300,000 reasons to wonder about the world

300,000 seems to be a recurring number for the day. The first three occurrences were in today's Irish Times, the other overheard in a queue:

1) the UK is borrowing £300,000 per minute
2) Berlusconi's wife is to receive €300,000 per month in alimony
3) 300,000 people are estimated to have so far died in the conflict in Dafur
4) there are 300,000 empty houses in Ireland

£300,000 per minute! Would anybody notice if 5 seconds of every minute was siphoned into the accounts of various charities? Is it possible to spent €300,000 a month on oneself? Couldn't some of this money be redirected to sorting out the issues in Dafur? We can argue over the 300,000 empty houses figure since I'm responsible for it (and its quite strange to hear someone discussing your research), but there's little dispute that whilst the average house price used to be above €300,000 at the peak of the market in Ireland it is c.40% less now. Sometimes one has to wonder about the societies we've built. It's no wonder that crime fiction writers have a never ending supply of stories.