RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working Class Children have Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock found me not at the motion pictures but at the Cinema Museum, a hidden gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a previous workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on tough times.

Truth be told, I seldom endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: ‘Great deal of very wicked people’ in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the event was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, actor, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour – a minimum of to my mind – was playing Des, the dodgy automobile mechanic in Minder.

George was checking out from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They’re magnificently written, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton’s Just William experiences.

The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a kid being brought up by a single mom – a non-traditional family life back then, sadly just too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print given that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can’t assist questioning, however, how often these marvelous texts are used in class these days, in between instructors stuffing their students’ little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about ‘white advantage’, manifest destiny and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the background to George’s reading were definitely white, however no one could have described them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ meant living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

Child poverty was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and reluctantly using last season’s Nike fitness instructors.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids acquired their knowledge mainly from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced authentic challenge, not the hardship of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their smart phones, instead of strolling totally free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the movies, however nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering instantaneous satisfaction in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the latest CGI generated hit on a mobile phone a few inches wide ever compare to the kind of old-school, big screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

It can’t. Just as the very best images are stated to be on the radio, even better pictures can be discovered in the printed word.

Among the most depressing things I have actually checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the truth that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention spans of today’s kids.

Not surprising that child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually dropped alarmingly. All this has actually contributed to the shocking revelation that white, working class pupils – kids in specific – are being left behind. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have been ‘betrayed’ by the contemporary schools system.

They with a lack of parental participation and following paucity of goal. The white, working class young boy in George Layton’s stories certainly didn’t suffer any parental disregard from his prideful mum. Nor did he lack creativity or aspiration.

Education was the escape of hardship. It produced significant wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford – and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who grew up in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmas taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a fulfilling profession at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the office.

George Layton is considering taking his one-man show on the road, to little provincial theatres. I’ve got a better concept.

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might start by getting the phone and inviting George to visit schools, checking out from his narratives.

I honestly believe that if they could be persuaded to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and inspired by the experiences of a young kid not that various to them, regardless of the distance in years.

You never ever know, there may even be another Charlie Chaplin among them.

When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking people for publishing hurty words on the web, the authorities are significantly taking 2nd jobs to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise consist of a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.

My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop needs to take the biscuit.

It’s also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I do not expect there’s any threat of them nicking a few shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought a child from a complete stranger are self-centered in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may end up being the least of our problems. We now learn that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is devouring crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put regional anglers out of company.

It’s bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs assisting themselves to what’s left.

We’re also informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive species’ having escaped into the wild and are colonising cities as far afield as Plymouth and Aberdeen. No doubt we’ll be putting them up in the nearest Holiday Inn soon.

Which’s before I get to the buzzard that’s been dive-bombing children in a school play ground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that originated from?

We’ve got enough problem with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour’s ‘ambition’ to spend a useless 3 per cent of GDP on defence by the year 2525 with a shovel-load of Maldon’s finest. The way Rachel From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there won’t be any GDP left in a couple of years’ time. And 3 percent of stuff all is still stuff all.

AN NHS cosmetic surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he ‘d said the exact same about those people who want to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.

Having recently declared that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these people ever take a day off?