RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock discovered me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a covert gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a former workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on tough times.

Truth be told, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: ‘Lot 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 – at least to my mind – was playing Des, the dodgy vehicle mechanic in Minder.

George was reading from his collection of brief stories set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They’re beautifully written, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.

The stories are based upon the trials and adversities of a young boy being raised by a single mother – an unconventional family life at that time, regretfully only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print since 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can’t assist wondering, however, how often these marvelous texts are utilized in class these days, in between instructors packing their students’ little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about ‘white opportunity’, colonialism and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were certainly white, but nobody might have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ meant living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just being able to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the newest all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, children gained their understanding mainly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine hardship, not the hardship of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their cellphones, instead of strolling totally free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children gained their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the films, but nowhere near the domination of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the most current CGI produced blockbuster on a mobile phone a few inches wide ever compare to the kind of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated 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 dismal things I’ve read 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 child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually plummeted amazingly. All this has added to the stunning discovery that white, working class students – boys in particular – are being left behind. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to admit they have been ‘betrayed’ by the modern-day schools system.

They experience a lack of adult involvement and ensuing scarceness of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton’s stories certainly didn’t suffer any parental disregard from his imperious mum. Nor did he lack creativity or goal.

Education was the escape of poverty. 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 neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest 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 instead of the relative drudgery of the office.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man program on the road, to little 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 begin by choosing up the phone and welcoming George to visit schools, checking out from his narratives.

I honestly think that if they could be encouraged to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and influenced by the adventures of a young boy not that various to them, regardless of the range in decades.

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

When they’re not one-legged 92-year-old males or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the internet, the cops are increasingly taking sidelines to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, 2nd tasks likewise include 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 store has to take the biscuit.

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

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased an infant from a stranger are self-centered in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might 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 regional anglers out of company.

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

We’re likewise informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive species’ having 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.

Which’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 originated from?

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

Take Labour’s ‘ambition’ to invest a useless three 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 will not be any GDP left in a few years’ time. And three per cent of things all is still pack all.

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

Having just recently claimed that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these people ever take a day off?