Six of the Best 334

Today George Osborne crossed fingers and hoped ‘steady as she goes’ will come good by 2015, says Stephen Tall on Liberal Democrat Voice. With graphs.

Paul Nettleton is impressed by Cumbria Day, in which the county’s six MPs put party difference to one side to support a showcase for local businesses.

"I really believe Guantanamo has created more true terrorists around the world then we've gotten rid of." Brandon Neeley - a former guard at Guantanamo Bay - is interviewed by RT.

"The attorney general of the United States has now admitted that the biggest American financial corporations have created such a labyrinth of their structures and practices that the Justice Department has given up trying to police them in matters of corruption or criminal malfeasance, saying that bringing down any of these mega-banks or businesses could cause crash the economy." Too big to fail? American corporations are too big to jail, says Dan Dewalt on Counterpunch.

Smashing Tops has photographs of the 10 most amazing abandoned railways in the world.

"For much of their lifetimes, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger never got the due they deserved. Powell was as English as you could get, had worked his way up through the film industry before coming to the attention of British film magnate Alexander Korda. Pressburger, meanwhile, was Hungarian Jewish by birth, who'd come to Germany in the 1920s to work as a screenwriter, moving to Paris, and then England when the Nazis came to power, and again was working for Korda. When the two met in 1939, there was an instant kinship. They shared a similarly uncompromising and original take on filmmaking, and were soon working hand in hand, sharing credit as writers, directors and producers under the banner of their The Archers production company." The Playlist takes us through the work of these remarkable filmmakers.