Washout?

Well, not quite.

The morning was sunny and dry. The rest... grey and wet.

My day wasn't a washout either. My usual Saturday morning chores were accomplished.

The weather also gave me time to write a blog post about last week's travels. I even read a newspaper over dinner.

Two very good pieces about the (generally) dismal standards of journalism we have imposed on us. It's worrying when the political editor of a formerly respected newspaper invents a story, it then gets used as a factual basis for a story in another formerly respected newspaper and is also treated as fact by an opportunist MSP.

The original "story" has been refuted by all involved, except the journalist (whose pedigree includes the News of the World at the time of the phone hacking scandals) who is the subject of the "story".

The writer of the "story" didn't try to contact the other parties involved to get their version of events, no doubt because such a basic journalistic technique would have left him without a story (or at best, one with balance to it).

Another news item records further significant drops in sales of newspapers in the latest period monitored.