"North Sea oil tax breaks mean good investment opportunities"

This is probably a good incentive, but the effects will take another 5-10 years to show up.

I am wondering what the UK, which already has the highest debt to GDP ratio of all Western countries, is going to do when the City of London starts shrinking in accordance with world wide deleveraging of the banking sector. The UK has a HUGE financial services industry, which has brought in a lot of tax revenues and has been a very important generator of employment. That sector has been and still is like a waterhead in my opinion and the UK better start investing in alternative sources of employment very fast. In that sense the oil industry is a good choice, but it may come a little late. I personally think that the UK is in a much worse shape than the Euro zone.