Do you ever get the feeling someones trying to send a message?

On Saturday afternoon UK police discovered the bodies of Chinese students Zhen Xing Yang and Xi Zhou in their flat on Croydon road, Newcastle. Although the police have yet to determine when the couple died early reports suggest that they were the victims of a sustained attack. Yang received multiple stab wounds and is believed to have been beaten to death over a long period. Zhou was suffocated after being beaten with two separate weapons. While the words torture and rape have not been specifically used the faces of the investigating officers leave no doubt as to the severity of the attacks. As there is no evidence of forced entry to the couples flat the police are working on the assumption that the couple knew their attacker.

This incident comes on the back of the murder of two French students back in July. On that occasion 23 year old bio-chemistry students, Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez were tied up in their South East London flat before being beaten, tortured and stabbed over 250 time before they were forced to drink petrol before being set alight. Again there was no sign of forced entry and police believe the killers had previously obtained keys.

Now if I was a conspiratorially minded person I may well think that these two incidents had been facilitated by Britain's own MI5. Not because I believe that any of the four victims were involved in espionage but because some foriegn students may well be.

The headline grabbing nature of these horrific crimes along with tales of Britain's high levels of knife crime has sent shock waves across Europe. The French case in particular lead to London being referred to as the "City of Blades" with French people being warned to Stay out Of London. With a similar outrage being expected following the latest murder I suspect that stories of these murders will discourage international students from coming to the UK making it much easier for MI5 to keep a closer eye on those that do.

It is a shame then that the UK's university system is so dependent on the money these international students bring with them so it should come as no suprise that everybody in the UK suddenly seems to be wearing black for some reason. I suppose then that it's a good job that at least Bristol's still got a bright future ahead of her.