I don’t mean ever. We all know that the U.K. has produced many of the worlds greatest inventions, works of art, cultural icons ect… I mean just in the last 10 years. It’s often said that the UK’s influence in the world diminishes more and more every year so I would be interested to hear what great things the U.K. has produced over the last decade?
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I would suggest the Premier League as the UK’s largest cultural export in the last decade
Retired prime ministers.
James Corden but there’s a risk he’ll come back
We’re the world’s biggest exporter of cannabis, so that must be pretty good ?
The Oxford/AZ covid vaccine? I feel like the biomedicial industry is one of the UKs strongest right?
Locally to me there was a team that made a load of breakthroughs in mitochondrial diseases too
Edit: spelling
Lagavulin and Dua Lipa’s legs
Comedy.
MasterChef
The UK is a mainly service-based economy (78% of total economic output, 47% of exports), so goods exports aren’t really front-and-centre anymore. Primarily I believe that’s Financial Services.
As far as what I would consider a good thing to export purely from a sentimental point of view, I think us Scots giving the world the gift of whisky is pretty good.
ARM processors also originate in the UK, although obviously not manufactured here and the company’s now owned by SoftBank.
This is stretching the timeframe by about a factor of 3, the World Wide Web was quite useful.
At the moment many of the weapons that are being given to the Ukrainians are British in origin (e.g. M777 howitzers, NLAW), so as much as that industry is more often than not distasteful to most people, at least they’re being put into the right hands in this instance.
Cheese.
Military arms.
Not my personal choice. However, the UK is one of the highest exporters of military arms to other countries.
Humour
Covid vaccines and related technologies, including our work DNA sequencing the many variants.
Weapons and intelligence to Ukraine.
A really good Olympics.
The usual set of films, tv, music etc.
Research & Development.
It’s the silent industry most people don’t realise exists, largely because it isn’t physical and tangible. But the UK is a major power given our size for certain areas of R&D.
The ARM low power cpu.
Drum and Bass. If that’s your cup of tea.
Ed Sheeran and Adele.
Education
The same as all the previous decades, irn bru and tunnocks caramel wafers
I’d say British TV drama has been putting on a pretty good show worldwide in the past few years! It exports all around the world and people hold it up as a benchmark of good tv a lot of the time. Bodyguard, The Crown, A Very English Scandal, and Fleabag all spring to mind just off hand
Financial services
The two paddington movies.
Graphene?
Taskmaster.
A succession of increasingly funny comedy prime ministers
An opportunity to watch the last gasps of a world spanning empire that lasted hundreds of years and oppressed countless millions.
We’re mostly providing entertainment for the rest of the world now.
Teachers, given how many of them I know personally who have left the country to teach elsewhere
Raspberry Pi. Not only British but also made in the UK now. Making a whole new generation of tinkerers and makers.
Independence days
Formula 1 industry is mostly centred around Milton Keynes, including dominant Redbull Racing
Cannabis….. look it up but the UK exports a fuck ton of cannabis for sale abroad in Canada and whatnot for medical use. British sugar turned their indoor tomato greenhouses into a weed farm for this purpose.
Henry Caville. I feel like we as a country should be paid handsomely for his existence.
Merch with the Queen on it.
Compound semiconductors. There’s a little know company in Wales supplying the world with some of the most advanced semiconductors that are made.
They are 100% UK owned and have factories in USA and Asia. Their semiconductors are used in 3D imaging applications, including Apple’s FaceID technology. They have other devices critical for 5G radio.
Originally an offshoot from Cardiff University, they are now a lot more commercial, especially since they brought in a new CEO last year. If they can holdout from a Chinese buy-out, we’ve still got a bit of British tech we can be proud of that export to the world.
Edit: The company is IQE Plc
I don’t see many of the top comments mentioning it so I’m gonna say it: video games. We make some damn fine video game companies.
Everyone knows Rockstar (GTA, Red Dead), and we have Jagex (OSRS is one of the most active MMOs on the market) and Creative Assembly (the total war guys).
There’s a whole bunch of other ones out there who have released some amazing titles too.
Technically not an export yet but Oxford company Tokamak Energy has seemingly cracked Fusion running a net generating Fusion Reaction. It’s not yet grid stable but that’s expected much faster as the hard part has been done
Our film industry. Seriously so many movies and shows are made here. It’s one of our most successful exports ever and yet the government keeps saying they want to cut arts education funding. It’s wild