When someone on the news starts talking in billions, my brain goes funny, does not compute and I have to translate the figure into real world bits and pieces.
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Here are some of the things you could buy for £6 billion, the estimated cost to the country of the Royal Wedding:
A Boris bike for everyone in London; a new football stadium for Tottenham, West Ham and, with the change, every other major football club in London; 60,000 new homes; 100 new schools, 10 new hospitals; three new nuclear submarines, a Mars bar for every mouth (human) in the world; Colonel Gaddafi’s secret pile of gold; 1,000 bionic men (1975 prices), or the whole annual UK overseas aid budget.
You’d even get close to paying off the annual City of London bonus pool, but would need to find an extra one billion quid for the poor bankers. Poor Will and Kate, too. Good luck to them, but no one should have to get married with that kind of pressure on their heads.
