RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working Class Children have Been Betrayed > 자유게시판

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

Truth be told, I seldom endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: 'Lot of extremely wicked individuals' in Sarf Lunnon.

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

George read from his collection of brief stories set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully written, warm, amusing, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

The storylines are based upon the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mother - an unconventional family life back then, sadly just too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print given that 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

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

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George's reading were certainly white, but no one might have described them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant 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 afford an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

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

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine hardship, not the poverty of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their smart phones, instead of strolling totally free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children acquired their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the films, however nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI produced blockbuster on a cellular phone a few inches wide ever compare with the kind of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the finest photos are said 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 spans these days's kids.

No wonder kid, and certainly adult, literacy levels have plummeted amazingly. All this has contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class students - young boys in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They struggle with an absence of parental participation and consequent paucity of goal. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult overlook from his domineering mum. Nor did he lack imagination or goal.

Education was the escape 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 close-by pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the greatest present we can bestow on any kid. 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 desires to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might begin by selecting up the phone and inviting George to visit schools, reading from his short stories.

I truthfully believe that if they might be encouraged to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the adventures of a young kid not that various to them, despite the range in decades.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking people for publishing hurty words on the web, the cops are increasingly taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, second tasks 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 store has to take the biscuit.

It's likewise reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don't suppose there's any danger of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the might end up being the least of our issues. We now discover 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 business.

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 invasive types' having actually 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 nearby Holiday Inn eventually.

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

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

Take Labour's 'aspiration' to spend a pitiful 3 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 won't be any GDP left in a couple of years' time. And 3 per cent of stuff all is still pack all.

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

Having recently declared that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day of rest?