm still hoping that shortly I'll land back in the New Zealand that has a sense of fairness and proportion, and can debate this revised bill on its merits. When that happens, we might start asking ourselves some really interesting questions, such as who stands to gain most from the lack of fairness and transparency in the present system -- the system that will prevail if this bill is defeated?

Steven Price is co-founder of the Coalition for Open Government.

Late November 1981, Saturday, the day the hit parade aired on TV. A brisker than usual walk down Pine Hill road to the Governor's coffee shop because that's where we hung out and everyone would be there to discuss the momentous event: Boodle, Boodle, Boodle reaching number 5.

I can't remember whom exactly but a gaggle of Clean acolytes had gathered to celebrate and even though we had no right to, it felt like our success too. It's probably a standard thing with music fans that when "your" band does well, you can at least take pride that your own good taste has been vindicated.

The conversation, I seem to remember, vacillated between how deserving they were and derisory comments directed at the four songs placed above it. Morons were obviously still in the majority- otherwise it would have been number one!

It was a darned special record to own because it seemed to me to so beautifully capture and celebrate our unglamorous existence- the suburban ennui of 'Sad Eyed Lady' (which I had just escaped) with its angular harmonies and oddball simplicity accompanied my trek down Pine Hill Road.

So what if David Kilgour sings g against the E chord's g# at 0.43, his inability to sing the "right" note (or better still his not bothering to) adds a delicious layer of sloth and torpor upon which the song depends. To sing the right note would have been utterly wrong. A bunch of Clean fans painted the lyrics on the outside of their Clyde street flat such that it was colloquially known as the 'Time to Go' house for the best part of a decade.

Most special was finally having possession of the song that had become, for many of us, something of a talisman, 'Point that Thing Somewhere Else'. Not that the band had intended it to be taken in this way but many of their audience hijacked it as an anti-violence anthem.

Violence was a big thing in our lives at that time. There was a lot of scarfie bashing, punk bashing and with the Springbok tour, bashing of anyone who was anti tour. To the fluffy-dice, Valiant-driving bogans that would lie in wait at midnight outside the public gigs where bands like the Clean played, we were all three.

At one gig, Wayne Elsey (of the Stones) and myself were approached by two such young men, both with biceps the size of our thighs, inviting us outside for a fight.

"No fists", he said, which might have been slightly reassuring were he not holding a doubled over length of wharf rope and his mate's forearm was in a cast.

Although 'Point that Thing' was so obviously a song about a defunct relationship, the refrain line, "don't point me out in the crowd, don't point that thing at me" accrued an obvious, if unintended, resonance in light of incidents such as these.

But it wasn't just the lyrics of that song of course, it was foremost the music. Someone said to me recently that they didn't think the recorded version was particularly good. Perhaps it isn't. It was doubtless a hard thing to capture, 'Point that Thing' being more a procedure than a fixed song, one that would be marginally different at each live performance. It would have been nigh-on impossible to capture the miraculous effect of there being two guitars in the music but only one guitarist on stage, an impression that David Kilgour could bring off live in a large reverberant hall, but felt compelled to somehow replicate here with an overdub.

The recording at least captured what the song typically did in any given performance, proceeding from a minimal emptiness of the guitar ruminating on the three pitches of the bass riff (d-c-b) and incrementally filling this void by adding e, g and finally f# (at 2.45). It is this gradual process whereby an implied minor-key emptiness (one that seems to me to communicate a suppressed malevolence that the lyric makes explicit) transforms to a fuller, brighter major-key musical landscape that sweeps its own past away. It carried with it, or at least to me, a sense of overcoming, of moving beyond (whichever of the two lyrical scenarios you chose to adopt).

To the bogans who stalked the Coronation Hall, this music was probably alienating and insufferable (it was obvious they weren't there to listen to it!), but as much as they could grievously assault us on the way home they could not penetrate or do this music any violence. It was as if to say, "this music is above your petty, violent world, it totally ignores you". It gave many of us the courage to stand our ground- the artfulness of its musical processes a triumph over the barbarity that lay in wait outside.

Malevolence is to be found elsewhere on the record, namely in "Billy Two". The boisterous energy of the song combined with the more direct moments in the lyrics paint a portrait of a sullen bully.

Billy didn't have a lot to say, he never ever spoke
I looked him in the eye just once and then I looked away.

As we all knew as guys, direct eye contact with any of our Coronation Hall antagonists was likely to be taken as a pretext for a thorough bashing. You simply avoided it no matter what the provocation (often an elbow to the ribs as they walked past you).

As a musical depiction of violence and mental derangement, the bridge or middle 8 of "Billy" is one of the Clean's more inspired moments it seems to me. It takes place on only one chord, E minor, but like Billy himself one is led to think, is profoundly unstable. The backwards guitar enters on the second bar of the section creating its own ambiguity in the process (Where does the section properly start, at the beginning of the E minor chords, or the advent of this melodic event one bar later?). It implies a time signature contrary to the 4/4 backing of the rhythm section, namely 3/2 (count a half time 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 against the six notes).

