I stumbled across a fantastic website illustrating every countries exports, down to the finest of details.

It is a website titled “the Observatory of Economic Complexity”, here is the homepage of this site.

Here is a snippet from their “About” page…

The Observatory of Economic Complexity is a tool that allows users to quickly compose a visual narrative about countries and the products they exchange. It was Alexander Simoes’ Master Thesis in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab.

The project was conducted at The MIT Media Lab Macro Connections group (now Collective Learning). Alex’s Advisor was César A. Hidalgo, principal investigator of Macro Connections. Since its creation in 2010, the development of The Observatory of Economic Complexity has been supported by The MIT Media Lab consortia for undirected research.

For a history of the contributions to The Observatory of Economic Complexity, you can view the project’s contributions timeline on Github. A predecessor of the Observatory of Economic Complexity is the product space site, built by César Hidalgo as a graduate student at Notre Dame in 2007.

If you would like more info on the OEC or to create a similar site for your country, state, or city, get in touch with us at oec@media.mit.edu.

Anyway, battering on. Here is a screen grab of the UK export figures for 2017. (note that yo can scroll very far back)

Now, for those of you who know me, I like numbers. I like comparing the numbers we are told exist by the UK Government and the unionists that support their numeracy skills, and the numbers that reflect reality.

Here are a couple of snippets of those numbers related to Whisky, Gas and Oil.

I could sit for days and look through them all, but I’ll leave that for others if they so choose.

Oil accounted for 40% of the UKs entire Mineral Product exports for 2015 (£26,170,000,000). Thats an EXPORT value of £10,468,000,000. According to GERS in 2015/16, it was only £60,000,000. Scotland has 90% of UK oil. Where is the missing £9,367,200,000?

Whisky accounted for 34% of the UKs entire Foodstuffs exports for 2017 (£15,120,000,000). Thats a whisky value of £5,140,800,000. According to HMRC, with a 7.8% rise from 2017 to 2018 say its only worth £4,700,000,000. Where is the missing £840,092,000?

Gas accounted for 16% of the UKs entire Mineral Product exports for 2015 (£26,170,000,000). Thats an EXPORT value of £4,187,200,000. According to GERS in 2015/16, it was only £60,000,000. Scotland has 60% of UK Gas. Where is the missing £2,512,200,000?

That’s £12,719,492,000 missing from Scottish Export income.

And that’s only for 2017 (Whisky) and 2015 (Oil and Gas). That’s not including all other exports across all other years.

Where has it gone?

Where are Scotlands missing billions?

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Oil Source

Whisky Source

Gas Source