saviour of the uk

[stokemaveric]

richard branson is worth an estimated �1.4 BILLION.i have a proposal for him that could save every single person in the uk...there are an estimated 50 million people in the uk if he gave eveyone �1million pounds that would save this country from economic gloom securing prosperity for everyone,he would be a national hero,we could rename great britain.....the richard branson islands.....and he wouldnt even be skint........

[Haggisdj]

I like your thinking...

[New Judge]

Your arithmetic is a little awry.

50 million times �1m is �50,000bn (about 35,000 times Beardie's wealth or about 100 years of government tax revenue).

He could only give each person �28 using your figures

[vehelpfulguy]

>Your arithmetic is a little awry.

No, his arithmetic is a LOT awry.

and even if you COULD find anyone to give each person in the UK 1 million pounds then all it would do would start rampant inflation.

House prices would double or treble overnight, bread would be �10 a loaf and so on.

[Buenchico]

Stokemaveric might be giving away his age with this question ;-)

When I was at school, a 'billion' was 10 to the power 12 (i.e. one million million). However, the US 'billion' was 10 to the power 9 (i.e. one thousand million). In those days, it didn't really matter what the 'true' definition was, because a 'billion' was such a large number it was never really used in things like news reports.

With inflation (and 'globalisation'), a standard definition has become necessary and (unsurprisingly) the American definition has been adopted by the media. It seems that Stokemaveric is unaware of this and is basing his calculations upon the assumption that the 'old' definition still applies.

Even so, I'm still concerned that Stokemaveric has managed to 'lose' some of the UK population. Am I, I wonder, one of the 10 million people he's ignored? ;-)
(The UK population is roughly 60 million, not 50 million!)

Chris

[kempie]

Recently released estimates of the mid-2007 UK population by country:

England - 51.1 million
Scotland - 5.1 million
Wales - 3.0 million
N. Ireland - 1.8 million

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/popest0808 .pdf

Hmmm... I wonder which 10 million are missing from the calculation ;-)

[stokemaveric]

well maybe the queen and for the sake of anglo / u.s relations maybe warren buffet and bill gates could trow in a couple of billion.....and that is just to keep the asylum seekers going...........lol

[BertiWooster]

Whatho stoke old chap
When you go and see Mr Branson - please tell him I only want 100k

Seriously though , have a read of this - not bad for a lad who had '' ... a poor acedemic performance ... ' - and started out growing christmas trees and raising budgerigars -- hey what ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson



Just quickly picking out a few interesting things -

- 360 companies

- Donating the profits of Virgin atlantic and Virgin trains
( apoprox 3 Billion ) , into research for enviromentally friendly fuels - ( doesn't that make the pain of the cost of the ticket more bearable ? )

- Virgin earth challenge

- How the name ' Virgin ' was chosen


Dont you think he should get a proper job ?

[EngTeach]

I'll get my passport and be right there!! Save me some.

[BertiWooster]

No probs Eng Teach

I'm in charge of blowing , sorry , spending the money - mind

[stokemaveric]

lol thats the spirit of things....................

[New Judge]

Just out of interest, stokemaveric, how did you estimate that the Bearded Wonder could give �1m to everybody and still not be skint?

Even if your definition of a billion is a million million as Buenchico suggests, he would still need 35 times as much cash as estimates say he has. And that is ignoring the population discrepancy.

[keyplus90]

I always thought that only I was so dull in numbers, Now I got some sort of hope...

[stokemaveric]

it was just a jokey thread..........did i say i was a mathemetician?......lighten up.........

[Lucy Thomas]

...mathematician...

[stokemaveric]

thank you lucy..............lol

[Tups]

It's good to have a friendly banter; thanks stokemaveric!