Guess who came thiiis close to signing off a €102k annual budget? Austria. Someone omitted 'figures in millions'
- Reference: 1590761712
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/29/austria_budget_millions/
- Source link:
Government spending in the mid-European nation came close to being capped at just €102,389.24 (£91,684.44 or $114,106.15 at current rates) until a sharp-eyed MP realised and pointed out the blunder immediately before the final vote to approve the budget.
Jan Krainer, of the country's Social Democrats party, [1]spotted that a key table in the proposed budget bill lacked the words "figures in millions", meaning Austria's government would have had annual spending powers just large enough to buy two new Mercedes-Benz cars, with enough change to provide a McDonald's burger and milkshake for each member of the parliament.
Local news site Puls 24 [2]reported : "After Krainer's speech, part of the plenary [parliamentary session] turned into a kind of football stadium, the other opposition parties also enjoyed the alleged lapses," adding that Krainer's Social Democrat colleagues were "hooting" from their benches.
Another local MP posted a snippet on Twitter that appeared to be the offending table in question.
Da vergisst [3]@Gernot_Bluemel doch glatt, die Millionen zu erwähnen und beschließt ein [4]#Budget in Cent. Was machen Sie eigentlich beruflich, Herr Finanzminister? [5]pic.twitter.com/7lXD3UowgG — Karin Doppelbauer (@DoppelbauerK) [6]May 28, 2020
"What do you actually do for a living, minister of finance?" jeered Karin Doppelbauer of the left-liberal NEOS party.
As for Krainer, a verified Twitter account in his name [7]tweeted last night, (in response to the question "What's the best thing you said to someone today?"), "In Ihrem Budget fehlen sechs Nullen." Roughly translated? "There are six zeros missing from your budget." ®
[1] https://twitter.com/KrainerJan/status/1266103920268644362
[2] https://www.puls24.at/news/politik/abstimmung-im-nationalrat-ueber-corona-budget-wegen-fehlerhaftem-antrag-gestoppt/205592
[3] https://twitter.com/Gernot_Bluemel?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://twitter.com/hashtag/Budget?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://t.co/7lXD3UowgG
[6] https://twitter.com/DoppelbauerK/status/1266047697158647813?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[7] https://twitter.com/KrainerJan/status/1266103920268644362
Re: They came this close . .
True, but it's a good (humorous and harmless) example of why legislation really does need to be properly scrutinised.
Imagine if the error had given them too much money.
Or if it was a law that set penalties that allowed for imprisonment for a set period of time.
the key words "figures in billions"
I assume the actual wording never mentioned "billions" as our billions are their "Milliarden" and their "Billionen" are our trillions. :-)
Re: the key words "figures in billions"
Well that's befuddled my head for the afternoon. Time for a lie down.
Re: the key words "figures in billions"
Milliarden is German for Billion
Bilionen is German for Trillion.
British English was changed in 1974 to be the same as US English in this respect.
Re: the key words "figures in billions"
British English was changed in 1974 to be the same as US English in this respect.
Ok... seriously? What's next, changing the gallon to be a mere 3.8 litres?
Re: the key words "figures in billions"
"What's next, changing the gallon to be a mere 3.8 litres?"
You mean changing it back to 3.8l? English measures changed over time. US ones were crystallized at a point in time, using the Queen Anne 1706 gallon of 231 cubic inches. In the 19th century Britain redefined the gallon to be more capacious (but complicated, roughly 277.274 cubic inches, and based on distilled water at specific air pressure and temperature), and then only in 1976 was it standardized as 277.4194 cubic inches.
Re: the key words "figures in billions"
"British English was changed in 1974"
That's weirdly specific. Since there is no Academie Francaise for British English, in what sense was it changed, and who changed it? I agree that one billion is now a thousand million, but even when I was a child (and I was born after 1974) there was confusion over what a billion meant.
saw a program, about building planes...one of the new Airbus? (have not currently googled the details)...France's software ran in one unit (inches or cm), Germany's software ran in the other. it went right thro to the end, meant miles of cabling around the aircraft was the wrong size/didn't fit. cost so much to rectify & rebuild, the commercial version of the aircraft had to be ditched (pun not intended).
It becomes even more confusing when a unit of measurement has two different meanings. Such as an Imperial gallon and a US gallon.
Or, for that matter, a megabyte being either 1000000 bytes or 1048576 bytes depending on what sounds better to marketing.
Mixing up units?
I'd think that scientists and engineers in both countries use(d) SI notation as that has been the default long before I even started to study chemistry (and that was about 2500 years ago, I think).
Rather, my suspicion is that there was perhaps too much wine (on the French side) or beer (on the German side) sloshing around. Or both, of course.
There have been a few cockups of epic proportions due to different units. Seems one of the space craft to Mars (if I remember right) had that problem and reduced itself to component parts on landing/impact.
That was Lockheed Martin IIRC. They were working in Imperial measurements and everyone else had moved to metric.
"saw a program, about building planes...one of the new Airbus? (have not currently googled the details)...France's software ran in one unit (inches or cm), Germany's software ran in the other."
I'd be highly surprised if it were, both countries having used the metric system for over a century. That seems like more of a US thing. So my guess would be Boeing. You know, because they haven't cocked up enough recently.
Edit: I've looked for a few minutes. Either my Google-fu is lacking or this didn't happen.
They came this close . .
to defining a law to enable them to change a budget after having voted it.
Come now, this was a clerical error and, had they voted the thing as is, they would have just voted a change. It makes for a great article, but honestly it would not have condemned an entire government to a budget of a Mercedes or two.