The True Meaning of a Row of Noughts

The global financial crisis (yes, we're still in an acute state, even if the banks have moved on) has left this country in debt to the tune of £176 billion. That's using the European interpretation of a billion which is a million million. To write that figure with all of its digits lined up, it looks like this, £176,000,000,000,000. Trouble is, when we type out a row of zeros that long, we tend to lose any sense of its significance. We glaze over the noughts and fail, utterly, to grasp the quantities involved. What does a million really mean, let alone a million million, or a billion, or even a trillion? These are figures way outside our arena of reckoning. They're numbers, yet they don't make sense.

A great explanation, comes from John Lancaster in his excellent book demystifying the credit crunch, Whoops.
Mr Lancaster draws on mathematician John Allen Paulos' illustration, inviting us first to guess how long a million seconds is - the answer is 12 days. Now, with that knowledge, try and guess how long a billion seconds is. I hope you're sitting down because the answer is almost 32 years. The purpose of such mental teasing, of course, is to appreciate the difference between a million and a billion.

These two straightforward sums give us an inkling of just how long a term stretches ahead of us before we, as a nation, can pay off this massive and painful debt.

So, as election fever covers Blighty, we observe the less than edifying spectacle of the three main parties tumbling over themselves to explain to the electorate exactly how they are going to make us pay it all back. Whichever way they cut it, the sum speaks for itself. And to balance the books, each household in the UK would need to cough up £56,000.

We must be ever watchful for increases in taxes and cuts in public spending. We must also watch our backs against stealth taxes: and none more so than the British expat. If there's no party canvassing for your vote, you can rest assured there are no politicians looking out for your interests. But you can also be sure, whoever forms the next government, their aparatchiks will weigh your value in terms of potential tax revenue.

We've been hearing a lot recently about how HM Revenue & Customs has been changing the rules governing residency although it has yet to set out proposed changes in a new rule book. All of which makes it very difficult for expats to ascertain, and so plan for, any tax charges that may be made on overseas income or, indeed, on income drawn, whilst overseas, from a UK source.

Situations such as these suit politicians down to the ground, because if they need to top up any empty coffer with tax from hitherto unsought quarters then a couple of million expats, with a question mark over their tax status, will do nicely. To find out more about HMRC's seeming reluctance to lay down clear rules, listen to Ronnie Ludwig as he spells out the implications for expats on www.expatmoneychannel.com/node/1167

And for those of you out there who don't want to miss your chance to vote, visit www.aboutmyvote.co.uk - it's the site of the independent UK elections' watchdog, The Electoral Commission.