I have a problem with being polite to people who I feel are beneath me. I can do it, but it's unpleasant, like taking a shower in your own piss. Being the slick tranny businessman I am, the only time I am nice to people I don't like the look of is when I am about to acquire something valuable of theirs.

But I may be realising the error of my ways. I was at the bar yesterday with a girl from work. Trust me, she is as cold-hearted capitalist as they come: when we are on a project together, she combines my slick tranny-like persona without being an actual tranny; a potent mix. Suddenly, two American girls came over and both heard me cutting glass with my English accent.

One was very attractive, smart, and evocatively dressed. I don't know what the other one looked like because she was ugly. Or what her personality was like for that matter. But one thing was obvious: the great oak tree of genetics hadn't dropped her a completely healthy acorn.

But then something strange happened. My friend was being nice to this girl. She engaged with her, laughed at her par-for-the-course jokes and with some sincerity kept her quite amused. It suddenly dawned on me: what if we were all nice to each other? Not uncritical, nor egalitarian, but rather a kind of permanent cordiality? Jesus spent his whole career being nice, and he got a book written about him - by God!

I often see the comments under these posts (most of the time under Alex's or Sofia's) and I see some people willing to forego courtesy upon having found a moron or someone with a contrary or differing outlook. I'm probably just as guilty. But life is too holy to dismiss someone who has picked up different ideas than you about immigration or capitalism.

If someone just tells me to fuck off I'll be pretty annoyed.

This was sent to me by a reader. If you can overlook the Christian dogmatism, it really hits it home about the futility of adolescence:

People know that I am against sex education in school. To me it's simple: sexuality and sexual values should be taught to children by parents and their communal culture, not by public messengers of the government. The rest is up to individuals when they're experimenting in their teens. The biological aspect of sexuality should be taught in biology class based on scientific facts, but there shouldn't be any lessons concerning values, politics or lifestyle based upon those facts.

What happens when the government teaches our children about sexuality? They indoctrinate them with whatever ideological trend is popular at the moment. In Sweden it's been ultra-liberalism since the late 60's. It's a fact that gay and queer lobby groups are co-writing the biology books to suit their propaganda. Our teachers even hand out condoms from those lobby groups in class. And you say public education is not politically biased? When I went through sex education in school, I learned the following:

• "Here, have a condom!" (this indirectly suggests it's normal for 14-year-olds to have sex, as long as they're protected).
• "Can anyone here give suggestions on how to spice up sex life?" (this not only suggests the above, but really excludes a majority of the teens in the class room who haven't yet had any such experience).
• Homosexuality is just as morally acceptable as heterosexuality.
• Abortion is an important human right for women.

Read carefully: I'm not saying either of these suggestions are right or wrong. I'm saying it shouldn't be up to our education system to teach our children about them. Just as I teach my children certain values, certain lifestyle choices, certain moral behavior and certain cultural ideals, I have the right to be a dominant influence in how they perceive sexuality. I don't trust teachers or politicians to ensure that my future daughter avoids whoring like her friends and my future boy avoids ending up paying alimony to some dumb lay he screwed over when he was drunk.

Most young people, especially teenagers, are not capable of thinking for themselves or withstanding peer and teacher pressure. If an authority they trust say heterosexuality is oppressive or that whoring is good, they're gonna buy it. I remember gay lobby groups coming to college and trying to persuade us to convert to liberal sexuality. Most of my friends were brought up traditionally; they called the teacher a fag and ran him out. Some were immigrants and were taught to not even accept homosexuality.

Critics will say there are Christian families who profess extreme forms of chastity, or extremists who rally against homosexuals. So? Let them do it. Who are you, or the government, to say what they ought to teach their children? If the attitudes have no place in society as a whole, or if they're simply not in line with reality, chances are the children will grow up to dismiss them later on. Either way it's not any central power's job to babysit parents nor their children about this. The government's incapable of being unbiased on these issues, and regardless if what it teaches ought to be perceived as "good," it's brainwashing and has no place in public education.

I baffled a sociologist at the university today with this piece of news:

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

The cornerstone of maintaining the quality of scientific papers is the peer review system. Under this, papers submitted to scientific journals are reviewed anonymously by experts in the field. Conducting reviews is seen as part of the job for academics, who are generally not paid for the work.

