NOT many countries plead to be wiped off the map, but the Manx government has successfully appealed to Downing Street for the island to be removed from a pro-Union graphic of the UK.

However, the online correction has come too late to prevent the same erroneous map appearing in the UK Government booklet which has been delivered to every home in Scotland.

The diplomatic spat between the Tynwald and Westminster started when David Cameron tweeted: "By staying united we have much more to share and much more to gain," illustrating this with a map of the UK which wrongly included the Isle of Man.

This prompted the Government in Douglas to tweet back: "The Isle of Man works very closely with neighbouring nations, but is not part of UK. We are a self-governing Crown Dependency."

It then asked: "Please could this map be corrected... the Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom," and this resulted in a spate of contributions, including "David Cameron's office gets UK map wrong in independence spat (not satire)!" and "Are you sure? Number 10 tell us that it is impossible not to be part of the UK."

A Manx government spokesman said: "The Isle of Man is not, and never has been, part of the UK."