Who are these blond-haired loons riding around on bicycles in a raging snow inferno with hardly a cycle helmet between them? Where are the men in fluorescent waistcoats coning off the streets to stop them? Don't they realise that a full-grown Danish cyclist could easily skid into a bus queue and kill forty people? (And why are the buses still running in such atrocious conditions?) We fought the Second World War to save these continentals from themselves, and I demand that we HM Government immediately despatches a task force of crack H & E inspectors with military backup to Esbjerg to put a stop to it!

Your assessment of the Scandinavians is very much my own: a robust, practical people who don't complain about the cold, just put on more jerseys. After living among them I have the very greatest admiration for them and agree with you that their societies will be a lot better able to cope with the coming adversity than our own poor, shabby little copy of the USA: not least because theirs are pretty well classless and based on consent while ours is the property of landowners and money-jugglers, with the rest of the population inhabiting it as skivvies managed by coercion. Having turned some of the poorest countries in Europe into some of the world's richest through sheer intelligence and hard work I dare say they'll handle future challenges very well indeed.