RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock found me not at the films but at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a previous workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on hard times.

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

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

George read from his collection of brief stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They’re magnificently written, warm, amusing, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and tribulations of a young boy being raised by a single mom – an unconventional household life back then, unfortunately only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print since 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can’t help wondering, however, how often these remarkable texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their pupils’ little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about ‘white benefit’, manifest destiny and, obviously, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were definitely white, but no one might have described them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ implied living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only being able to manage an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

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

In the 1950s, kids experienced real hardship, not the hardship of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their mobile phones, rather of roaming totally free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids acquired their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, but no place near the dominance of TikTok and other apps providing pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the latest CGI created smash hit on a mobile phone a few inches broad ever compare with the kind 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 images are said to be on the radio, even better pictures can be found in the printed word.

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

Not surprising that child, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plunged alarmingly. 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 been forced to confess they have been ‘betrayed’ by the modern schools system.

They suffer from a lack of adult participation and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class young boy in George Layton’s stories definitely didn’t suffer any adult disregard from his imperious mum. Nor did he do not have creativity 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 grew up in poverty in nearby pre-war Leeds.

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

George Layton is considering taking his one-man show on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I’ve got a better idea.

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

I truthfully think that if they might be convinced to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and influenced by the experiences of a young kid not that different to them, despite the range in years.

You never know, there might 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 authorities are progressively taking second tasks to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, sidelines 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 shop has to take the biscuit.

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

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought 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 learn that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is feasting on crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put local fishermen 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 told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive types’ having escaped 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 eventually.

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

We have actually got enough trouble 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 method 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 things all is still pack all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he ‘d said the same about those people who want 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 . Don’t these people ever take a day off?