Is it racist to want a high street where you can understand the shop signs?

A very useful feature in the Daily Telegraph informs me of the best 20 towns in Britain ‘for Christmas’. Number one on the list is the Cotswold village of Chipping Campden, to which we must surely all decamp immediately. People moan all the time that despite the profusion of new technology and our comparative affluence these days, we’re not actually much happier. But they forget to factor in things like the Daily Telegraph’s list of the best places to live in if you really like Christmas.

Think how useful that would have been to the parents of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Instead of journeying by donkey to the dusty, Hamas-run Arabic hellhole of Bethlehem, which has never actually lain silently, not even for a nanosecond, they could have hopped in a comfortable Audi 4×4 and made for Gloucestershire. Better a barn conversion than a stable, no? If only they had known.