Posted on 12/03/2005 11:38:22 AM PST by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
Having just come to terms with writing cheques using millions of dollars, working out how many zeroes to add and being very careful about counting digits on the ends of prices before I purchase things, this week all that carefully accumulated knowledge became rather pointless.
I spent one afternoon this week listening to the Minister of Finance presenting Zimbabwe's 2006 budget. Millions were gone completely and all the figures were billions and trillions. I sort of lost the thread right near the beginning of the budget presentation when I heard the announcement that the national football team had been allocated 10 billion dollars. I already have to consult my dictionary to work out how many millions make a billion but when I tried to tap in ten billion dollars to see how much each player may get, it didn't work. My calculator has only got enough digit spaces for nine billion and after that it reverts to gobbledy gook and so I just sat in stunned open mouthed silence listening to next years budget.
It looks like the way things are going in Zimbabwe, and the speed at which they are getting there, I might not have to worry about how many zeroes to add to get billions after all. A lot of the numbers being used in the budget this week were in trillions and unless some clever cookie invents a bigger calculator, hey, I'm out! My dictionary tells me that a trillion is a million million but that until quite recently it used to be a million, million, million - either way there are just too many zeroes and my head spins in dizzy circles trying to understand it all.
It wasn't just numbers getting my head spinning this week but also quite a large number of words. The Minister of Finance announced that agriculture had declined by 12.8% in 2005 but that this would change dramatically and agriculture would increase by 14% in 2006. He said: "Government is committed to enforce utmost discipline in the agricultural sector. Any disruption of farming activities is not in the national interest and will not be tolerated." This statement was met with jeers, scornful laughter and derisive comments by MP's in the House. It comes at a time when commercial farming continues to be the most dangerous and uncertain occupation in a country where millions of people go to bed hungry every day.
In the last three months over 60 commercial farmers have been thrown off their properties; last week a commercial farmer in Harare West was murdered and a dairy farm in Beatrice which produces nine thousand litres of milk a day was besieged by none other than a High Court Judge who demanded the owners leave as this was now his farm. Nine thousand litres of milk, by the way, at last week's price, was worth 270 million dollars a day - no wonder his Honour wanted the farm! So, the Minister's stern words are painfully hollow because without political backing, enforcement at all levels from the bottom right up to the top and plain and clear instructions to Zimbabwe's police - and judges - they are mere words.
What a shame words don't fill tummies.
Zimbabwe's budget in 2007 will, by all accounts have to be in Zillions and I shudder at the thought because my dictionary doesn't define a zillion it just says it is an "indefinite large number." Oops.
Until next week, love cathy.
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Thank you for posting this.
Where is the MSM outrage?
In common usage, a trillion is a thousand billion. Money is not the only thing this lady doesn't have her head on straight about.
Not in the UK and its sphere of influence. There a billion is a million million, or 10^12, not a thousand million, or 10^9 as used here.
I said a thousand Billion, not million.
"In common usage, a trillion is a thousand billion."
Say what?
PAR35: Sorry, I missed that, you were correct.
Lancey: Yes, what they call a billion is a million million (10^12), or what we call a trillion, whereas our billion is a thousand million, or 10^9. What the Brits call a trillion (a million million million, or 10^18) we call a quintillion.
I'm not sure if the Brits have a name for a thousand million.
The author has more problems with her math than just where to put zeros; $270 million a day for 9,000 litres of milk is $30,000 per liter. Gasoline isn't even that high....
I was raised to think of a billion as being a million million and what the Yanks called a billion was, to me, a thousand million, and I suppose that Cathy has the same problem.
But it is really simpler to simply turn the handle the way it goes and think of a billion dollars as being a thousand million dollars, although I prefer a to call it a megabuck.
The same with dates. to me, the short form of dates was always day, month, year, so that December 3, 2005 would be 3-12-2005 or 3-12-05 but our proximity to the US has resulted in many Canadians using US notation while others still use Brit notation which can cause serious misunderstandings. So I now prefer to use the international notation 2005-12-03, as you can see in the datelines of the stories that I post. I have set my computer to report dates in that format.
I do still usually spell color as colour and labor as labour, however, but I am starting to bend on that one because of US spell-checkers and the fact that my local Sun Media newspaper has standardized on US spelling.
Of course, since modern computers have no problem converting back and forth between strings and numbers, the easy way to solve that dilemna is to write dates as "3 Dec 2005" or "Dec 3 2005". Actually, come to think of, since we're in this new century, writing the year in dates with two digits can also be confusing.
As to spellings, my natural inclincation is to use the ones I learned, but really is there any intrinsic value in holding onto spellings that are unintuitive? I think rationalizing (or is that rationalising?) spellings only makes sense, although where do you stop? Night=nite? Knife=nife? Would knight also get spelled as nite? The English language is a mess, though - how many different pronounciations are there of the "ough" letter strings. Cough, tough, through, bough, and for none of them does "ough" make sense phonetically.
Gasoline is definitely that high, and higher, in Zim dollars.
That is, if you can manage to hoard enough petrol to get across the border to SA or Moz to fill up your tank as there is none to be had in Zim except for Zanu PF party cadre, the police and the army.
BTW that has to be the farm gate price for milk, not the retail proce. The Zim dollar is trading at over Z$70,000.00 to US$1.00
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