Cracks in the system have been obvious for years. Yesterday it emerged that 14 leading researchers in a different field – stem cell research – have written an open letter to journal editors to highlight their dissatisfaction with the process. They allege that a small scientific clique is using peer review to block papers from other researchers.

She was baffled, because yet again we see the flaws of the European education system, which otherwise is so highly praised. The idea behind peer review was to let academics self-manage each other to ensure quality, but since much of the research today is politicized and most people act like monkeys when they're not checked, academics have begun using the system to self-promote political motifs.

This is one problem the whole Western scientific community needs to ponder. But there's a European-specific factor to note here. Most European universities are government-managed. This means that politicians are enforcing quality checks like the peer review system to be certain that tax money actually produces results. This system is now being manipulated and questioned.

America, only introducing similar systems with the GPRA act in '93, has escaped much of this dilemma since about a third of its universities are privately owned, funded by private and philanthropic resources. It also happens that those universities are ranked as the world's best. Do we see a pattern here? The government's quality systems have failed. Private investors are looking for results and seem to have created an academic environment unparalleled by any public system. Yawn, what's new?

I see many libertarian-leaning Conservatives arguing in the following way:

1. Humans are selfish by nature.

2. For society to work, people need to contribute to each other.

3. Therefore we need to construct a society where the selfishness of individuals benefit one another.

So, selfishness basically leads to altruism, given that all people have an equal opportunity of making such contributions. There are a few problems with this line of arguments. #1 can be questioned, now that we better understand the evolutionary function behind altruism. So can #3; does self-investment always result in collective benefits?

The real virus in libertarianism is tragedy of the commons, or the idea that positive action taken by individuals alone may harvest negative consequences for the group as a whole. The environmental problems we face today are a good example of that. Sure, it's good to expand the economy and produce new goods and services, especially for individuals who want to secure a good standard of living. But the altruism only works within that human system, or market, if you will. What lies outside of it? Added together: water pollution, toxic air, extinct species, dying forests and urban sprawl. Chaos.

Libertarians always dodge the green issues, so do most Conservatives, because they only recognize the internal system: the economic market. They don't realize the long-term consequences of our lifestyle, which of course will impact the internal system as well. Therefore this line of thinking, I argue, is not long-term viable, because similar to the welfare State, it assumes we can endlessly consume resources without the system itself ever being effected by the consequences of that consumption. Margaret Thatcher famously said that "the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" - today we know this is just as true about our environment.

It's long since I had time over to read books. Instead I gather inspiration from society. Here's something funny I picked up in the locker rooms at the gym.

Guy: Ah, it'll feel so good to get home and have a long, quiet shit.

Another guy: Thanks for telling me.

Guy: C'mon, you know how good it feels to just empty yourself after a work out. My dad's the same. He can sit on the toilet for hours.

Another guy: Hours?

Guy: Hell yeah, and no one ain't allowed to disturb him during that time.

Another guy: What makes him sit there for so long?

Guy: Mom.

Here's a classic I think most men will immediately recognize. I picked this up in the sauna, where guys always talk shit.

Guy: Why do women talk all the time?

Another guy: I dunno..it's annoying.

Guy: Like my mom, she talks for hours on the phone, every single time. I've stopped listening to her.

Another guy: What?

Guy: Yeah, I just drop dead on the bed and leave the phone by the cupboard.

Another guy: Haha! She doesn't notice?

Guy: All I have to do is to say "mmkay," "yeah" and "huh" now and then so she thinks I'm there.

Another guy: Dude, it's your mom.

I guess the blessing of all mothers is that they love you, even if you often just want them to leave you the heck alone. I suggest all guys call up their mothers this evening to let them know you care about them. If they end up talking too much, you can always leave the phone for a while and cook some food instead..

A world of shit, known as our beautiful planet, has taught me a simple lesson:

"You dumb guinea"

"How the hell was I supposed to know he had a knife"

"Never trust a nigger"

"He could have been white"

"Never trust anyone!"

