The AQA examination board has apparently dropped a poem by one of the UK's most applauded contemporary poets from its GCSE English anthology because of current fears and controversy over teenage knife crime.
Education for Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy features the opening line: "Today I am going to kill something. Anything."
It deals with the thought processes of a disturbed person who kills first a fly, then a goldfish, then sets off from home with a b
read knife.
The removal of the powerful piece seems odd, to say the least, seeing as it's clear in the poem itself and in AQA's own study guide to the work that the reader is not meant to admire the character whose thoughts it explores. Nor does it promote or glorify violence.
The comparison that's made is with a speech by Gloucester in Shakespeare's King Lear. Aye, there's the rub: if hatchet-wielding poetry police are going to get stuck into every hint of knife violence in literature, fearing its malign influence on our young, then the Bard's work would certainly be stripped bare.
Palin is a fairly unusual surname, and the only really famous Palin on this side of the pond is our own dear Michael, son of Sheffield and former Monty Python star turned TV traveller.
Hearing the name again, but this time attached to Senator John McCain's vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin, does bring you up short and wonder, ever so slightly, whether the two Palins might be related.
When called by a journalist to set the record straight, Michael Palin's wife Helen happily announced that Michael and Sarah are not connected. And, she allegedly added: "... to be quite honest with you, we are quite relieved."
Some comedians fear hecklers, but Dara O'Briain is much more worried about tight-lipped audiences.
The comedian and Mock the Week host is about to set out on another UK tour, but he's already a little worried about returning to Sheffield.
"About 25 per cent of the act I make up on stage, talking to the audience," O'Briain told the Yorkshire Post.
"Last year I went to Leeds and couldn't shut them up. It was the same in Bradford, but when I went to Sheffield the audience collectively just shrivelled. They withdrew like a turtle into its shell and I had to tease them out Bill Oddie-style. It was genuinely bewildering."
We may soon be seeing rather more of the Kaiser Chiefs than we ever really wanted.
The Leeds band have been invited to Mark Ronson's 33rd birthday party where guests have been asked to dress as their favourite album cover.
While the super-producer is apparently opting for a tribute to Prince, the Kaisers are apparently thinking of stripping down in homage to John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1968 album Two Virgins. We look forward to seeing the photos.
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