On abbreviations alone we have a clear winner

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I’ve not yet seen last night’s Dr Who so I’ll talk about the other burning issue on everyone’s mind.

I haven’t decided how I’ll vote in the referendum on how to vote. Both sides make some good cases. Both also make bad ones. Nothing winds me up more than people I agree with using bad logic to support their argument; because if you can’t find good logic to support it, what exactly does that say about your case?

Sad fact about FPTP: it does not guarantee the winner is the guy with the majority vote, whatever nice Mr Cameron might say. Not if they got 40% and their two opponents got 30% each. Do the sums. You can probably do that even if you are a Tory. You will get a guaranteed majority winner only if there are two candidates – and, nationally, if all constituencies are approximately equal. Which they are not.

Sad fact about AV: the most popular candidate is not the guaranteed winner – it may well be everyone’s second or third choice who gets in. But (and it’s a big but) thepolicies that candidate represents are most likely the policies of interest to the majority of voters. There’s a subtle difference but it’s an important one. Suddenly no seat is a safe seat; no candidate can just cruise in because they’re representing a constituency that has voted the same way since 1066 and the opposition needn’t bother turning up.

A strong argument against FPTP is that twice in my lifetime now it has delivered prime ministers with such a landslide majority, and the personal conviction to back it up, that they can and did do pretty well what they wanted, unopposed; and yet they did not represent anything like the majority of the country. If I knew AV would never deliver another Thatcher or Blair, that would count very heavily in its favour.

A strong argument for FPTP is that contrary to popular belief, it can even cope when you get a logjam in the political process and no one wins. Like, a year ago. Given that it still works in that regard, why change it? What is beyond dispute to me that FPTP has always, always delivered the government that was needed on election day. I will say that for Thatcher and I will say it for Blair, because in both cases the opposition was so untenable. And I say election day. It may well be that within a few years, months or even weeks it is no longer the government we need; but on election day, it always has been.

Meanwhile, there are more burning issues to tackle which will go a long way to making our parliamentary system fairer. Boundary reform so that every MP represents approximately the same proportion of the population. Sorting out once and for all the present cludge that gives some citizens of the UK two parliaments and some only one. Things like that. I have a sneaking suspicion AV is just paint on the cracks. FPTP is unfair. So’s life.

So, how will I vote on Thursday? Haven’t decided. AV has the better publicity but it will take more than clever cat videos to win me over completely and they have four days in which to do it.

Vence en Provence en France, part deux

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Okay, the key, take-home lesson to impart to anyone visiting Vence is that you canturn left when leaving the car park beneath the Place du Grand Jardin. Failure to understand this key point led to much unhappiness and tristesse and enforced navigation of the hired Renault Clio twice around incredibly tight and steep little streets and corners of an old Provencal town, feeling more and more like something out of an advert and wondering when I would bump into Nicole and Papa coming the other way.
Later, I would look down from our room in the Hotel La Victoire which was right above that particular junction and see that everyone was turning left, even though I had clearly seen a sign forbidding it. I mean, come on, I know this is France but even so, I thought that level of disregard for basic traffic regulation was unusual. So I went and took a closer look at the no-left-turn sign, and noticed the extra bit beneath it that said something about 13.5 tons.
Dommage. On with the holiday.
La Victoire: tres joli, on one corner of and overlooking the main square, run by a lovely couple; cheap and cheerful, like a bed and breakfast except that you have to order the breakfast. So, not so much B&B as just B. Discount arrangement with the car park so that it’s affordable to leave your car there. Room clean and comfy but at 6’.5” I was glad not to be spending more nights in the just-about double bed. Definitely a warm weather hotel, as the only communal area for sitting in is outside the front door where you can watch the world go by. This is fortuitously next to a very nice ice cream stand.
Wednesday, explored Vence, not just the Matisse museum but elsewhere. The core of the town is a walled off medieval pedestrian-only labyrinth, containing such things as the cathedral, which itself contains a mosaic by Chagall (a lot of artistic stuff in this vicinity) …


… and the first Madonna & Child I have ever seen that makes Mary look young and makes both mother and son look like they’re having fun. Suspiciously like a real mother and son, in fact.
The Chapelle des Penitents Blanc had an interesting art exhibition: the artist had taken a few hundred left profile photos, mirrored them so that the subjects seem to be looking themselves in the eyes, and artistically adorned them according to some internal standard known only to the artist. It said something – no idea what – but I enjoyed looking at them all, which probably means it’s proper art, or something.

