Every day I pick up the papers or browse the BBC website or watch the news and I see we’re cutting millions here, spending billions there, and Greece is half a trillion in debt and frankly they all merge into a great big blur. The figures are so huge they mean nothing to me, and I guess it’s the same for the Greeks.

So I thought I’d put some of these stonking great numbers into a context I could understand.

Sit down in front of me and give me a pound coin every second. Do this for me sixty times a minute, every hour, every day, day and night, continually. After 11 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds, you will have given me one million pounds.

Don’t stop there. I like this. Please carry on at the same rate. One a second. Months go by. Years go by. Still the money comes, one per second. A generation passes. 31 years and 7 months later I would be a billion pounds better off.

And a trillion? A trillion would take 31 thousand, 546 YEARS. 31,000 years ago Neanderthal Man still had another 6,000 years to go before we wiped him out. They were thought to be cleverer than us, bigger brains, you know. They probably were. They certainly didn’t get involved in this mess.

Greece’s national debt is said to be half a trillion euros. At one euro a second, that’s going to take them 15,773 years to pay it off. The US national debt is 15.7 trillion dollars.

We appear to be living on borrowed time as well as money. Don’t hold your breath for a resolution any time soon..

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