Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Billions again
So Gordon ‘The Wallet’ Brown has committed 35 Thousand Million pounds extra to public expenditure since his accession to the Downing Street Throne. According to the Guardian that is, so my first reaction as an ancient Grauniad observer was to wonder about mis-prints. My second is to repeat my plea to abolish the term ‘Billion’ in spoken discourse as deaf and hard of hearing people find it almost impossible to hear or lip-read the difference between ‘Billion’ and ‘Million’.
And yes I know that the UK has officially given up on its parochial insistence that a Billion should be a ‘Million Million’ and gone over to the US mini-Billion. Whatever, the mumble from ’M’ to ‘B’ when talking about ‘illions’ rather serve to obscure for the public (including me I confess) just how huge the sums discussed actually are.
If the LibDems started talking about 'Thousands of Millions' of pounds insted of 'mumble-illions' maybe this would surprise the public into attention to economic arguments...
And yes I know that the UK has officially given up on its parochial insistence that a Billion should be a ‘Million Million’ and gone over to the US mini-Billion. Whatever, the mumble from ’M’ to ‘B’ when talking about ‘illions’ rather serve to obscure for the public (including me I confess) just how huge the sums discussed actually are.
If the LibDems started talking about 'Thousands of Millions' of pounds insted of 'mumble-illions' maybe this would surprise the public into attention to economic arguments...
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