RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have actually Been B…

Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the motion pictures but at the Cinema Museum, a hidden 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 informed, I rarely endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: 'Lot of really 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 - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy vehicle mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of narratives embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class version 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 mom - a non-traditional domesticity at that time, regretfully only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print because 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't assist wondering, though, how frequently these remarkable texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between teachers stuffing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white opportunity', colonialism and, naturally, environment modification.

The kids in the 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' meant living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only being able to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

Child poverty was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and hesitantly using last season's Nike trainers.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids acquired their knowledge primarily from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced authentic hardship, not the poverty of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their smart phones, rather of roaming free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids gained their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the movies, however no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the most current CGI created blockbuster on a cellular phone a couple of inches large ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the best images are said to be on the radio, even better photos can be discovered in the printed word.

Among the most dismaying things I have actually checked out 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 these days's children.

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 - kids in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They experience an absence of adult involvement and following scarceness of goal. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any parental overlook from his prideful 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 hardship in neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any kid. 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.

George Layton is considering taking his one-man show on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a better concept.

If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might begin by getting the phone and inviting George to tour schools, checking out from his narratives.

I honestly 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 kid not that different to them, despite the range in decades.

You never understand, there may even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the internet, the police are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines 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 do not suppose there's any threat of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased a child from a complete stranger are self-centered in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may 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 company.

It's bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs assisting themselves to what's left.

We're likewise told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive 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 soon.

And that's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing children in a school play area 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 'aspiration' to spend a pathetic three percent 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 will not be any GDP left in a few years' time. And 3 percent of stuff all is still pack all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually 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 Chief law officer.

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