RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock discovered me not at the films but at the Cinema Museum, a hidden gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a former workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be told, I hardly ever endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: ‘Lot of very wicked individuals’ in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the event was a one-man program by my old mate George Layton, actor, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour – at least 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 beautifully composed, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.

The storylines are based upon the trials and adversities of a kid being brought up by a single mom – an unconventional domesticity at that time, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print given that 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can’t assist wondering, however, how frequently these glorious texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between teachers packing their students’ little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about ‘white opportunity’, manifest destiny and, naturally, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were certainly white, but no one might have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ meant living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a standard 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only being able to afford an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids acquired their understanding mainly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced genuine difficulty, not the poverty of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their mobile phones, instead of roaming complimentary and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their understanding mainly from books. Yes, TV played a huge function, as did the movies, however no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps offering instant gratification in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the most current CGI generated smash hit on a mobile phone a few inches broad ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

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

One of the most dismaying things I have actually checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention spans these days’s kids.

Not surprising that kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plummeted amazingly. All this has contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class students – kids in particular – are being left. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have been ‘betrayed’ by the modern schools system.

They suffer from an absence of parental participation and following scarceness 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 goal.

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

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a satisfying career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the work environment.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man show on the roadway, to small provincial theatres. I have actually got a better concept.

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could begin by selecting up the phone and welcoming George to tour schools, checking out from his brief stories.

I honestly think that if they might be persuaded to search for 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 range in years.

You never understand, there may even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.

When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking people for posting hurty words on the web, the police are significantly taking second tasks to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise consist of a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.

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

It’s likewise reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don’t expect there’s any threat of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased an infant from a complete stranger are selfish in the severe

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

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

We’re likewise told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive types’ having actually gotten away into the wild and are colonising cities as far afield as Plymouth and Aberdeen. No doubt we’ll be putting them up in the closest Holiday Inn soon.

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

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

Take Labour’s ‘ambition’ to invest a worthless 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 few years’ time. And 3 percent of stuff all is still stuff all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he ‘d said the very same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Chief law officer.

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