(The French Connection)

Why? Because with prosperity, unless constantly reminded of reality, people slowly breed corruption and filth. I realized this years ago when it was cool to walk around with A.C.A.B. shirts and mess with the cops on weekends. At that time I saw it as a working class condition. The "poor" people rising up against a wicked society. Or so my German friend believed, who smoked weed instead of going to school.

I tended to agree, recognizing the bullshit we were taught by teachers every day, until the people who used to deal him dope, suddenly also began to sell him stereo equipment. Where from? Take a good guess. The rich kids' neighborhood. It was then that I could see it wasn't a working class condition; it was middle class faggotry, because while it implied The Authority was the problem, the power structures in society were simply responding to violence and crime. Those people selling stereos and weed probably did more serious crime than just living a Hollywood thug life. So who was the Bad Guy now?

This is what a corrupt middle class doesn't understand. It is breeding problems, because its values have lost touch with reality. It's easy to sit in a class room, recite Foucault and complain about inequality, police violence and class differences, but in reality we're all contributing to the decline of society by engaging in that very same process of filth. We buy filthy weed/alcohol, we consume filthy products, we reinforce filthy propaganda from television. We believe everything we're told, yet we insist on attacking the institutions that protect us from living in a third world gutter.

Yet all the middle class can do is to whine about modern problems. I couldn't care less about "modern problems," and here's why:

Patriarchy: The white, Western, middle class male invented and built almost every road, every house, every theory, every bit of literature you've ever encountered in your life. Without him, you're nothing.

Income inequality: For every piece of careless immigration policy, minimum wage system and union mob you advocate, you'll effectively lower the wages for yourself and your parents, who'll continue to suck either government pussy (Democrats/socialists) or multicorporation cock (Republicans/conservatives).

Climate change: You want the infrastructure, you want the prosperity, you want the lifestyle you're in right now--you are a walking environmental disaster. No matter how much toilet paper you recycle, you'll never change this simple truth.

Iraq/Gaza War: Every super power tries to moderate fundamentalist enemies before they take over. If you'd studied history, you'd know, but since you believe we just all need to get along with everybody and have a giant UN-party, you're lucky at all to see the day, every day. The people who live in these countries don't agree with you, and they don't need your sympathy. That's why they carry guns.

Racism: One camp thinks white people are going to go extinct like dinosaurs by 2050, another camp thinks white people are going to oppress every single non-white individual in the world by 2050. The truth: we're just not going to get along, so society will decline as a result and everyone will complain and feel unjustly treated. Diversity? Ha ha ha!

Capitalism: The crisis of capitalism? We've already been through the Cold War. Not even China or Russia believes in socialist economies anymore. The problem is not the system itself, but what values we attach to it. If nations are greedy and kill their economies, they are motivated by wrong values. Money, we'll always need, unless you want to go back trading copper for dolphins.

You cannot trust the public, because it doesn't know what it says or does, and as follows, you cannot really trust the leadership that panders to that same public. It's a vicious cycle of stupidity. But blaming the People or the Authority doesn't work either. Instead, trust yourself, find companions, create bonds, and make them last. Find a community you belong to and feel safe in. You don't want to smoke weed collected by the same gangster hoodlums who want to rob you tomorrow, or vote for a party that leaves you and your parents with less money and more trouble by the next election.

You want what's best for your immediate surrounding in a world of shit. Get back to work.

Is the world we (Westerners) live in really that horrible? Of course not. In many ways it's never been better. However, as we all know, a prophecy of Crappiness is slowly taking over our minds in the West. In short, we're supposed to feel guilty about the way we live. Some people use it as a convenient excuse to justify inaction. How about this one, which I was served as late as a week ago when discussing the Future:

Woman: I don't wanna have kids.

Me: Mmkay. Why?

Woman: ...becaaaaause.....we're living in such a horrible world.

Hold it. Rewind. Horrible world? Are you kidding me? A few generations ago most Swedish women would count on at least 1/3 of their offspring would die from either hunger, poverty or poor social conditions. Today they'd probably die because of overeating or accidentally swallowing a video game. Women today pull this argument a lot to justify their unwillingness to form a family, but I think it all pretty much comes down to hormones.

