Six of the Best 178

"The cause of today’s market calamities is the fact that the Eurozone has spectacularly failed to get its house in order, and that no-one has any idea how the US is going to cut its deficit. Both of these are political failures, what could be perhaps termed massive regulatory or policy uncertainty," argues Decline of the Logos. He calls for less policy uncertainty from the Coalition too.

For an illustration of just how large the US deficit is, turn to Nick Hollinghurst.

Eric Pickles' claim that increasing town centre parking will help local economies and "'help small shops prosper in local high streets" flies in the face of the facts, says Living Streets.

Talking of cars and flying in the face of the facts, Tentacles of Doom catches Top Gear misleading its viewers over electric cars.

On An Overgrown Path discovers the chilling story of the forgotten mixed-race piano prodigy Philippa Schuyler: "Her early success notwithstanding, it became clear that Philippa's colour was an insurmountable barrier to her ambitions as a pianist. So in 1959 she started to experiment with her ambiguous ethnicity by describing herself as 'white' on visa applications."

Talking of classical music and chilling stories, Lib Dem blogger Niklas Smith, writing on Seen and Heard International, reviews a Swedish production of Benjamin Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw.