Did you know, for example, that the economy of Northumbria is of about the same size as that of Zimbabwe?
London of Nigeria or South Africa or Egypt? Lancashire of Libya? Oxfordshire of Mozambique?
Now you can see it all in graphic format here.
The genesis of the project being:
…..a map of England showing a comparison of the English county economy to African country economies, showing just how small some African economies are and therefore the slight strangeness of insisting in trade barriers between African countries when we would laugh off the idea of a trade barrier between Norfolk and Suffolk.
Out of interest. Which English county’s economy would be equivalent to the country of Scotland?
Rutland was abolished, wasn’t it?
There isn’t one. Greater London is too big (obviously) and nowhere else comes close. West Midlands (with Greater Manchester close behind) seems to be the 2nd largest English county economy and that is less than half the GDP of Scotland.
On the other hand, once Wee Eck gets sent south to Westminster next year, it will completely cripple our extensive “hot air” industry, so the figures will have to be considerably revised.
As a note, the economy of Scotland, based as it is on hot air, whisky and porridge oats (with a wee bit of oil mixed in) is somewhere between the economies of Morocco and Algeria in size.
I think there are quite a lot of localist eco-freaks who would be extremely happy with trade barriers between Norfolk and Suffolk.
“we would laugh off the idea of a trade barrier between Norfolk and Suffolk”
True, but surely that is at least partly because they are two bits of the same country?
b(n)is
In a local TV programme about devolution, ISTR some pundit told a Look East interviewer that the economy of the Look East region was a bit bigger than that of Scotland.
Look East is the BBC news opt-out (“…and now, the news where you are”) covering Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Northamponshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and northern parts of Buckinghamshire.
CJ N,
And, on AJ Tate’s figures (albeit my calculation included all of Buckinghamshire) that’s about right, as long as you don’t include any offshore GDP attributable to Scotland.
£132bn for Scotland, £137bn for “Look East plus southern Bucks”.
And, as a matter of interest, the populations aren’t that different (2011 census figures). A bit under 6.2 million for LE+sB, 5.3 million for Scotland.
Correction – I’d forgotten about Luton (well, you would, wouldn’t you?) Population for LE+sB is a bit over 6.5 million – so 20% higher than for Porridge-Wog-land.
“I’d forgotten about Luton (well, you would, wouldn’t you?)”
It’s long been an idle ambition of mine to create a website called “Eight Places To Go When You’re In Luton”.
It would consist of information about Bedford, Stevenage, Hatfield, St Albans, Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Aylesbury and Milton Keynes.