RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working Class Children have actually Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock found me not at the movies 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 mom fell on tough times.

Truth be informed, I seldom venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: ‘Lot of really wicked people’ in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the event 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 was checking out from his collection of narratives 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 version of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.

The storylines are based upon the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mother – a non-traditional domesticity at that time, sadly only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print considering that 1975 and found its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can’t assist questioning, though, how often these marvelous texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between teachers packing their pupils’ little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about ‘white benefit’, manifest destiny and, of course, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the background to George’s reading were certainly white, however nobody might have described them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ implied living from hand to mouth, not having to opt for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only having the ability to afford an iPhone 14 rather than the latest 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 trainers.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids got their understanding primarily from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced authentic hardship, not the poverty of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their cellphones, rather of wandering free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children acquired their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a huge function, as did the movies, but no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using instantaneous gratification in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the current CGI generated blockbuster on a cellphone a couple of inches large ever compare with the type of old-school, big screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

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

Among the most dismaying 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 these days’s kids.

No surprise kid, and certainly adult, literacy levels have actually plummeted amazingly. All this has actually added to the stunning discovery that white, working class students – young boys in particular – are being left. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to confess they have been ‘betrayed’ by the modern schools system.

They suffer from a lack of adult participation and ensuing paucity of goal. The white, working class boy in George Layton’s stories definitely didn’t suffer any parental neglect from his domineering mum. Nor did he do not have imagination or aspiration.

Education was the method out of hardship. It produced eloquent 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 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 workplace.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man program on the road, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better concept.

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

I honestly think that if they might be convinced 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, in spite of the range in decades.

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 individuals for posting hurty words on the internet, the cops are increasingly taking 2nd tasks to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment drivers. More intriguingly, sidelines also consist of a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki instructor, 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 do not suppose there’s any threat of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might end up being the least of our issues. 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 service.

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

We’re likewise told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an types’ 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 nearby Holiday Inn soon.

Which’s before I get to the buzzard that’s been dive-bombing children in a school playground 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 ‘aspiration’ to spend a worthless 3 percent 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 three per cent 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 very same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.

Having just recently declared that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these individuals ever take a day of rest?