Women who are not very feminine, e.g. have less of estrogen, usually don't get along all that well with children. They don't think they're cute, they're mostly in the way, and their childishness becomes somewhat of a problem. Women like that feel emotionally alien to the task of motherhood, and so they rationalize their emotional viewpoint by saying the world is shit. Well, it's not, and even if it was, it's a lousy argument for a lot of reasons:

(1) Even if it was horrible, it hasn't stopped millions of mothers to give birth before in history, or today.

(2) Good thing you're aware of this horrible state we're in, because that means you can pass that knowledge on to your child and teach it to change the world to make a better place.

(3) Exactly how do you add to the world of horror, or avoid its crappiness, by having a child?

(4) Every child, everywhere, is going to face horror sooner or later in life. Maybe it's better with sooner rather than later.

As I've said before, I don't have a problem with unfeminine women or feminists in general. I like most of them. I just realize that many of them will not become mothers, and I wish they'd stand for what they are instead of trying to justify their emotions with lousy arguments that are supposed to convince other women of their righteousness. Let's face it girls, you're a minority. Most women love pink colors, cute babies and French kissing. The crappiness-argument is bullshit, and we all know it, so let's move on (and have some kids).

I was walking down the road the other day with a few friends. We were on the way to the pub. In the course of socialising, we were pretending to grind on each other like so many women in a hip-hop video.

Suddenly, someone who we knew, but on the extreme periphery of our social circle, started looking angry and calling us benders. I told him I wasn't homosexual but actually a transvestite - as if he couldn't already guess by the drag I was wearing! What an idiot.

Anyway, we taunted this guy all the way down the road until we got to the pub. Pretending to kiss each other, rubbing each other, asking him out on dates, complementing his shirt, saying his waxed hair style looks so masculine and so on. Each time the look of incredulity and exasperation on his face stretched and contorted itself even further. People with homophobia have one fear - their homophobia. As this guy (my idol) shows us brilliantly, these guys can be made to look pretty stupid pretty fast.

Even though I am technically just a normal, everyday tranny, I still sometimes get temporary and deep urges to fulfil a deep hole in my body. I think you will all know what hole that is! This usually happens after half a bottle of vodka and a few lines of cocaine.

The other day I was at this pretty cool club, dancing away in my vest (I wasn't in drag this time!). The club was just about to close and my urge for man flesh just had to be tempered. I looked over to the bar and suddenly I saw this huge, muscular mass of blond meat just standing there. He looked Scandinavian. He had his shirt ripped wide open, with his dripping abdomen pulsating in the neon light. The open shirt was a sure sign that he was up for some manly action. Literally no-one else had their shirt completely undone in the entire club. Or even in any club anywhere in the world. No-one does that. He looked so gay and I wanted him.

We at Corrupt are always talking about how you should have positive goals, and how you should always reach for them. And for this goal I wasn't just positive; I was HIV positive! I went up to him and complemented him on his cute chest hairs. He smiled and said thanks. After taking a sip of water, he asked if I was hot, as the club had very little air conditioning. I said yes, to which he said I should take off my shirt as well!

From all this outrageous flirting the next move was pretty plain to see. I reached out and touched his bulging pectoral muscles. Then I got a huge surprise (no not that kind of huge surprise!); he freaked out, pushed me away and then shouted "fag" at me. I felt so disheartened! The night was wasted. Or was it? I went outside to see all of the other ladyboys leaving the club (the place is a popular haunt for the LGBT scene). I went home with one of them and... well you know how the night ends!

I guess the lesson here is yes, if you're straight and have spent your whole night dancing topless in a gay bar, don't be surprised if someone tries it on with you at some point. Being tolerant, I forgave the guy anyway and didn't stay to teach him a lesson. I hope whatever that hunky totem is doing nowadays, he's doing it with an eye out for tolerance and fairness.

"Immersing yourself in a virtual world is just as superficial and weak as immersing yourself in the world of putting on airs." - Anon.

Let me tell you a story. It's a short story about a girl in her mid-twenties. This girl was living a fairly quiet student life in the city she grew up in. Like many other young people like her, she studied subjects that would guarantee you'd never get a job, but are interesting to read in contrast to the boredom of bureaucracy and entertainment in Scandinavian societies. You can do that when the government pays the dues and the teachers don't care about your future.

