289 billion spent on this. 400 billion spent on that. When money reaches this level it literally becomes mind- boggling.
Yet these figures are regularly issued by the government - and the media - as if they are self-evident facts that everyone understands.
Frustrated by this, I created The Billion Pound-O-Gram. It's a cousin of the Billion Dollar-O-Gram.
In this version, I've mixed up of 2008/09 figures from the Treasury and the Guardian. Visualising the numbers like this puts them in visual context, making them easier to relate to.
I was pretty shocked by the size of the UK budget deficit - essentially the country's overdraft. It's more than an entire year's worth of income tax.
Seeing the scale of it made me wonder about the various measures suggested by the political parties for plugging that gap.
This is how they look.
Looks like we'll be paying that off for many years to come.
As ever, you can read and check my data in this Google Spreadsheet.
I'd like to keep expanding and growing The Billion Pound-O-Gram. So if you come across any billion pound sums worth popping in the image, please comment below or email informationisbeautiful [at] gmail. Please include a link to the source of the information. Thank you.
Additional research: Alexia Wdowski
About David McCandless
David McCandless, writer and visual data journalist, runs the blog Information Is Beautiful
His book of infographics and data visualisations, The Visual Miscellaneumis out in the US now, and in February in the UK
Can you do something with this data?
Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk
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