An article on the BBC web site reports about a trillion, "making this number meaningful to ordinary people is a major challenge.". Odly enough they ommit the British defintion of the term trillion, meaning a million million which is not the American defintion, which is a thousand million.
Politians and media use the American definition so much its undertandable why a modestly well educated commentator may too, it's still meaningless though
more on the BBC pushing up daisy stories here.