Visual Awareness

The European Debt Crisis, Unfolded

The European financial debt crisis visualised using Debt-to-GDP as the primary indicator of the health of an economy. This visualisation was featured in The Guardian Datablog and was shortlisted for the "Money Panics" challenge on the Information Is Beautiful Awards website.

Personal Thoughts

Although it is no surprise that Greece, Ireland and Portugal are among the countries with the highest Debt-to-GDP ratio, what is slightly worrying is that Italy is also way up there. With an economy approximately 10 times larger than that of Ireland, Italy defaulting could mean disaster for the European Union as they would simply be too large to bail out.

UNESCO Vote Results

On the 31st of October 2011 the UNESCO General Conference voted on whether to admit Palestine as a Member State. Although the number of votes was published, it was difficult to get an idea of the distribution of votes. This infographic attempts to give an insight into where the votes came from.

Personal Thoughts

I find it particularly interesting that although Asia, Africa and South America voted clearly in favour of Palestinian membership, Europe seemed quite indecisive with the majority of countries abstaining from the vote. The United States, which has veto power at the UN Security Council, has announced that it will cut funding to UNESCO, which accounts for about a fifth of the organisation's annual budget (source: www.bbc.co.uk).