, near the end, Jeremy Paxman announced:
Well, that’s all from Newsnight tonight. Before we go, a correction to our markets, the Dow Jones was actually, aw, this is bad, up this evening, not down as we reported. How do we manage to get it so wrong so frequently on the markets?
Well, I don’t know Jeremy, but I could hazard a guess or three! Then:
It was the 100th anniversary today though of the foundation of the Boy Scouts though.
D’oh! It’s just the Scouts these days Jeremy – girls are members too you know! (And what was with that second ‘though’? or was it a “D’oh!”?).
There are now said to be 28-million of them, all as Baden-Powell promised, smiling and whistling under all circumstances. There are 40,000 of them camped out at Brownsea Island in Dorset.
D’oh! There are 40,000 of them camped out at the World Scout Jamboree 2007 in Hylands Park, Chelmsford in Essex, with 300 lucky Scouts participating in the Brownsea camp re-enactment on Brownsea Island in Dorset…
Goodnight.
Well, at least you got that right Jeremy. Well, the night part anyway.
We then cut to film of Peter Duncan, the Chief Scout, hand raised in Scout salute, saying, as the titles roll (as is the way on hip-and-happening Newsnight these days):
Join with me, in saying, “On my honour, I promise that I will do my best…”
…then Parum-pum-pum-pum he’s silenced and the Newsnight theme starts at full blast – omitting the rest of the Scout Promise as the film and end credits continue to roll.
Now, the Scout Promise is:
On My Honour, I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people
And to keep the Scout Law
…which is sufficiently short that Newsnight could have included it in full within their end-title sequence, yet, in common with other BBC news coverage that I saw, they chopped it off after ‘do my best’.
It’s enough to make one wonder if the BBC has a problem with the concepts of doing one’s duty to God and to the Queen, helping other people and keeping the Scout Law (which is equally straightforward and eloquent). Surely not.
A wiggle-woggle to Chuffer for spotting the first Scout promise abridgement.
Dib dib dob – Paxman’s not doing his job! He IS paid hundreds of thousands to ensure he knows what he is talking about surely, otherwise you might as well put a trained monkey in the chair, Oh wait.
BBC – never accept that it might be our fault – always blame others – this is what we do.
heaven forbid that such notions of “queen and country” ever re-enter the political sphere.
we are now part of the grand EU project now. (even though we didnt vote for it)
The BBC, we get the little stuff right, so you can trust us on the big stuff.
Wait……
Oi!!
I want a hat-tip for this!!
Nah you can have a wiggle of your woggle instead!
OK – I want a wiggle woggle for this:
Chuffer:
Blimey, I didn’t realise how good my prediction was. On the One O’clock news, they are doing a report on the Scout Mass Jamboree, and Peter Duncan is leading the Scout Pledge. You remember it goes:”On my honour, I promise that I will do my best,
To do my duty to God and to the Queen”
No surprise that he is cut after the word ‘best’.
Chuffer | 01.08.07 – 1:40 pm | #
A week ago the BBC told its listeners that Lord Baden-Powell took 20 ‘mainly public school boys’ to Brownsea Island.
By Friday they had become 20 ‘boys of different backgrounds’ on the News at 6.
What had made the BBC a little bit less sniffy about the Scouting Movement?
Was it the influx of bright young people of all races and creeds from over 200 countries?
Don’t tell them they were nearly all ‘middle class’ bright young people of all races and creeds!
Thanks for the wiggle woggle, not least from Mrs Chuffer, who says that that means she’s got one less nasty job to do.
On the radio yesterday, it was made clear that ALL the scouts, of all national;ites, made the Scouting pledge together, no matter their nationality or creed. So only the British Souts would have made the promise to the Queen etc. All the others would have made a similar promise, but in their own language, and in their own way.
That’s why the promise was faded out.
Why wasn’t that made clear originally?
Or at least that’s their excuse for cutting it off (‘fading it out’ indeed Beeboids!) They could have stayed with Peter Duncan and the British Scouts or at the very least explain what promises were being made and why – but then that would mean going into all that duty, Queen and God stuff that the BBC cannot abide 🙂
> It’s just the Scouts these days Jeremy – girls are members too you know!
Er, so what? It was still the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Boy Scouts.