Mad Cyril in 'Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing'

Sorry, son, I've gotta get this off my chest. All you Facebook

socialists wonderin' why Labour can't get it together like it's a mystery: sit down and listen. Better than that, read The Prince and get a clue.

You want to know why the Conservatives are in power so often, even though their policies have the compassion of a orangutan with his penis caught in a zip? Check the way they dealt with their leadership contest. Give them a week, and most of the candidates have withdrawn, leaving the alpha in place. They make like gangsters, and I'm not saying that the withdrawals were precipitated by a word in the shell-like. 

Except I totally am. I'd just love to see the pictures they showed Gove to get him out the race. They must have been tasty.

Labour, meanwhile, can't run a palace coup without letting the papers in on the act. If you want to assassinate a leader, even metaphorically, don't announce it. Even Professor X had files on his X-Men 'case they needed taking down. If there isn't a file in the whip's office with a picture of Corbyn doing something to shame him - like wearing a properly tailored suit, son - then Labour needs some new enforcers. 

I reckon Corbyn's got too many principles to have his own protocols for Mutually Assured Destruction. Not saying it'd be nice if his boy Seamus Milne was strolling round Parliament remindin' the rebels of that time they pumped a donkey, but it might have shut the chaos down. 

So, the papers have it that Labour is going to split in two. Good. Fuck them. The Tories were on the fucking ropes, and they decided that was the perfect moment to have a domestic. We've seen in the last two referendums that the political class have not been listening to the populace. Maybe a pair of parties would have to pay attention instead of relying on brand loyalty.

Too long, didn't read? Try this: The Tories win because they are ruthless. This is moronic political commentary, written by a moron, because that is all politics deserves. 

This May Hurt A Bit @ The Traverse 2014

This May Hurt A Bit feels almost old fashioned in its insistence on a political message. Harking back to the rougher edges of 1980s' agit-prop (it even has complaints about Margaret Thatcher), it repeatedly, and precisely, skewers the Conservative attack on the NHS. Through the story of one family coping with the ailments of age - and interrupted by factual or forthright sketches - it condemns the attempts of the government to sell off the NHS into an American style free market profit grab.

As crassly as the cliche I am about to use, This May Hurt pulls no punches. When Death, in his classic outfit, blames the Tories for killing the NHS, Feeney is in no mood for compromise. The main story, featuring a mother and son, various illnesses, harassed staff and an American extolling his system, is little more than a hook for meditations on PFI - a truly disgusting and stupid idea, which has effectively put future generations in hock for the sake of a few new buildings - management restructuring and and the stand-off between Bevan and Churchill.

This last battle echoes down the corridors of time - they stalk the present day, with Churchill half defending, half excusing David Cameron's strategies. While the parodies of management speak, and the formal agons around the value of health care are taut and precise, it is the scream of the nurse that captures the spirit of the script. Frustration, disappointment and a desperate urge to save what is good are summed up in a single syllable. Fuck.

This May Hurt is propaganda, and provokes anger. It is the righteous anger of the elderly, seeing their gains lost, their faith shattered and their health held to ransom. It affirms a belief in the worth of theatre as a political activity, evangelising for the consensus politics and kindness that made British healthcare the pride of that silly Olympic opening ceremony. A quiet note of optimism may end the play, but the violence of Cameron's Acts, as described, threaten no happy ending for an entire nation.

Getting Back into the Game

Glasgow has always had a reputation for political agitation - I don't think that it is coincidental that Arika decided to stage their more political incarnation of the Experimental Festival on the West Coast, and although Joseph Beuys originally came to Edinburgh, it is Glasgow that has the history of its visual art scene named after his most political idea. After a fortnight in Edinburgh, I immediately noticed that the lamp-posts around the Subcity Offices were hung, not with fascists, but adverts for Marxism, the annual London-based jamboree of ... well, have a guess.

I've just read Nick Cohen's What's Left? Two years after most people, but I had to wait until it turned up in Oxfam. Apart from convincing me that I do, in fact, support the invasion of Afghanistan - my complaints about the Taliban's treatment of women and the big Buddha statues they exploded would make any moans on my part mealy-mouthed - Cohen has challenged me to consider whether the role of a theatre and arts critic retains any purpose in the face of mounting political disorder.

Since I am fairly shallow, I retain a holding position: I'll point to my various rants about how Marxism makes for dull theatre, how some work is just too middle class, and hope that no-one notices the internal contradictions. The overuse of the flashy phrase and unfashionable jargon ought to disguise the fundamental emptiness of my rhetoric.

Radio Hour Blues

The Vile Arts Radio Hour began in January 2011. Recorded live at Subcity between 3pm and 5pm on Friday afternoons, it combines my enthusiasm for contemporary classical music, Glasgow's dynamic arts scenes, My Producer Harry's laconic wit and technical knowledge and Subcity's idiosyncratic approach to post-student radio. Modesty, and a residual honesty left over from my time training under the Jesuits, forbids me from praising my contribution too heavily. The guest list, however, is very impressive and I think it is the generosity of musicians, actors, theatres, art galleries, cultural pundits, film and festival programmers that have made it the top rated arts-based show on the station.

