Not me, but a Civil Servant
Working for the DTi, I didn't actually make the mistake but caught it.

Purchase order was being paid and got hung up in the system. Instead of being for 80 quid, it was for 80,000,000,000 quid.

Yep, 80 Trillion Quid nearly went out of the Governments bank account to pay a purchase order.

Can't quite imagine the company paying THAT back can you?
(thatguythere is wondering where he is, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 11:31, 8 replies)

80,000,000,000
Is eighty thousand million in British terms.

/pedant
( Kroney, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 12:04, closed)

Or
80 Billion.
(Vic Flange, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:14, closed)

80 Billion
by US reckoning. 80 thousand million by ours.

Yes, I still think in Imperial measurements, too.
( Kroney, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:48, closed)

an american billion
is 1 hundred million

so for us English (and therefore correct) people, 80 thousand million = 80 billion
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 14:58, closed)

Ah
I thought it was a thousand. Either way, Americans are rubbish and can't count. That is the important thing here.
( Kroney, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 15:12, closed)

Eh?
The Americans never thought that a billion is 100 million!
It used to be the case that a British billion was a million million and an American billion was a thousand million.

However, these days everyone uses the American billion, including the British officially.

One of those things I guess, like foreign English students speaking with American accents. Bah.
(Adamish Time of death, Fri 26 Oct 2007, 9:59, closed)

Or it could be written
$8 x 10¹⁰.

So there.

:-)
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 26 Oct 2007, 12:34, closed)

@Vipros
Thick as pigswill though they are, the Yanks have never used the term "billion" to mean 100,000,000. It's 1,000,000,000.

However, as any fule kno, one billion is actually 1,000,000,000,000.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sat 27 Oct 2007, 10:09, closed)