As the Burns supper season approaches, it seems apt that this report on Scotland’s national drink has just been published.
It shows that the sector creates £7.1bn annually, which means that Scotch Whisky represents 26.1% of all UK food and drink exports, and 2% of all exports, full stop. And creates 66k jobs, 41k of which are in Scotland. Only energy creates more wealth. The 7.1bn figure is for the UK, but 5.3bn is created in Scotland. So 9% of the population creates 80% of the wealth in the sector. 90% of the malting barley needed to make the stuff is grown right here. We export forty bottles a second. It’s hugely popular across the world, and it can never run out. These are the Scotch Whisky Association’s own figures, by the way. It’s a colossal income stream that the treasury can ill-afford to lose, particularly in a post-Brexit economic contraction.
It’s a curious situation when we’re told that we’re too wee, poor and daft to go our own way by a government that simultaneously is desperate to stop us from leaving. If we’re such an economic basket-case and financial drain, wouldn’t they be better shot of us?
You get the picture. You whiles wonder why they’re so desperate to keep us….
I wonder if any of this informed the bard when he exclaimed:
“I have often said to myself what are the boasted advantages which my country reaps from a certain Union that counterbalance the annihilation of her Independence, and even her very name!”
Slainte, everybody 
