Does Britain still lead the world in anything?

Paul Hider, by email

While Britons have pioneered all sorts of things from the steam engine and the computer to passenger jets and rugby football, we have dismally failed to maintain world dominance in much at all that we can be proud of.
One problem is the size of Britain. Our population is too small to compete with the likes of the US in rankings based on sheer numbers of, say, Nobel Prizes. On the other hand, we’re too big a country to beat tiny nations like Luxembourg on per capita rankings of, say, numbers of patented inventions granted per year.
What’s left isn’t very impressive: we’re the world’s biggest arms producer and the largest importer of wine, the biggest consumer of fast food (yes, really) and the most monitored people on the planet, with around four million CCTV cameras. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?

Submitted by Robert Matthews

the biggest consumer of fast food

Thu, 2010-04-08 12:28
Guest

Again, this must be relative. However, where in the world is the most famous burger chain growing the fastest? France !!

"we’re the world’s biggest arms producer"

Mon, 2009-08-31 22:14
Guest

What do you mean? America is much bigger.

we’re the world’s biggest arms producer

Mon, 2009-08-31 22:16
Guest

From Wikipedia -
Rank Country Spending ($b.) %GDP[3]
– World Total 1,158[4] 2.41
1 United States 528.7 3.99
2 United Kingdom 59.2 2.49

"we’re the world’s biggest arms producer"

Mon, 2009-08-31 22:18
Guest

Indeed, America are by far a bigger arms producer. What does Robert mean by his answer? It's clearly wrong.....

Perhaps 'per-person'

Wed, 2010-03-10 15:05
Guest

Perhaps Robert means that we are the world's largest arms producer given the size of our population.

i.e. We are much closer to America in terms of our arms production than our population.