Saturday night at eight o'clock found me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a former workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.
Truth be informed, I seldom endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.
Coincidentally, the event was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy cars and truck mechanic in Minder.
George was reading from his collection of brief stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully composed, warm, amusing, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.
The stories are based upon the trials and tribulations of a boy being brought up by a single mother - an unconventional domesticity at that time, regretfully only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print because 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.
I can't help questioning, however, how often these marvelous texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors packing their pupils' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white opportunity', colonialism and, of course, environment modification.
The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, however no one might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not having to choose a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only being able to manage an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.
Child poverty was genuine, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and unwillingly using last season's Nike trainers.
Until the digital/social media transformation, children gained their understanding primarily from books, composes Littlejohn
In the 1950s, kids experienced genuine challenge, not the hardship of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their smart phones, instead of roaming free and experiencing life to the complete.
Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their understanding mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, but nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps using immediate satisfaction in byte-sized pieces.
And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created blockbuster on a mobile phone a few inches large ever compare to the type of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?
It can't. Just as the very best pictures are said to be on the radio, even better pictures can be discovered in the printed word.
One of the most dismaying things I have actually checked out recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention periods of today's kids.
No surprise kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have plunged amazingly. All this has added to the shocking revelation that white, working class pupils - kids in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to confess they have been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.
They experience a lack of parental involvement and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any parental disregard from his domineering mum. Nor did he lack creativity or goal.
Education was the method out of hardship. It produced significant wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who matured in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.
Literacy is the greatest gift we can bestow on any child. My grannies taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a satisfying profession at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the workplace.
George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man program on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better idea.
If the Education Secretary desires to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might start by picking up the phone and inviting George to visit schools, reading from his short stories.
I honestly believe that if they might be convinced to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young kid not that various to them, despite the range in decades.
You never ever know, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin among them.
When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old males or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the web, the police are increasingly taking 2nd tasks to supplement their income.
Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise include a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) and a reiki instructor, 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 risk of them nicking a couple of thiefs.
Mind how you go.
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought a child from a complete stranger are selfish in the extreme
First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might turn out to be the least of our issues. We now learn 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 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 likewise told that parakeets from India and are an 'unstoppable invasive species' 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 nearby Holiday Inn before long.
And that'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 problem with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.
Take Labour's 'ambition' to invest a worthless 3 per cent 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 won't be any GDP left in a couple of years' time. And three per cent of things all is still stuff all.
AN NHS cosmetic surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he 'd said the same about those of us who want 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 allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day off?
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RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: White Working People Children have actually Been Betrayed
sethwithnell9 edited this page 2025-06-03 19:09:16 -05:00