The decision by Britain's biggest exam board to pulp a collection of poems because it contained a poem with a reference to a bread knife risks sending me into stuck record territory. But bear with me for a moment as I groan at the stupidity of it all once more: this time it's on our side of the fence.
Leave to one side the misreading of the poem that led to the latest complaint - Pat Schofield seems to think that a poem Duffy's agent calls "pro-education, anti-violence" carries a "horrendous" message for teens. Leave aside the crassness of banning something because it's about knives - as Michael Rosen points out, that Shakespeare guy is looking a bit dodgy. Focus instead on the numbers. The book is to be destroyed because three, yes three, complaints were made - and one of those was about the goldfish.
Last time round there was some talk about how things were different in the US, a point which echoed something the Museums Libraries and Archives Council's Ian Dodd said to me when I talked to him last year. He told me that they don't collate data on banning books in the UK because it "isn't really an issue". Maybe they should start counting.
