RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have actually Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock discovered me not at the films but at the Cinema Museum, a covert gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a previous 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, cautioned Arthur Daley: ‘Lot of extremely wicked people’ in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the celebration was a one-man program by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour – at least to my mind – was playing Des, the dodgy car 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 wonderfully written, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton’s Just William experiences.

The storylines are based on the trials and tribulations of a kid being raised by a single mother – an unconventional household life back then, sadly only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print because 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can’t help wondering, however, how frequently these glorious texts are used in class nowadays, in between teachers stuffing their students’ little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about ‘white benefit’, colonialism and, obviously, climate change.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were definitely white, but nobody could have described them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ indicated living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to afford an iPhone 14 rather than the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child hardship was genuine, 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 mainly from books, composes Littlejohn

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids gained their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the films, but no place near the domination of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

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

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

Among the most dismaying things I’ve checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the truth that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention periods these days’s children.

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

They experience a lack of adult involvement and following paucity of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton’s stories definitely didn’t suffer any parental disregard from his aggressive mum. Nor did he lack 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 poverty in close-by pre-war Leeds.

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

George Layton is considering taking his on the roadway, to small provincial theatres. I’ve got a much better idea.

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

I truthfully think that if they could be convinced to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and motivated by the experiences of a young kid not that various to them, regardless of the distance in decades.

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

When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking people for posting hurty words on the web, the authorities are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment chauffeurs. More intriguingly, sidelines also consist of a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) 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 risk of them nicking a few thiefs.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may turn out to be 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 local 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 also informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable intrusive types’ having 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 nearest Holiday Inn soon.

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

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

Take Labour’s ‘ambition’ to spend a useless 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 couple of years’ time. And three per cent of things all is still pack all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he ‘d stated the very same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney general of the United States.

Having recently claimed 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?