Keep on delivering the message, robustly, repeatedly, and it becomes fact. Whoosh!

Magic!

It's not as crazy as it seems. The media is a pussycat when it comes to government creating, rather than accepting, reality.

Twenty-four hour news needs to be fed constantly. The soundbite is king. The room for analysis is squeezed, reflection is left behind. Keep saying it and it becomes reality in the minds of the electorate.

As a form of spin, it has caught on this side of the Atlantic. Over here, we have 'BertieWorld', where facts are irrelevant, the message is all that matters, and if you keep saying it, the message becomes reality.

Take Dick Roche. The electoral register is in a mess, as revealed by this newspaper last Sunday. In BertieWorld, all is fine and bright. Roche said this newspaper used Census figures from 2002, which it didn't, as Shane Coleman has pointed out. The figures used were from this year's census. In the Dail on Wedneday, Brian Cowen repeated that the 2002 figures were used. Keep saying it and it becomes reality.

Then we have BertieWorld's appearance at last Saturday's party conference. Cowen told John Bowman on RTE Radio that decentralisation was on course as planned, or at least, as planned in the latest revision. He said it and said it again.

Pesky reality: Enterprise Ireland has taken out a 25year lease on a building in Dublin designed to house 600 staff, despite plans to move to Shannon. Just 19 personnel have applied for the move.

In the vital area of technical and professional specialist staff, just 368 have applied for the 1,036 positions due to be decentralised. The whole programme is a shambles.

Yet Brian says the job is oxo.

Keep saying it and it becomes true, and if reality has to impinge on BertieWorld, it certainly won't be showing its face this side of the election.

Last week, Michael McDowell entered BertieWorld. He declared the government had now delivered a garda force 14,000strong as promised in the programme for government. "I have delivered, " he boomed. "I have delivered."

Pesky reality:

He hasn't. The force will not be 14,000-strong until spring 2008 at the earliest, by which time . . . if population trends continue . . . it will be even further below the required strength.

McDowell included recruits in his figures, a transparent bluff that allowed him to utter the triumphal cry of delivery. To be fair to him, his self-image demanded that he say something that didn't represent another u-turn, but as with all in BertieWorld, it's the message rather than the reality that matters.

Then there is the eponymous hero of BertieWorld.

Last weekend, he spoke of dark forces that were out to do him down over his finances. In BertieWorld, some sinister person tried to deliver him a low blow and tarnish his allconquering image as the Man Of The People.

Pesky reality: He had four highly unusual lodgements to his bank account over a 16month period in the mid 1990s that required explanation. He says he got loans from millionaire friends and gifts from millionaire strangers, and he can't say from whom exactly or when he received the latter.

And he claims that a lodgement of £50,000 was a result of six years' saving, when he kept the money at home, in a biscuit tin, or a sock, or somewhere.

That is the reality that has been created, by Bush, by Ahern. BushWorld is coming a cropper following Tuesday's mid-term elections. Reality is knocking at the door of the White House.

The prospects for BertieWorld are far better. All he needs his people to do is keep talking, delivering the message, creating the appropriate reality, for another six months or so. After that, it may be time to create a new reality. Fifty grand? What fifty grand?