Things you don't read in newspapers:

Teenager Marcus Revell was stabbed to death yesterday in broad daylight, leaving the people he was standing at the bus stop with horrified. Revell, 17, was assaulted by a group of seven hooded assailants, who "attacked him like animals with knives".

Friends of Marcus were quick to post their personal recollections of him to social networking sites.

• "You were an ignorant arsehole who always were threatening my children", wrote AngryDad1971. 
  
• "Another dealer off the streets! Yes!", recalled OffMyStreet2.
• "Where will I gets my crack from now, geez? LOL", wrote TheAddamsFamily
• "How will your three angels survive without you?", typed a tearful eMmA924EvA, referring to Marcus' three daughters from three separate relationships.

Local Police Media Relations Officer Clive Raymond read from a statement at the crime scene. "For two long, Revell's reign of terror on these community streets remained unchecked by the people of this town, the Police, and Social Services. Many sleepless nights went past with the sound of Revell's gang cynically smashing up cars, property and shop fronts. The sheer weight of drugs he brazenly sold in front of my Police Station, knowing his rights as a nine year old, that he could not be searched, was astonishing. Only when he tried to rip off some Somali gangsters did he ironically, finally realize the true meaning of the word 'terror', as they cut open his chest and started to sever his internal organs with delight".

A Police investigation continues.

Letters to The Sun

Today, I saw possibly the most astounding correspondence that has been published in a national newspaper, which I will re-type here verbatim (hence the quotation section).

I am diagnosed by the NHS as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia as a result of believing extra-terrestrials are in telepathic contact with me. Yet I read that an NHS hospital is using an exorcist in order to get rid of a ghost. Where is the consistency?

Robert Greatorex, Newcastle upon Tyne

It was the "Where is the consistency" line that made me nearly fall off my chair.

Things that might begat other things:

Why does the plastic lid on a take-away Mocha from Starbucks always split?

Why did ITV play an ad-break at the wrong time in Everton v. Liverpool?

Why did ITV Weather suggest that the North Sea will freeze?

When Radio 3 played "Stockhausen: Hymnen" on January 31st 2009, why did I think that it was some crazy local pirate radio?