Woolf
That
used to be how it was in the UK. But the US uses billion for the nineth power of ten (1,000,000,000) and trillion for the 12th power (1,000,000,000,000) and the cultural superiority
of the US has resulted in the UK starting to use US nomenclature. So when Gordon Brown plans on spending a billion pounds, he's being less generous than he might be!