CHRISTMAS has come just in time to stop us from lurching into becoming a nation of moaners.

Far from adversity — and I suppose the credit crunch comes under that heading — bringing us together, it seems to be pushing us into being the stereotypical whingeing Poms that Aussies love to hate.

The weather is too hot, or too cold (that’s got to be the fault of global warming, of course).

Public transport is too sparse/too costly/useless. We hate the new Market Hall and want the old one back. Squirrels should be saved/shot. And why can’t the council find a way of shifting the snow as it falls?

Thank goodness that the festive season is here with half-price sales and multi-buys of everything frivolous.

It takes a reader of The Bolton News to point out that there is still plenty worth carolling about in this town.

Jean Jones from Westhoughton says in a letter that, in spite of the real hammering social services generally has had in the media recently, social care in Bolton is among the best in the North-west and rated by the Government as “excellent.”

Vulnerable adults are well-protected here, older people treated with respect and valued in official decision-making and excellent support groups to underpin it all. This sounds like the same Jean Jones who does fantastic work herself with Westhoughton’s elderly people, so she should know.

Can I just add a few pluses to this list? We still have a town centre with real character, plus great shopping at Middlebrook and local markets. We’ve also got more than 1,000 hard-working local voluntary groups, and proper communities dotted all over the borough where people care for each other.

And if you didn’t think the genuine, giving spirit was truly alive in 2008, I recently met a lovely lady in her 80s, quite frail but still gets out and about. She spends her spare time in autumn knitting scarves.

Then in winter, when she goes out on her weekly trips to Bolton Market, she stuffs a few in her shopping bag and, she told me quite matter-of-factly, “if I see an old chap without a scarf who looks a bit cold, I go up to him and just give him a scarf and say ‘keep yourself warm with this, love’. Then I just smile and walk away.”

It’s always people who are a town’s real treasure.