This girl, we don't have to give her a name just yet, spent her time either playing computer games at home, reading up on university essays, or working in a clothing shop. Pretty cute, friendly. She even had a dog. Not a party freak. But there was something wrong. Something that made her life feel empty. If you met her in that shop where she worked or in her home, with her dog, you'd never be able to tell just by the look in her eyes. The emptiness was deep inside and only really known to her.

This emptiness came from a lack of context and vocation. In the Social Democratic society she was living in, she fulfilled the norms of what would be expected of young people like her. She was studying, she had a part-time job, some friends, and an animal. And still there was something clearly lacking. Her life was a line stretched between quiet boredom and occasional bursts of curiosity. She had no personal goals to strive for, no skills to harvest, no social community of which she was a part. She was a member of society, yet so strangely alienated.

So she let her life go on as usual, slowly feeling accustomed and at peace with the kind of monotonous lifestyle she'd managed to build with student loans, computer and dog food. Every day she fed the dog, every day she played at the computer, every day she wrote on her essays, and every day she spent a few hours at the shop, smiling at customers. But who did ever smile back at her? Who would dare to challenge her as an individual? Who would giver her love and let her give love back? She'd never dare to ask these questions--what if there were no answers?

I once met this girl. Her name was Indifference, and we parted soon after we'd met. I believe, and hope, she's never been more happy in her life that what she is today.

Have you heard of Frances Inglis, mother?

Thomas had suffered serious brain damage after falling out of an ambulance in July 2007 and hitting his head on the tarmac. Although medics insisted he was showing signs of improvement, Inglis believed he would never recover, and plotted to "put him out of his misery", the court heard. Inglis tried to kill Thomas, administering heroin, most likely through the tracheotomy tube that was keeping him alive, the court was told.

She was on bail for attempted murder when she killed Thomas by injecting him in the thigh and arm, again with heroin, the court heard. She gave a false name to gain access to his care home. , and tried to stop nursing staff entering his room after she had injected him by claiming to have HIV and threatening to infect them with blood or saliva.

It's happening. I've talked about it here. It has been increasingly.

Why did she do this? Perhaps the clue is in her profession.

Frances Inglis, 57, a trainee nurse from Dagenham who was described by witnesses as “a pillar of the community”, denies murder and attemped murder.

I needn't tell you who it benefits to not emphasise the fact that she's connected to healthcare in any way. She's only a student, too.

The media has been giving this issue increasing attention, reflecting back the popular sentiment. For reasons I've explained before, I'm not surprised.

You're probably going to hear about this happening much more often. The popularity of euthansia or mercy murder -- whatever you wish to call it -- shall rise.

Dogma always clouds the judgment of large groups of people. This is why I apply Occam's Razor to shocking news as often as possible: the simplest explanation is usually the best (and it pisses liberals off). When Finnish school shooter Pekka-Eric Auvinen made it to the news, Corrupt was the only place on the web that didn't demonize the boy as a misanthropic maniac.

The truth was, as later revealed by parents and teachers, that Pekka-Eric was a bright student and intelligent individual, but got bullied for it. In the end, like with school shooters Matti Saari and Cho Seung Hui, and recent mass killer George Sodini, there is always a human factor involved in mad acts of violence and terror. Simple madness might trigger a mad act, but the motivation or causes leading up to that act is usually a combination of desperation and alienation from society.

This is not just a psychological issue, but also a political one. When someone tries to blow up an airport in Detroit, how do most people react?

The government bureaucrat apologizes for mindless bureaucratic behavior, but suggests we simply need more of the same to avoid future catastrophes. The business journalist suggests terrorism exists because fundamentalists are maniacs, period. While I find his foreign policy ideas pretty naive, Ron Paul is one of the very few American politicians who understands underlying motivations behind terrorist acts. Organized terrorism is an answer to America's influence as a superpower, just like small tribes occasionally clashed with Rome during its height.

What's even more hilarious about this story is how the suspected Detroit bomb plotters were previously prisoners at Gitmo. Instead of realizing that people like this are too dangerous to let loose and ship home to America, the Obama Administration decided to go the populist, crowd-stroking way once again to cash home popularity. Europe might like it, but we are now also less secure as a result.

