Dome black hole deepens. Who's lying though?

The Millennium Dome - possibly the most criminal waste of money the world has ever seen - has been forced to start selling "surplus" equipment in a desperate bid to get some money. At least that's what The Daily Telegraph says.

We chased up the story that The New Millenium Experience Company was selling hundreds of handhelds to make ends meet. It has already sold some land trains - used to ferry old folk around the Dome, which presumably has left pensioners stranded in the Body Zone - so we wanted to know what the handhelds were being used for.

Having finally tracked down NMEC's phone number, we were greeted by a surprisingly cheerful PR woman (they must be the most battle-hardened PR in Britain). We read that you're selling off handheld computers? "Er, no. Hang on". She goes to check with her boss. "No we're not selling any computers." I read the Telegraph story to her. "Do you believe everything you read?" Of course. So the story's not true. "No, not true at all".

So the question here is: who's lying? Frankly, the Dome hasn't exactly got a good reputation. It lied about £758 million being enough for a year. And then it subsequently lied three times that a cash injection would be enough to tide it over - £139 million later and all we still have is a pile of brightly coloured junk in a big tent.

That said, the conspiracy theory runs that the nationals have been subversively hostile to the Dome for the simple reason that their editors were kept waiting on its opening because of a bureaucratic cock-up. Is the Telegraph spreading malicious misinformation?

Why don't we just close it down, have a sit down, and then try to find the eels that approved the scheme but have subsequently disappeared? ®