RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have actually Been Betrayed

Saturday night at 8 o’clock discovered me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise 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 mom fell on tough times.

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

Coincidentally, the occasion was a one-man program by my old mate George Layton, actor, 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 maturing in post-war Bradford. They’re beautifully written, warm, funny, expressive, a slice of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mother – an unconventional domesticity back then, unfortunately only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print given that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can’t help questioning, though, how often these glorious texts are used in class these days, in between teachers stuffing their students’ little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about ‘white opportunity’, manifest destiny and, of course, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were certainly white, however no one could have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ implied living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a basic 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, children acquired their knowledge mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, children acquired their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, however no place near the domination of TikTok and other apps offering immediate gratification in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the latest CGI created smash hit on a cellphone a few inches broad ever compare with the sort of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

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

One of the most dismaying things I have actually checked out recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention periods these days’s children.

Not surprising that child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have plummeted alarmingly. All this has contributed to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils – kids in particular – are being left. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have been by the modern schools system.

They experience an absence of adult involvement and ensuing paucity of goal. The white, working class young boy in George Layton’s stories certainly didn’t suffer any parental overlook from his aggressive mum. Nor did he do not have imagination 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 grew up in poverty in close-by pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the greatest present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmothers taught me to read before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a satisfying 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 small provincial theatres. I have actually got a better idea.

If the Education Secretary desires to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could begin by getting the phone and inviting George to tour 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 inspired by the experiences of a young boy not that different to them, in spite of the range in years.

You never ever know, there may 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 cops are significantly taking sidelines to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, second jobs likewise consist of 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 also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don’t suppose there’s any danger of them nicking a few shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased a baby from a complete stranger are selfish in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may end up being the least of our issues. We now find out 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 regional anglers out of business.

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 intrusive types’ having actually 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 closest Holiday Inn eventually.

And that’s before I get to the buzzard that’s been dive-bombing kids in a school playground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that originated from?

We have actually got enough problem with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour’s ‘ambition’ to invest a worthless 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 couple of years’ time. And 3 per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he ‘d stated the exact 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 just recently claimed that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these individuals ever take a day off?