Just as easy answers often are good answers, easy solutions are often good solutions. Some people snap because of pressure from society. In some cases, like with many teenage school shooters, we need education reform to make sure we don't leave the intelligent students behind. In other cases, like with fundamentalist Jihadists preaching Islamic warfare with bombs, we need to return with determination and force. The best way to finish a war is to win it.

"Why can't you stay?"

"I wanna be alone tonight. 2010 is ours. G'night."

Through the stormy, snowy, icy weather I stumble home. Under a bridge I pass two men. They've placed a bottle of champagne in the snow.

"Happy New," one man says joyfully while painting his name on the wall in urine.

Going uphill, I see a young boy and girl kissing while the snow whirls around them. They seem to have lost track of time. Like most young couples they consume each other every moment they can, as if every kiss could be the last. For a moment I share their warmth. It's not cold outside when your heart would like to explode any second.

On my way I pass groups of older people. Happy New Year. Happy New. Nice dog. Yes, it's fucking freezing, but it's not so far from home. I'd forgotten how long it takes to walk home with snow covering every step you take.

When I finally get inside, I crack open a bottle of whiskey. The smoky taste burns my throat. I look outside the window and spot a neighbor looking back at me. That same neighbor who always seems to observe me when I wake up in the morning. Is she waving her hand? This country may finally break the ice and embrace new possibilities. We don't have to be these cold-headed, socially pretentious bureaucrats who lack faith in tradition. 2010 might be the year we change and evolve.

Either way, whatever we'll leave behind, it'll be covered by snow in the morning.

Here's what may look like an odd story, but really isn't:

A friend tells me his parents -- retired white people -- live in a nice city neighborhood into which a few relatively high-profile rappers have moved in recent years.

"Oh, that must be lovely for them," I deadpanned.

"Here's the interesting thing," my friend continued. "Word's gotten out that [rapper] is trying to sell his house in my parents' neighborhood and move to [an even nicer subdivision, a gated community]. My folks and everyone see this as a bad sign for the neighborhood. They figure that when the rappers start leaving for better areas, the neighborhood is about to decline."

If you think about it, it's not so strange. A high-profile rapper is someone with wealth and status. Such a person typically wants to live like rich (white) people do. The stuff about hoes, crime and drugs is mostly a trademark to sell music. I bet having 50 Cent or P Diddy as neighbor wouldn't be that bad. Their fans, on the other hand, is another story..

Do we necessarily have to obsess over money just because we have access to so much wealth? I've never believed that. It's all about the values that guide us:

He and his wife make less, but have more quality time over for each other instead, and their patients are happier. In the most capitalist of all Western nations. What if we embraced our communities and the qualities that make us human, and began to view money as merely a tool to enhance these things? We'd all benefit.

Everybody wants to call themselves something or be a part of some group. I guess that's how human nature works. But that doesn't mean that whatever group you're part of or what opinions you hold really matter. I argue that much of what people believe doesn't matter at all, either because they don't act on their beliefs, or the ideas they hold simply have no practical bearing on everyday life.

One of the brightest students I met was a hardcore Communist. Every day in class he wore a Lenin suit with the Soviet symbol. Eventually we had a chat and it turned out he was both very friendly and intellectually sharp. When it came down to it, it didn't really matter that I was on the opposite side of the political scale; we pretty much reached the same conclusions about society, and agreed on similar philosophical conclusions.

If you believe evil polar bears are secretly controlling the world, why should I care? If you're friendly, I'll still like you. If you're a dumbass, you're dumb either way.

To be certain, people in general take their beliefs very seriously. I've been attacked several times for the opinions I express publically, but this has less to do with politics and more to do with human psychology. People want to fit in and if they see someone that doesn't, that's a threat to their homogeneous views. And so that person is attacked until it caves in or runs off. It's one of the most horrific features of crowdism, but if you truly understand how pointless it is to go around caring about what other people say or believe, you'll start to look at outcomes, e.g. what really goes on in reality. Let's leave the rest to our dreams.

Ever since liberalism became the dominant paradigm in the West, our governments have indulged in handing out "rights" to groups in society that don't really deserve them. As a result, the immigrant vote is now growing more powerful than the native European vote, women's rights have spawned into totalitarian feminism, the lower classes are using socialism as a class weapon against anyone successful, and...children aren't allowed to be left behind.

