RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have actually Been Betrayed

Saturday night at eight o’clock discovered me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a concealed gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a former workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be informed, I rarely venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: ‘Lot of extremely wicked individuals’ in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the celebration was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour – at least to my mind – was playing Des, the dodgy cars and truck mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of short stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They’re perfectly written, warm, funny, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.

The storylines are based upon the trials and adversities of a young boy being raised by a single mother – a non-traditional domesticity back then, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print considering that 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can’t help questioning, though, how typically these glorious texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their pupils’ little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about ‘white opportunity’, manifest destiny and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were definitely white, however nobody could have described them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 rather than the newest all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids acquired their understanding primarily from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced real difficulty, not the poverty of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their smart phones, instead of wandering free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their understanding mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, however nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the newest CGI generated blockbuster on a cellphone a few inches wide 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 finest images are said to be on the radio, even better images can be found in the printed word.

One of the most dismal things I’ve read just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz regreting the truth that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention periods of today’s kids.

No surprise kid, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually plummeted alarmingly. All this has added to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils – boys in specific – are being left. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to confess they have actually been ‘betrayed’ by the modern schools system.

They struggle with an absence of adult involvement and consequent scarceness of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton’s stories definitely didn’t suffer any adult disregard from his domineering mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or aspiration.

Education was the way out 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 hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmas taught me to read 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 workplace.

George Layton is considering taking his one-man program on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually 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 welcoming George to tour schools, reading from his narratives.

I honestly believe that if they could be convinced to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young boy not that various to them, regardless of the distance in years.

You never ever know, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.

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

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, second jobs also 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 shop has to take the biscuit.

It’s also reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I do not suppose there’s any danger of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought an infant from a complete are self-centered in the severe

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might turn out to be the least of our problems. We now discover 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 also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive species’ having actually left 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 eventually.

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

We have actually 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 method Rachel From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there will not be any GDP left in a couple of years’ time. And 3 percent of things all is still stuff all.

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

Having 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?