Littlejohn makes up some figures

A small point on last Friday's Littlejohn column. During his latest diatribe about Gordon Brown selling gold, something he has mentioned at least eight times in the last year and a half, he wrote:

He flogged off our gold at car-boot sale prices a few years ago. With the price nudging $1,000 an ounce, if he'd waited he could have paid off the national debt several times over.

Firstly, the BBC's Robert Peston says:

the gold loss is spilt milk – and, as any great investor will tell you, it’s fatuous to weep over it.

Dictionary definition of fatuous:

Foolish or silly, especially in a smug or self-satisfied way

Which clearly doesn't apply to Littlejohn. At all.

Secondly, the impression Littlejohn has consistently given is that all gold reserves were sold, rather than just over half.

Thirdly, the national debt currently stands at £800 billion.

The price of gold when Brown held the sales was $275.6 an ounce and made $3.5 billion. If the price is now close to $1,000 an ounce, a sale now of the same amount would raise around $12.6 billion.

Which is around £7.9 billion.

Which isn't quite £800 billion once. Let alone several times over.