A guide to financial numbers

Thanks to Hugh Richards, a veteran antinuclear campaigner, for this

What's the difference between a million, a billion, a trillion?

A million seconds is 11.57 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds.
One trillion seconds ago - 31,688 years was well before the peak of the last
ice age (20,000 years ago).

A million minutes ago was - 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A trillion minutes ago was 1,901,280 years ago, Homo Erectus was just
emerging, and lasted a further 1,500,000 years
Homo Sapiens started to develop about 100,000 years ago.

A trillion pounds is so large a number that only politicians can use the term in conversation... probably because they seldom think about what they are really saying.

If they start using the T word, we are in very deep trouble