Furthermore the brain fakes much of the data, giving the perception of colour vision, for example, in regions of the visual field where no ability to discriminate colour exists,

Just a note - I don't disagree with your point; but the claim that we can't discriminate color in our peripheral vision is simply false. I've done some informal experiments with this, because I was puzzled that textbooks say that our peripheral vision is primarily due to rods, which can't detect color; yet I see color in my peripheral vision.

If I stand with my nose and forehead pressed against the wall, holding a stack of shuffled yellow and red sheets of origami paper behind my back, close my eyes, and then hold one sheet up in each of my outstretched arms, and open my eyes, so that the sheets are each 90 degrees out from my central vision and I see them both at the same time, I can distinguish the two colors 100% of the time.

There's a serious problem with resolution; but color doesn't seem to be affected at all in any way that I can detect by central vs. peripheral vision.