Now and Next shows what’s on the major BBC radio stations now and next, to enable more intelligent listening choices. I am frankly astonished the BBC doesn’t have it on a webpage somewhere. James has designed it in the style of a Cefax page, which is a bit garish for my tastes, but does the job.

James Bridle has worked on a series of projects around areas that interest me, so I guess it should come as no surprise that he produced this. Awesome.

So I put a ’1′ against my first choice and a ’2′ against my second choice, right? From hugovk on Flickr

To begin, I assumed I could rely on the mainstream media. Perhaps a televised debate? Nope! OK, in that case, Today on Radio 4 will cover it and I listen to that everyday. Sadly, while they did cover it, none of the subtle issues around the debate were covered at any time I was listening (peak listening hours 7.30am – 8.30am) and the interviews with the politicians were about the political climate about the debate, and other issues, rather than the meat of the issue. I really want to know why our Prime Minister favours FPTP but the interview with him was largely focussed on criticizing his campaign. When it did get to substance, John Humphrys totally failed to properly make the counter arguments to Cameron’s claims – fluffing issues about the claim that votes are counted more than once under AV, and about which systems are used around the world. Equally, the interview with Nick Clegg started with a political row about internships – surely not more important than how we elect our government for years to come.

So, in frustration, I turned to online research. I started with the campaign websites and came away disappointed. The campaigns are both terrible. Once you understand the basics of the systems, I think the real questions are around who potentially benefits from each system and what the strengths and weaknesses of each system are. Instead of properly addressing these issues, both campaigns have resorted to simplified and highly politicised soundbites. The leaflets that came through my door were awful on both sides. The Yes campaign (for the change to AV) essentially has an ‘anti MP corruption’ message, obviously playing on the anger around expenses. The No campaign is worse, though, with claims that the money spent on changing the system should be spent on schools and nurses and soldiers instead, and claiming that Australia, who uses the system already, wants to change it. I’ve seen reputable counter claims to these arguments that say they are both total rubbish. It’s disappointing and, more to the point, it’s very hard to work out if there is any substance to any of the arguments against AV.

Wikipedia was useful and there are other online resources that are useful, including a twee but informative bit on More or Less on Radio4.

I have concluded the following:

• the claims about cost are rubbish and include the cost of holding this referendum. Also, I think it’s worth paying for a system if it’s good enough
• the handling of extreme parties is a key issue with this debate. AV allows people to vote at the extremes and express their true preferences safe in the knowledge that they can also vote for a more moderate party more likely to get in. This should mean that votes aren’t wasted (as your preference gets taken into account when your extreme party has been excluded) and could reduce tactical voting. It should also encourage extreme voters to think more about which of the moderate parties appeal to them, and should force the moderate parties to take into account the views of the extremes. There are risks with this, but it seems like a more sensible set of risks than FPTP, which risks the moderate vote being split over several candidates and extreme parties doing well in ‘protest’.
• the idea that some people have more votes than others under AV is interesting, but essentially I think untrue. You have one vote that gets transfered to the candidate of your choice in the event of your favoured candidate being knocked out. If your candidate isn’t knocked out, your first vote is still valid and counted again. I’m genuinely confused about why people have a problem with this.
• I think it possible there are good reasons to reject AV but I can’t find any that seem valid to me.

Most worrying of all, it seems the tactics of the No campaign including lies and emotive rubbish have worked and the polls are suggesting the No campaign will win. That’s certainly not how I want our political system to work.

One journey of almost 7000 miles, six new cities, eight trains, fifteen days, and every vignette, observation and fractured bitty-bit of the travelogue broken up and sent as status messages the old way. By postcard. To a bunch of random people who asked for one. Because travelling slowly is nice. And so is leaving a trail to see where we have been.

I requested, and I received!

This is the front of my postcard:

Text reads: “the snailr project notes the interconnectedness of all things”

I particularly like this because my doodles often look like this sort of colouring in. Note that she has obeyed the golden rule and no adjoining areas are coloured in with the same colour. Phew. Although, there are two white sections next to each other. I can cope.

And this is the back:

Text reads: “We step out onto the streets of Chicago, after going to sleep in Memphis, and the streets are teeming with people on their way to work or, worse, to meetings half way through their work morning. And then us. Oh, and one guy in Leiderhosen. He walks past us on a bridge going into the financial district and thrusts a flier at us. “Oktoberfest, folks? Starts today at the…” “No THANK YOU.” we say, firmly, hoping to convey the fact that we are grownup, responsible travellers and care little for knowing the whereabouts of such tripperies, or drinking in the morning.