May I also recommend the Restaurant Cote Jardin, where we dined simply for its amazing view across the valley. Actually eating out on the terrace would have been counter productive as you go down a few steps and therefore would have the view blocked by the trees; much better to stay up in the main building. We ate there twice, and the first time had the slightly surreal experience of being an English/Swedish couple in the south of France not being able to help eavesdropping on the party of Norwegians at the next table.
Thursday, off down the road to St Paul de Vence, a hilltop town that is even more bijou and medieval and labyrinthine, perched on top of a rocky crag, just begging to be the setting for a fantasy novel …

… and guarded at its main gate by a Transformer.
This is just one of the many arty tableaus and sculptures around the town. Can I be excused for thinking that this one, consisting many dead mobiles, remote controls etc, looks just a little like a very large Jedi training aid?
From here we also got our first glimpse of the Alps, which we had previously forgotten all about. You can see them very plainly from the plane, but for the outbound flight you need to be sitting on the left and we weren’t.


St Paul de Vance sadly knows exactly how alluring it is to tourists and while it may look the part, almost every building is a shop selling something touristy. Still, there are people who live there; there are people who can still call it home. Chagall is buried somewhere in the cemetery at the end, but we signally failed to find the grave, possibly because (having looked it up on Google images) it’s just like – well, a normal grave. How odd.
The road there is hair raising for a Brit accustomed to Oxfordshire, switchbacking along the side of steep hills. Doing a comfortably safe maximum of 50kph I could swear I was hearing men’s voices; then I looked in the mirror and saw we were being tailgated by a couple of racing bikes, with more behind, and what’s more we were obviously holding them up. Eventually they were able to overtake, and we repaid the compliment on the next uphill slope.
Friday, perhaps the biggest miracle of all – finding our way through Nice rush hour not only back to the airport but to the Europcar office within it.
And that is what we did on our holiday.

How to steal like an artist

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My friend Dave asked for my thoughts on How To Steal Like an Artist, so I may as well share them with the rest of the world too. He’s talking about creativity generally; I take a specifically writer’s views.

  1. Yup.
  2. Indeed – this is part of your becoming. Having an idea helps, however, to give drive and focus to your creativity. Knowing who you are feeds into your creativity and vice versa.
  3. Depends. Sometimes there’s a contractual obligation. However, let’s assume this is about starting out as a writer, so it’s probably true. However, having written what you like, go back and check it isn’t just fan fiction. Sometimes you have to drown your kittens.
  4. YMMV. This works for him; I know for a fact it wouldn’t for me.
  5. Yes, even when you feel they’re crowding into what you really want to do, i.e. be creative.
  6. Get a good publisher with a publicity department. You should be free to spend your energy on creating.
  7. Well, yes. Not sure why this makes the top 10 – it’s a bit like saying we live on a world with gravity.
  8. Oh yes. Oh yes! Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, because if they’re typical newbie ones then people will people will move on. But if you enter the realms of total epic jerkness, people will remember. Oh yes. Seehttp://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html
  9. Also true. This is why I get so irritated with people banging on about not wanting to have a boring 9-5 job when in fact they’ve never tried it.The boring 9-5 job gives you stability and subsidises the important stuff you do with the rest of your time. All the other things he mentions are true too.
  10. Also true. Make your audience do some imagining rather than spell it out for them – it will be better than anything you write. Cf. the entire career of Anne McCaffrey after the mid-80s.