In January, the head ofthe independent UK Statistics Authority was moved to write publicly about a television broadcast the prime minister had made, suggesting the government was "paying down debt", when ofcoursethetruthis that debt is going up.
But ofcoursethetruthis this story began centuries ago, when horsemen descended to the plains from a lost kingdom called Futa Djallon, long before Europe's map makers turned their minds to the niggling problem of how to fill those blank spaces.