RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working Class Children have Been Betrayed

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nhs.org<br>Saturday night at 8 o’clock found me not at the films but at the Cinema Museum, a hidden gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a former workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.<br>
<br>Truth be told, I rarely endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: ‘Great deal of extremely wicked individuals’ in Sarf Lunnon.<br>nhsproviders.org
<br>Coincidentally, the event 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.<br>
<br>George read from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They’re magnificently written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.<br>
<br>The stories are based upon the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mother – an unconventional family life at that time, regretfully only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has been in print since 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.<br>
<br>I can’t assist questioning, though, how frequently these glorious texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between instructors packing their students’ little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about ‘white advantage’, colonialism and, naturally, environment modification.<br>
<br>The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the background to George’s reading were certainly white, but nobody might have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ indicated living from hand to mouth, not having to opt for a standard 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.<br>
<br>Child poverty was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes stuff, not dining on Deliveroo and hesitantly using last season’s Nike trainers.<br>
<br>Until the digital/social media transformation, kids gained their knowledge primarily from books, writes Littlejohn<br>
<br>In the 1950s, kids experienced genuine challenge, not the hardship of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their smart phones, rather of strolling totally free and experiencing life to the full.<br>
<br>Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the motion pictures, but no place near the dominance of TikTok and other apps providing pleasure principle in byte-sized portions.<br>
<br>And how can squinting at the latest CGI created smash hit on a phone a few inches broad ever compare to the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?<br>
<br>It can’t. Just as the finest images are stated to be on the radio, even better photos can be found in the printed word.<br>
<br>One of the most depressing things I have actually read just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention periods of today’s children.<br>
<br>No surprise kid, and certainly adult, literacy levels have dropped alarmingly. All this has contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class pupils – boys in specific – are being left behind. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been required to admit they have actually been ‘betrayed’ by the modern schools system.<br>
<br>They struggle with a lack of adult participation and consequent paucity of goal. The white, working class young boy in George Layton’s stories certainly didn’t suffer any adult disregard from his aggressive mum. Nor did he lack imagination 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 hardship in close-by pre-war Leeds.<br>
<br>Literacy is the best 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 satisfying profession at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the workplace.<br>
<br>George Layton is considering taking his one-man program on the road, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a better concept.<br>
<br>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 visit schools, reading from his short stories.<br>
<br>I truthfully think that if they might be persuaded to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young boy not that various to them, in spite of the distance in decades.<br>
<br>You never understand, there may even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.<br>
<br>When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the web, the cops are increasingly taking sidelines to supplement their income.<br>
<br>Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment drivers. More intriguingly, 2nd tasks likewise include a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.<br>
<br>My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop has to take the biscuit.<br>
<br>It’s also reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don’t suppose there’s any threat of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.<br>
<br>Mind how you go.<br>
<br>RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought an infant from a stranger are selfish in the extreme<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 issues. 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 organization.<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 likewise told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive types’ having 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 nearby Holiday Inn soon.<br>
<br>Which’s before I get to the buzzard that’s been dive-bombing kids in a school play area in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that originated from?<br>
<br>We’ve got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.<br>
<br>Take Labour’s ‘aspiration’ to spend a pitiful 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 won’t be any GDP left in a couple of years’ time. And three per cent of stuff all is still pack all.<br>
<br>AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he ‘d stated the same about those people who want to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney general of the United States.<br>
<br>Having recently declared 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?<br>

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