RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working Class Children have actually Been Betrayed

[cherylcantamessa]

<br>Saturday night at 8 o’clock found me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a previous workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mom fell on tough times.<br>nhs.uk
<br>Truth be informed, I hardly ever endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: ‘Lot of extremely wicked individuals’ in Sarf Lunnon.<br>nhs.uk
<br>Coincidentally, the occasion 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.<br>
<br>George was checking out from his collection of brief stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing 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 experiences.<br>
<br>The storylines are based on the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mother – a non-traditional domesticity at that time, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print since 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.<br>
<br>I can’t assist questioning, though, how frequently these glorious texts are utilized in class these days, in between teachers stuffing their students’ little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about ‘white opportunity’, colonialism and, of course, environment modification.<br>
<br>The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the background to George’s reading were certainly white, however nobody might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ implied living from hand to mouth, not needing to opt for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only being able to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.<br>
<br>Child poverty was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and hesitantly using last season’s Nike fitness instructors.<br>
<br>Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding mostly from books, writes Littlejohn<br>
<br>In the 1950s, kids experienced authentic hardship, not the hardship of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their cellphones, instead of strolling complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.<br>
<br>Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the films, however nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering immediate satisfaction in byte-sized pieces.<br>
<br>And how can squinting at the newest CGI produced smash hit on a mobile phone a few inches wide ever compare to the sort of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?<br>
<br>It can’t. Just as the finest images are stated to be on the radio, even much better images can be discovered in the printed word.<br>
<br>One of the most dismal things I have actually read recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention periods these days’s kids.<br>
<br>No surprise child, and certainly adult, literacy levels have actually plunged amazingly. All this has actually added to the shocking revelation that white, working class students – kids in specific – are being left. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to confess they have actually been ‘betrayed’ by the contemporary schools system.<br>
<br>They experience an absence of adult participation and consequent scarceness of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton’s stories definitely didn’t suffer any adult overlook from his prideful mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or aspiration.<br>
<br>Education was the escape of poverty. It produced significant 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.<br>
<br>Literacy is the greatest 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 satisfying career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the workplace.<br>
<br>George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man program on the roadway, to small provincial theatres. I’ve got a much better idea.<br>
<br>If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might begin by picking up the phone and welcoming George to tour schools, reading from his narratives.<br>
<br>I truthfully believe that if they could be encouraged to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and inspired by the adventures of a young boy not that different to them, despite the distance in decades.<br>
<br>You never know, there may even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.<br>
<br>When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the internet, the police are increasingly taking second tasks to supplement their income.<br>
<br>Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, 2nd jobs also include a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.<br>
<br>My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop needs to take the biscuit.<br>
<br>It’s also reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don’t expect there’s any threat of them nicking a few shoplifters.<br>
<br>Mind how you go.<br>
<br>RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought a baby from a stranger are self-centered in the severe<br>
<br>First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may turn out to be the least of our problems. We now 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 anglers out of company.<br>
<br>It’s bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs helping themselves to what’s left.<br>
<br>We’re also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable intrusive types’ having actually 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 closest Holiday Inn soon.<br>
<br>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 originated from?<br>
<br>We have actually got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.<br>
<br>Take Labour’s ‘aspiration’ to spend a pathetic 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 things all is still pack all.<br>
<br>AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually 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 Chief law officer.<br>
<br>Having just recently declared that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these people ever take a day off?<br>

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