“An hour later, after spending 40 minutes searching for the main city post office to get more stamps, I eventually find it… hiding behind the Oktoberfest tent. Dagnammit.”

We’ve all been there, one way or another…

Here are some reasons I love this project:

• It’s simple
• It’s joyous
• It’s personal
• It’s not TOO personal
• It’s a way to think about travel
• It’s a way to think about the little bits of information we share with people we don’t necessarily know, and remind us who those people might be
• It’s witty
• It’s brave

I’m very pleased to have received a card and played my part. Thank you, Anna!

Orbach is a psychotherapist, though, and there is something in her arguements that make me uneasy at times. She presents cases as mini mysteries, where we are given the problem (a man wants his legs amputated, for example), a series of clues from his past (troubled upbringing), and then get the reveal for why he feels the way he does (read the book to find out!). This simplification she presents is obviously to make the cases she raises, but I think the approach is also what makes me a touch uneasy about psychotherapy: the idea that there is an ‘answer’ if we can just work it out. I could be wrong (and for those undertaking psychotherapy everywhere I hope I am wrong), but I struggle to think of people as that linear.

One of the things that I have struggled to understand about Facebook and Twitter is the lack of permanence. These are fuzzy spaces where people can play and redefine themselves and make tangential jokes about the current context that don’t make sense years, months or maybe even days later. And yet, they are also spaces that define an online personality, affect job prospects and even get you in trouble with the law. They are like postcards, indexed and made available to the world.

(Interesting postcard link via Russell Davies.)

I avoid lots of tv because of the sexism, but now I begin to see why so many films don’t speak to me. It can’t turn me against Back to the Future, though.

(via Bechdel herself, who credits a friend of hers with the idea.)

via The Chief Happiness Officer.

Happy Christmas!

This is the Christmas card I drew and sent this year, but which also threw me into a frenzy of confusion about Christmas card etiquette.

When I was growing up there were two sorts of Christmas card givers and you had to pick a side. One set of people gave a card to everyone they knew, including everyone in their class at school and as they grew up all their work colleagues. The second set, to which I attached myself, sent cards to people they’d not seen in a while as a way to keep in touch (and, ocassionally in my case, totally failed to send cards altogether).

Then there’s the cards. Some people use cards as a way to demonstrate their charitable affiliations, some send tasteful, some send funny, some send religious and so on. I decided to send handmade cards wherever possible, and recently handmade cards that make me laugh, and saw this as one of the benefits of my small distribution group. The downside, of course, was that the people I saw a lot in my close circle of friends wouldn’t get the amazing works of genius I created.

One year I experimented with Christmas e-cards and in some ways that was the most successful (although I still fear some of my friends didn’t realise I knew the pictures were rubbish) because I could distribute the cards so widely and relatively unobtrusively. Sure, it broke my distribution rule, but the cards made be laugh so it was OK.

All this has changed with the rise of Facebook. Now, many of the people on my traditional Christmas card list are friends on Facebook and I increasingly feel I am in touch with them without the need for a card once a year. Why a card for the friend I chat to on Facebook but not the friend I chat to in the pub? It is of course great that I am now so much more in touch with these friends, but, as a result, this year’s card giving has been totally lacking in logic or thought. It has also been fraught with the potential to offend and confuse the people who’ve received or not received.

It’s clear I need a new policy. I’ve eleven months to think of one.

I have just visited your Islington branch and have a few questions.

1. Why are you playing music in this branch? Are you under the impression this bank is an optional shopping experience, which you seek to enhance, or somewhere that people might visit for leisure? Do you believe that all your customers are under 25, with the attention spans of hamsters and need constant entertainment while they carry out their banking? In my experience, the music and advertising is distracting and annoying and makes it hard to concentrate on the multitude of options that your machines present me with. Speaking of which…
2. Why are you signs so confusing? (see above)
3. Why do you have one tiny table for writing at? Would it not be reasonable to assume that by forcing your customers to fill in forms to do anything, they need the space to fill in the forms?
4. Why does your cheque paying in machine not work properly and, on failure, not give any useful feedback about why it’s rejected my 6 cheques?
5. Why do you have only two staff at the tills at lunchtime? When do you expect your customers are most likely to want to use the bank?
6. Why are your staff wearing casual t-shirts? This is my bank. This is where all my money is. Why do you think I should entrust it to someone who looks like he is on work experience?

I’ve banked with HSBC since I was a kid, and regret it every time I do anything other than internet banking or taking out cash.

Regards, etc.