British Gas a one time state owned company, announced today that it had made just short of £1 BILLION pounds (approx $2billion) for the last six months trading, which as a company with nearly 16 million customers on its books to whom it supplies both Gas and Electricity is not surprising.
However, yesterday, in a spectacularly inept P.R move ,it announced it was hiking prices by a massive 35% on top of several other recent price rises,together with shedding staff by 8% and increasing shareholders dividends by 16%
Whilst the controversy grows how many of us know how much a billion actually is ?
The accepted version is 1,000 ,000, 000, that is 1000 x a million.
How long would it take for you to accumulate that much?
You can substitute $ sign for £ it will be the same calculations.
Well if you were given £1.00 for every second, after one minute you
would have £60, after one hour £3600, after one day, you would have £86400
( 60s x 60m x 24hr ) really nice work if you can get it.
So the first step is to get to a £1 million, just how long would that take ?
At £1.00 per second, for every second, of every minute, of every
hour, of every day, for 11 and a half days, not much sleep, but not to
bad then.
(60s x60m x 24hrs x 11.5741 days)
So if a Million takes just over a week and a half at a £1.00 per second to acquire, how much longer to get to a Billion ?
You would have to get £1.00 for every second, of every minute , of
every hour, of every day, of every week, of every month , of every YEAR for :-
31 years 8 months 8 days and a few odd seconds
( £1.000.000.000 ~ 60secs ~60mins~24hours~365.25 days, (to allow for leap years,) 30.475 days per avg month)
Which means Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson have a lot of money
for every second for this life and well into the next one, and
that, if you want to be a Billionaire, be a brilliant entrepreneur.
A British Chancellor (the guy in charge of the government finances) once lost £6billion ($12b) in about 3 hours playing in the currency exchange markets, he did not even lose his job,I suspect this was because the numbers were to big to understand
So the next time a politician proposes a project that only costs "a couple
of billion "you will know how much that actually is, and you might want to let them know
How would you spend a billion ?
Any ideas on how to get a billion ? anything legal considered
The best or most original reply will get a billion electrons of free software