We came across a very interesting fact this week. The UK is very close to setting a new record of a billion hours worked in a week.
According to Wikipedia - previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is no longer the case, and the word has been used unambiguously to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for some time.
Back in the dark days of 2008 the economy plunged from 950,000,000 to 910,000,000 hours worked and is currently 997,000,000 and climbing.
We must thank the Bob Watson and the Office of National Statistics for that little nugget. Great pub quiz material if nothing else.
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