The Billion Pound o Gram

Friday, November 27th, 2009

My latest visual piece for The Guardian, The Billion Pound O Gram, is a British cousin of The Billion Dollar Gram. It reveals the scale of the budget deficit in the centre of the British economy. SPOILER: It’s a big one..

Link to the Guardian piece.

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  • http://logictutorial.com Russell Johnston

    Breathtakingly good. So worthwhile. Now could you do one mixing in the cost per year of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, smoking, alcohol, drugs… ? Pretty please?

  • http://flinstones.com Lee

    Hi. I didn’t see any box for payments to the EU ?
    UK is a net contributer (unlike a net recipient e.g., Spain), so what is the cost?

    Everyone talks about what we pay to the EU… so what is it?

    Superb graph by the way.

  • http://www.zoombits.co.uk/christmas-gifts gifts for men

    It’s time to put them into perspective The billion-pound-o-gram by David McCandless. Click on graphic for bigger image 289 billion spent on this. 400 billion spent on that. When money reaches this level it literally becomes mind- boggling…..

  • David Leslie

    I find this visualisation to be amazingly effective. My immediate focus is on Trident, which is so close to the National Debt – is that per annum ? It is so unfashionable to be in favour of the EU, but now is the time for us to offer Trident to Europe as Europe’s own submarine defence deterrent. I don’t know how we work out the ‘button’ is it all 27 countries that have to ‘fire’, or just the majority, and is that majority by population ? The protocol is horrendous, but the threat is real. If Korea and Iran are capable of sending missiles to Europe, then we need a defence that is real. And Britain can no longer afford that on it’s own, as you so clearly show.

  • Jason

    Notice there is no reference to PFI debt on here (which is generally kept off the balance sheets, so perhaps unsurprising…). Current estimates are that it runs to 215bn more debty goodness.

    http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/04/07/the-biggest-weirdest-rip-off-yet/

  • ian

    As was pointed out in the comments on the Guardian’s page, some of the data is incorrect and the boxes are not consistently sized. The overall effect is misleading.

    It actually made me quite angry to see such sloppy work published alongside slogans like ‘information is beautiful’ and ‘data is sacred’.

  • http://www.bitsfortheboat.com ropes

    Interesting diagram – it shows, for instance, that the ‘asset purchase and lending’ aspect of the bank bailout, which accounts less than half of the total cost, cost more than the entire personal wealth of the UK!!! We are truly up the creek.

    Some of the wording is also interesting: personal wealth comes under the category of ‘hoarding’ – a word that has strong pejorative connotations. If, after all that’s happened in the past two years, we still believe that ‘debt = good; savings = hoarding”, then there is no hope for any of us!

  • http://www.escapestudios.com/blog/tag/maya-tutorials/ maya tutorials

    Interesting diagram – it shows, for instance, that the ‘asset purchase and lending’ aspect of the bank bailout, which accounts less than half of the total cost, cost more than the entire personal wealth of the UK!!! We are truly up the creek.

  • http://www.greetsiel-feriendomizil.de reiner

    Breathtakingly good.

  • http://www.laminareifen.de/ Linda

    Great post!

    I like this blog so much!

    Linda

  • http://www.wandtattoo-sticker.de/ Stephan

    I líke it too! Geat ideas.