News Letter's reports about RHI have been of high quality

He believes – though he provides no evidence for this – that your reports are meant to destroy Arlene Foster – a woman for whom his admiration is, it seems, boundless.

Those of us who are less willing to admire the First Minister’s bluster, arrogance and insecurity – this is, one presumes, what Mr Halliday means when he refers to her inability to fight back on the media’s own terms – are perhaps rather better placed than Mr Halliday to see honest and assiduous reporting for what it is.

One assumes that it is the high quality of your reports which has alarmed Mr Halliday.

If your reports were inaccurate and biased Mr Halliday would be able to quote examples to support his case; as it is he has not done so and I am confident that he will not do so.

However, it is hoped that Mr Halliday carries out his threat to visit your office. No doubt your colleagues will agree among themselves – unless they have been left speechless by his illogicality – that the experience of being lectured to by My Halliday is akin (in the late Denis Healy’s remark about Sir Geoffrey Howe) to being savaged by a dead sheep.

C.D.C. Armstrong, Belfast BT12