Today's blog has three tasks: to parade my ego, give a brief guide to the show's vision and ethos, help future guests know a bit about what they can expect on the Hour. The best thing to do would be to listen to it. You can  fast forward over my voice.

When Harry and I started the show - we used to be called The Skinny Radio Hour, until my arrogance decided that it ought to be called Vile Arts and concentrate on whatever aesthetic butterfly had landed on the stamen of my consciousness - we had a very clear vision. We wanted to investigate the various scenes that interlock and define Glasgow. I come from a Performance background, fascinated by the possibilities of the live event. Harry is an engineer, musician and philosopher. That the scenes and places we cover are very much our choices seems to connect with the way Glasgow operates: subjective, eclectic, chaotic. The addition of Nick Spaghetti broadened the playlist, but kept us partial.

The Radio Hour is very much an extension of the critical writing I have been doing for The Skinny over the past five years: I still plunder the Skinny for information, keeping an eye on Dave Kerr's articles and recommendations, and write from a deliberately personal perspective. Lately, I have gotten into politics. Not party political: I read all the manifestos and decided I preferred my fiction more realistic. In line with my overall attitude to life - confused, partisan, selfish - my politics are Radically Subjective. I have no idea what I am talking about, but I am willing to begin a conversation until someone with the facts turns up.

I am broadly evangelical about the arts. We don't invite artists or curators on to tear them apart. I am hoping for a few more guests from the worlds of cultural politics in the future, so I can get spiteful. I don't like everything I play on the show (viz. the Swedish House Mafia Incident). But I think that anything that gets people away from the TV to share an experience is a Social Good.

Alongside the advocacy of Glasgow creativity, we emphasis work that is cross-platform. We are also keen on New Media - online radio, podcasts, blogs, social media. As an Old Media critic, the best jokes I hear are in the area of print publications trying to understand the internet. Oh, and the record companies trying to protect their hegemony by claiming to be all about developing bands. I assume none of them have read Steve Albini's comments on the A'n'R men.

The Radio Hour lasts two hours and features between three and five guests per episode. Most of our listeners tune in "on demand" - that is, in the week following the live broadcast. This is why the show tends to focus on work in the fortnight ahead, and not the weekend approaching. We prefer live interviews - they seem to go better.

The Journey into Striptease: Part 1

Back when they used to let me near children, and I was a happy Latin teacher, feminism was going through a strange time. Young women, who had high aspirations for their careers, and who would frequently demonstrate how little they needed a man, would frequently launch into anti-feminist rants. Meanwhile, the English Department were teaching “feminist criticism” as part of the advanced English curriculum – trite readings of texts according to some kind of objective, pro-female stance. It became obvious that feminism was being associated with this peculiar simplification and detached from its historical roots. Not only did this ignore the diversity of the feminist traditions, disconnect it from the campaigns towards political, financial and social equality and reduce it to a predictable narrative, it associated feminism with the pointless cod-academia of contemporary education. Effectively, its teeth were being pulled.

Fortunately, LadyFest was still a dynamic movement, and a quick trip to see Brat Mobile or Le Tigre could introduce another, vibrant feminism.

Further back, when I was toiling in the declensions and conjugations of Ancient Greek, feminism was having a splendid internal battle. Easily distracted from the hard work of learning my endings, I delighted in the fierce polemics of Mary Beard and Germaine Greer. I even did my dissertation on Medea as a heroine. In the real world – or at least in the broadsheets and culture shows – Camille Paglia and Andrea Dworkin squared up to claim the legacy of the Second Wave feminists. Paglia was all about sex, excitement and bravado, frequently hanging out with drag queens, strippers and Italian macho men. Dworkin was teaming with Catherine MacKinnon and drafting laws against pornography.

In an article from that period, Kathy Acker suggested that feminism had once been about the women’s right to say yes or no. Those two answers, she worried, had evolved into two separate and competing strands.

It was exciting.

The period between had been complex. Until a few years ago, many former leftists bemoaned the political shifts of the twenty-first century, feeling almost nostalgic for the dualisms of the 1980s, when Thatcher and Apartheid were Bad and the miners and Sandanistas were good. Happily ignoring the arms-dealers and New Labour’s superb corruption of the socialist ideal, they made their compromises with the state. Going into education, arts administration or finally getting that grant for their theatre company removed their teeth. You can spot them today: they are the ones who think that Labour are better than the Conservatives. Well, I admire their faith like I admire fundamentalist Christians. I am sure it is a consolation to them.

The transition from feminism as the radical response to an obvious patriarchal society towards a media misrepresentation of lesbian man-haters (something it hasn’t been since 1974) was being completed. I woke up in 2005, roughly the time that I kicked the education habit and starting mainlining performance art, and found that burlesque and striptease were acceptable entertainment. While I remember reading in Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves that the advance of women’s rights in Greece was accompanied by more explicit representations of tits and arse in art, I wasn’t sure whether this was okay. The last time I had looked, striptease was shoved into Soho alley-ways, and was likely to involve getting threatened for your credit card by a burly bouncer. Suddenly, I could go and see women disrobe before an audience of enthusiastic women. I didn’t even have to be ironic.

Of course I decided to make cabaret part of my performance portfolio of interests.