The Joy of Six 1594

"Trump’s early business ventures reveal ties to individuals with connections to Soviet intelligence. In 1976, Soviet immigrants Tamir Sapir and Sam Kislin sold televisions on credit for Trump’s Commodore Hotel. Tamir Sapir had previously studied at the Ministry of  Internal Affairs in the USSR, while Kislin's electronics business served as a cover for KGB operations, according to former KGB spy Yuri Shvets." Zarina Zabrisky reveals the long history of Donald Trump's connections to Moscow's intelligence operations.

Leilani Farha argues that the housing crisis shows democracies have ceded too much power to the financial sector.

Restraint can leave mental health patients traumatised, and Nutmeg Hallett and John Baker have researched what can help them recover: "A frightening experience cannot be undone. But being ignored or dismissed afterwards can deepen the harm, while compassionate support may help patients begin to rebuild their trust in the people caring for them."

"An area gentrifies and catches the eye of developers. Developers then build upmarket flats to attract upwardly mobile incomers, with their proximity to nearby vibrant hubs, pubs and clubs being a major selling point. Then, a few years down the line, some of those incomers decide they'd now like the vibrancy turned down to suit their increasingly conservative lifestyles." Mike Urban on the pressure on Brixton's night economy.

Harry Sword reads Arthur Machen: "The London Adventure is also a (perhaps, the) foundational work of early psychogeography, less working guidebook in the mode of, say, The London Nobody Knows by Geoffrey Fletcher (1962) or Len Deighton’s London Dossier (1967) and more akin to the playful, verbose, cog twisting world of Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital (2002) (and on which Machen’s London Adventure was a firm influence).

Paula Hotti takes the first train from Finland to Sweden in 38 years.

The Joy of Six 1468

"By-elections follow their own logic, not Westminster narratives, and Gorton and Denton has all the makings of a classic contest - a divided seat, polarising candidates and four different parties with a credible local claim. ... Gorton and Denton is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, formed ahead of the last general election when remnants of the abolished Manchester Gorton seat were stitched onto a chunk of the also abolished Denton and Reddish seat ... with Burnage ward, formerly in Manchester Withington, chucked on at the South West edge for good measure." Rob Ford marks your card for the coming by-election.

Mental Health Cop is not impressed by the new white paper on police reform: "It’s rather spectacular in all the wrong kinds of way because it misses rather a lot of important points, it plays undergraduate essay games with what policing actually is and what the public want it to be, and yes: it touches upon mental health as it’s primary example of the police doing non-police things which need to be cleared out of the way so they can 'fight crime and catch criminals'."

Miranda Sheild Johansson on how abolishing its wealth tax changed Sweden for the worse.

"Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, MOOCs (“Massive Open Online Courses”) were the exciting new technology that would revolutionize education – and perhaps even kill off the university as we knew it. With a MOOC, a single star lecturer would give the definitive course on topic X, and students everywhere would learn from the MOOC. Why replicate thousands of near-identical versions of Biology 101, each taught by a local lesser light, when students could all tune in to a masterpiece by the best instructor in the world?" Stephen Heard asks what happened to MOOCs.

James Kenney examines a favourite film in depth: "Breaking Away – a film that runs well under two hours and yet feels fuller than most contemporary movies – doesn’t linger, nor does it inflate moments to announce their importance. Themes aren’t announced in heavy-handed speeches. It moves generously and with grace through characters in motion and leaves them alive in our minds long after it ends."

"The chancel glows in green and gold, its walls painted with stylised flowers and leaves. The decoration, if overwhelming, also does an excellent job of defining the chancel as the most sacred space." Philip Wilkinson visit Wilmcote and its 19th-century Gothic Revival church.