This is all somewhat disorientating such that it becomes very difficult to know where you are in the phrase, to predict when (or even if) the section will end. Rock music tends to move in predictable four-bar units, but in the end the Clean's bridge is only seven-bars long, such that, in combination with the earlier disruptions and disorientation, the return of the verse section is precipitous and violent, impervious to prediction.

It is as if this section enters Billy's turbulent universe (Hamish's drumming almost boiling over) to see the world how he sees it. Of course the song is a multi-levelled response to the character of Billy; as much as it captures and depicts his violence it has a humanitarian angle, the cajoling and encouraging chanting of his name in the chorus suggests he is more to be pitied than reviled (it is as if to say "come on, it doesn't have to be this way. Come out of your angry shell and the world will be a better place for both of us").

In contrast to Billy Two's intensity, 'Thumbs Off' turns to the mundane subject of leaving home and setting up a flat. It always brought to mind for me the flat on the corner of London and Filleul streets where the Clean lived and practiced, a rambling, dishevelled sort of place, with dishes in the sink and the unpaid bills on the wall, while deep in the bowels of the building was their practice room, a little sanctuary away from the all that. And finally there is the EP's centrepiece 'Anything Could Happen' a gentle ditty of optimism and encouragement.

Anything that could happen was happening as far the Clean were concerned and could easily happen for the rest of us (with the release of the Dunedin Double to a certain extent it already had). In little over a year the Dunedin scene had evolved from a bunch of bands essentially playing for the fun of it and to each other as an audience, to now having the ability to make records and tour the country.

'Anything Could Happen' may as well have been Flying Nun's corporate anthem. In the Governor's coffee shop that early summer's evening what mingled in the air was the exquisite excitement of possibility. The Clean had broken through and the rest of us were going to be scrambling through the rubble hard on their heels to take on the world.

---

Graeme Downes was born and raised in Dunedin. He formed the Verlaines sometime around 1980 and has released seven albums in the period up to 1997 and one solo album (Hammers and Anvils) in 2001. He is now a senior lecturer in Music at the University of Otago.

So what's your golden New Zealand album or EP? This week, you can craft us some prose about it, post it here and be in to win one of five copies of Grant Smithies' Soundtrack, the new book by Nelson's finest and a horde of guests -- from Karen Walker to Chris Knox -- that covers 118 great records with wit, feeling and insight.

Prior to last week, I would have said that Bob McCoskrie was not on my list of friends.

What he personifies used to be called 'reactionary' in the old days, now it calls itself 'family values'. Family values are the perfect stealth vehicle for transporting right-wing politics into society by means of a pleasant name. 'Christian fundamentalism' or 'moralistic fascism' -- while technically more accurate -- doesn't sound nearly as good.

In a similar way, the name of Bob McCoskrie's lobby group Family First is a masterpiece of misdirection. Who doesn't like families? Who wouldn't want to put them first? Of course, "Democracy Last" might be a more truthful name, but it's nowhere near as cuddly.

Even though I am a mother of two, I still haven't quite figured out what 'family values' are exactly. Hatred of gay people? Hatred of unmarried parents? Hatred of atheists? Hatred of anyone who isn't one of those picture-perfect families cloned somewhere in the Midwestern American Bible belt?

Bob's Bible-fearing troops had their first field-day with Sue Bradford's 'Child Discipline Bill' earlier this year. Bob was up in arms. What would this country come to if parents were stopped from exercising their God-given physical powers on their children's bottoms? Surely New Zealand would end up like Sweden, where they banned smacking half-a-century ago. And look what they've been up to since: nothing but porn movies. Bob has to stop that.

Family First called for a big rally to defend the right to hit. Thousands came, but the loophole in the law was changed nevertheless. That has made Bob even angrier. And it has got him thinking. When the latest sad statistics about sexual abuse in young New Zealand women hit the news, Bob McCoskrie's brain went into overdrive. His widely-reported analysis was that "sexual liberation" was the cause of this abuse. Go figure.

You'd think that this would've been the last that we would ever hear of Bob McCoskrie. But no, he has resurfaced again, thanks to a new television show called 'Californication'. Family First has called for a boycott of this US import because former X-Files star Dave Duchovny is given an on-screen blowjob by a nun in a church. It's a dream sequence, no genitals in actual sight, and it's only half as twisted as some of the freakish stuff in the Old Testament, but nevertheless, it was enough for the moral majority to scream "Blasphemy!".

This outrageous scandal, by the way, screened at 9.30 pm -- when, according to my own family values, kids should be fast asleep and parents sampling another glass of Shiraz. Although the ratings jumped up, some consumer companies got scared, and moved their advertising to less sleazy slots.

And that's why the commercial breaks on 'Californication' no longer feature a certain budding actor, who sits on a sofa, and fills his stupid fat gob with a vile New Zealand confectionary called 'Pineapple Lumps'.

This alteration to the programme will save numerous families from foolish candy purchases, and the consequent blight of pineapple-induced tooth decay. And it also means that I no longer want to throw up during the advertisements, which has greatly increased my viewing enjoyment of 'Californication'.

So THANK YOU, Bob McCoskrie. Perhaps, after all, you really are my friend.