What happened to the British billion?

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I know that an American billion has one less zero than the British billion so an American billion is one thousand million whereas a British billion is one million million. The gripe I have is that it appears that we have now adopted the American billion here in Britain. This has only been recently. Upon watching a news programme, there was an amount of money in Great British Pounds which said so many thousand million. Now, if the amount had been in US Dollars, that would have been ok but it wasn't and the newsreader say billions when that is not what it was. Some people might think this is silly but I think that we are already Americanised enough without adding this to it. It only confuses people. There are one million millions in a British billion. So, what has happened to the British billion? Should we have to change because it's different in America? I'm not going to start calling nappies diapers and biscuits cookies so I will not be referring to one thousand million as one billion.