Consider another situation. You are on a bearing of 190 from the beacon, tracking north. If you select 270, then when you arrive a few miles west of the beacon, you will turn left. If you point the arrow the other way (090), you will turn right.
This may seem trite but... only if
you choose to turn in the direction of the arrow! There's nothing in the behaviour of the beambar in those circumstances to direct you to fly left or right -- it just moves down the instrument towards you.
I could envisage a model of use whereby you always use the arrowhead to select the radial on which you're flying (i.e. you always have the FROM flag showing). The beacon is always at the "blunt" end of the arrow. I think it's self-consistent (for VORs) but unconventional, compared with the usual practice of having the arrowhead more closely aligned with heading. Of course autopilots would get horribly confused...
