THE Margin hears that those august people over in the NTMA who handle our increasingly less corpulent national debt are just a little bit miffed with the media's use of the word "gilts" to describe domestic Government bonds.

It seems that Auntie Mae thinks that "gilts" suggests that Irish bonds are the same as the bits of paper that HM Treasury occasionally churns out. Auntie Mae believes that we should give up talking about gilts and begin talking about bonds. Or should it be bunds.