But what does it mean to be "left behind"? According to liberals, here are ways of harming children's "rights":

Teach them religion

Soon we won't be allowed to teach our children religious values, because that supposedly means projecting our beliefs unto them. So? No individual is born as a blank slate. If you grow up to become religious, you probably have a genetic disposition for that. Since you're going to teach your child what's morally right and wrong anyway, why is religion suddenly so dangerous? And who's going to make sure you don't violate this principle? The Nanny State, of course, that knows how to create good liberals out of any child.

Teach them self-defense

Anyone who's passed through high school knows that unless you defend yourself, you'll be the eternal victim of other children who want to dominate you. Not very convenient to mention among teachers, I know, but it's true. Anti-bullying movements miss the point, because the problem isn't bullying itself--like death, this will always exist, even if we think it's nasty. The problem is that children are growing increasingly defenseless against bullies. If I teach my child to defend itself, why punish it? The bullies should be punished, not the victims.

Teach them self-discipline

No one really believes hitting children anymore. I don't either, at least not violently. But why should people press charges on a parent that slapped his child or locked him inside his room for a day or two? These things can't possibly hurt children, and if they have at some occasion, that's a whiny child in the first place. My dad gave me a soft beating or held me down to the ground when I was out of control as child, and I learned my lesson. Contrary to liberal wisdom, I haven't grown up to become a gay pedophile with leather bondage leanings.

Teach them competition

Our liberal educational system is so afraid of classifying children these days. No one is better than anyone else. So children grow up to whine over low grades, become lazy over trivial tasks, and feel down whenever they engage in competitions or fights. No wonder--they've been told since day one that they are special, unique and best in their own regard. Why not teach them some reality: there will be many people better than you, my son, so go out there and kick some ass to get ahead in life. Without self-confidence, children grow up to become liberals--a fate worse than losing any competition.

Teach them "racism"

Everyone's got preferences, even ethnic ones. I want my children to respect people regardless of race, but I also want them to abide the cultural norms I teach them, like I abide the norms my parents gave me. That's how you build and sustain a civilization. But the liberal government would rather have you teaching your children diversity, e.g. the culture of no cultural standards at all. That's not a platform, that's chaos..

My point? Don't thoughtlessly hand out rights to groups, whose very existence is sustained by other groups. Immigrants wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the society we Europeans built. Women wouldn't live in the kind of society they live in today if it wasn't for hard working men who gave their lives to build material and intellectual infrastructure. The lower classes grew out of poverty thanks to a free market enterprise. And children...they owe their lives and sustenance to their parents. Anyone failing to acknowledge that probably doesn't deserve to become a parent.

Everyone likes to blame journalists for all kinds of things. Most often, as in Sweden, we say they're biased and leftist. Maybe they are. But that's only because Sweden is a leftist country.

No journalist can be completely objective in reporting news, because accounting for all information related to an event is impossible. So, all journalism is "biased." What a news report does contain can still be factually accurate and relevant to the event at hand. That's quality journalism.

I'd say many Swedish journalists have got a leftist bias. So what? Most Swedes have got leftist biases. We believe in a big welfare State taking care of everyone. We believe that we can enforce pluralism, equality and freedom (!) through government programs. We are hardcore global warming fanatics. We think Communism is "less evil" than Nazism. In short, we're all a bunch of leftists, more or less.

Don't blame the journalists. The crowd is the problem.

The Copenhagen climate change summit is both winding down and coming undone, with the entire world wondering: "what can Alfred teach us about global warming?". Well I shall tell you.

I haven't done a single bit of first-hand research, nor have I looked at other people's evidence or arguments. Instead of placing my trust in one, none or both sides of a debate in which zealous combatants of all sides inculcate a strange kind of deeply filial bond to their opinions, what I have done is rely on common sense; that strain of cynical, optimistic and humble logic that always remains untainted from the virulent subject matter at hand.

