McKeating’s Niqab
A cultural ‘Deal or No Deal’

Nick Barlow: Mission Accomplished

Rachel North: How mad is Tony Blair?
From knobbly-kneed Boy Scout to Wizard of Oz manque in nine short years.

World Cup Latest: Women, Know Your Place
Alastair Campbell blogs the greatest show on Earth.

The Friday Thing set free
The mighty weekly satirical email magazine is now available for free.

Steve Bell: Labour and the Basra Deaths.

Here’s something a bit different for The Sharpener – a film club. There’ll be a secret handshake and everything.

I’m going to nominate a film and invite Sharpener readers to go and watch it. Next week I’ll write a short retrospective – a review with a few interesting facts (if I can find any) – and then throw the discussion open.

If the idea proves (even remotely) popular I’ll look to making it a regular feature and maybe other Sharpener contributors will offer to choose films and chair discussions as well.

Anyway, the first film I’d like to chew over is Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. It’s a while since I’ve seen it so I’m keen to revisit it to see if the themes of surveillance and paranoia still resonate (it was made in 1974) in this age of encroaching authoritarianism, CCTV and impending ID cards.

Hope to see you next week. Have a few pints before you come so we can make it a proper film chat.

(I’d argue that The Conversation deserves a place on everybody’s DVD shelf. Amazon has got it for under a fiver and there’s a bunch of them going for quids on eBay.)

Update: Here’s a pleasing little synchronicity. For UK readers, The Conversation is being shown on BBC2 at 12.05am on Sunday night/Monday morning. Set the video.

Polly Toynbee: Labour MPs at last seem to be ready to ditch Tony Blair
It’s nosepegs ahoy once more, says Polly.

Existing Actually: Living in the thick of it
Are you authoritarian or hippie? Reformer or revolutionary?

You’ll have noticed that things have been rather quiet of late here at The Sharpener.

Not for much longer. A shiny new coat of paint in about to be applied and a refreshed roster of writers are being strapped into their flight seats ready for launch in April.

Keep watching the skies.