Just Saying...

At the time of writing the UK debt was just over £1.8tn (trillion). £1.8tn is such a massive number that is really difficult to imagine. So when they mention it on the news it has no real perspective to it. All we know is that it sounds like a really big number.

So, in terms that make sense, how big is it really? We are all familiar with millions, for example, £1m = £1,000,000 etc but when it comes to billions and trillions then the size of the numbers get crazy. So let's make some more sense of big numbers by converting them to something that we can measure, for example, time, which will make sense later.

As you can see from the table above, large numbers get a bit crazy really fast. Who would have guessed that 1m seconds was only just over 11 days but 1bn seconds was over 31 years? Now the National Debt figures starts to look a little bit out of control.

Let's imagine for a moment that all debt interest is frozen and that we agree to pay back the £1.8tn at

• £1 per second, this will take 57,000 years. (£86,400 per day)
• £10 per second, this will take 5,700 years. (£864,000 per day)
• £100 per second, this will take 570 years. (£8.64m per day)
• £1000 per second, this will take 57 years. (£86.4m per day)

Now if you add to that the debt interest then it's obvious that the debt appears impossible to clear. At best, all we can do is service the debt to stop it rising BUT the Conservative Party have doubled the UK debt in just under 10 years without scrutiny or comment from the media. With a majority of 80 in Westminster and another 5 years in power, how much more will the Conservatives borrow in order to make it appear that Brexit has worked?

And worse yet, how much will they borrow to bribe Scotland into staying in the Union?

Andy