The way I see it: the world may very well be getting warmer. Or not. It may be getting colder. It's snowing outside - a rare prelude to the Christmas season in England - and our last winter was among the coldest ones on record. It may even be staying the same for a while. However, the climate's various variables surely change at one point of another; I would hazard that the temperature of the Moon has been stable for millions of years now, perhaps as a mutual trade-off for not enjoying a single wheeze of breathable air. Are we contributors to this change? Surely yes, but surely not all of it. We are of course one factor to be considered among many.

The Earth's climate will always be changing, but the crowd remains predictably the same. People love to get whipped up into a frenzy about doomsday scenarios; it makes them feel important. Even more, they love announcing dramatic platitudes or flaunting trivial acts in response to the problem of the day (just check Twitter); this makes them seem selfless, anti-elitist and egalitarian, and thereby makes them popular. These twin tactics have historically always brought lots of empty souls together; look at the G20 protests for example. I guess that every individual there felt both important and popular.

That is why I am cynical about the global warmongering lobby. I would require an incontestable burden of proof before I agree to give away Mt. Everest sized chunks of money to incompetent third-world leaders that promise to use the money to sacrifice their own growth and economy, and to sit around and build solar panels instead. All of that to find out one year later that they were lying all along, thinking it a much better investment to purchase several thousand gold-plated AK47s.

But I recognise that my cynicism may very well be misplaced; in simple terms, we should always be wary that there is no smoke without fire, even if it's a very meek, smouldering kind of conflagration. Yet I remain optimistic in the face of such danger. We know that our behaviour is sometimes no good for the environment, it's just that sometimes it takes us a while to realise it en masse. This is why free-range eggs are now so popular, why CFCs are banned pretty much everywhere, why wind farms are being erected, clean coal technology being developed, why fly-tipping is frowned upon, overpopulation becoming a major issue, and why the old, garishly orange, sky-pollutingly inefficient lights on my high street have been replaced with elegant white-light LEDs.

The Copenhagen talks, if they went the way of its most fervent supporters, would have the entire planet infinitely bound into an awkward, anti-democratic and self-harming agreement over an issue widely contested and highly capricious. If, in the course of global events, we eventually come to a stark, irrefutable conclusion that we are taking an ineffable dump on our planet's well-being, perhaps something similar would be the best course of action. Yet despite the humorous foibles of the crowd, evolution has consistently shown humankind to be highly adaptable, and it is in this process I trust. To choose to regress is a failure to adapt, and signals demise.

I do think action is necessary to reduce our negative impact on the Earth. Crucially, we just need to keep to ourselves and I offer one example in support of that idea. Land situated next to a nature reserve behind my town has been left to fallow indefinitely by the local landowner. Within a couple of years, the result is that a beautiful meadow has sprung up and the riverside edges are now populated by a thicket of adolescent foliage. Playing children, hikers and dog walkers have trod a scenic footpath through the middle, and the local deer can be heard courting in the area during many summer nights. Species once endemic to the area can now spread back.

But more practical action is available; I strongly support research into renewable and environmentally friendly technology, despite being a Copenhagen cynic, but I generally do not believe in coercion. I recognise someone's freedom to happily drive an SUV around the home counties, but I don't recognise their intellect. The relevant motto is John Milton's: "opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making". A skyscraper is about to be erected in London that houses three giant wind turbines at its helm. The energy created is enough to power the entire living complex, and some of the area around it. This kind of action should be encouraged, but the capability to utilise such local solutions would be seriously hampered if we were to tax our pioneers and throw their money elsewhere.

Even with all of the most pious ranting available, we cannot force the world to act on our behalf; Europe's cajoling, China, India, and America's reluctance, and the limpet-like financial demands of third-world states have made talks too volatile to enforce global consensus. Yet unless all of these people are actually psychotic, they will each want what's best for their people, or at least themselves.

So in the wake of the conference's failures, what is my answer? I see no point in presenting an entire manifesto, so here are just a few simple words in a vaguely chronological order: be patient, develop, adapt, praise, share and change.

Sometimes politics is nothing more fashion, hygiene and money:

Go back, you flower people, back where you came from, wash your hair, get dressed properly, get to work on time and stop all this whingeing and moaning.

- David Marquand, 'The Paradoxes of Thatcherism'

How come it's still so difficult for radical leftists to dress properly, maintain their hair and actually make a decent living for themselves?