How big is a billion? Peter Rhodes on hirsute royals and the truth about home ownership

EXPECT more of the same. The US and UK are two nations divided by a common language. The Yanks also have a strange approach to names. On a trip to Texas in the 1980s, I had great difficulty convincing our hosts that no-one in England ever referred to the Prince of Wales and his wife as Chuck and Di.

THERE is a myth among millennials that once you are on the housing ladder all your troubles end. So it was illuminating to come across a column a few days ago by a first-time buyer who admits: "When it’s your name on the mortgage, the buck stops with you . . . you’ll never have any money ever again." There followed a bleak tale of things going wrong and a dodgy tradesman relieving him of £1,000. That's how it is, kids. Owning your own place brings some security but much expense, and the words 'the landlord will sort it out' vanish like a comfort blanket chucked in a bin.

YOU can get away with being paid £486,000 a year if you work in a bank or stock exchange where everybody else earns £486,000. You will stride together in one vast, elevated herd, like giraffes on the savannah. However, if you are earning £486,000 and everyone around you earns a tiny fraction of that amount, you become like one isolated giraffe in a herd of snappy little mongooses (mongeese?). Eventually, the little creatures will gang up on you, bite your ankles and bring you crashing down. Dame Glynis Breakwell has quit as vice-chancellor at the University of Bath. Her downfall is an object lesson in the awesome power of free speech, a free press, natural justice and, above all, envy. I predict a sudden drop in the number of vice-chancellors asking for a wage rise.

BUT don't shed too many tears. Breakwell is not resigning in the sense that you or I might understand the word. She will not stand down until next August and will then spend the following six months on what you and I call a paid holiday but academia calls a sabbatical.

THE Government was apparently surprised at the initial lack of outrage about Britain having to pay £50 billion or so to leave the EU. I suspect this is because many years of indifferent education have created a nation which doesn't really know what 50 billion is. Adding to the confusion is the fact that many older folk were taught in their schooldays that a billion was a million million. So own up. Is 50 billion 50,000,000,000, 50,000,000 or 50,000,000,000,000? And how many million zeros can you get on the side of a bus?

THOSE of us who never buy new cars may wonder how the second-hand market for electric cars might work. My eye was caught this week by an advert for used electric cars from £7,000. But under this scheme you never own the battery. You have to hire it for more than £50 a month, which is frankly a bit of a shock.