This is more or less the statistical spine of an otherwise floppy media.

The programme now airs year-round on the BBC World Service,

but this is a full-length episode from Radio 4.

Hello and welcome to more or less the programme that takes a statistical scalpel

to the festering wound of public debate. Now, despite the fact that they shunted us out of our

old time slot, we, on more or less, are admirers of the world at one. But on Tuesday,

while Martha Carney was luxuriating in her acres of extra airtime with the Conservative

Party's co-chairman, Saeed Avarse, this happened.

The dilemma we must remain on track, because you're so keen on keeping interest rates low and

cutting the debt, that you're actually forgetting about growth. And that's what's important.

We're seeing much higher levels of growth in the United States, for example,

which hasn't cared so much about cutting its debt.

Well, if you look at the figures from the US, they've actually cut debt deeper,

and they've cut it faster. So it's a myth to say that they haven't.

Oh, hang on, I'm not sure that's right, is it?

Let me just summon Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economic senator, by beaming this huge

pound symbol onto the underside of some low cloud. They can't say that, can they, Stephanie?

Well, this is one of those exchanges that I hear often, and it pains me every time I hear it,

because I'm afraid, afraid to say both the interviewer and the interviewer have made that

classic mistake that everyone makes some of the best politicians, some of the best journalists

make, which is the difference between the deficit and the debt. If we think about it very carefully,

maybe we'll remember it finally. The debt is the accumulated amount of debt,

...