Tag Archives: north sea oil

Stacy Summary:  Why don’t the Brits just grow some more?  All kidding aside . . . for the past 4 years on Resonance, Max and I have been pointing out that oil has played a much bigger role in UK economy than its finance sector.

• North Sea oil collapse drags UK economy down with it
  

The result is that while we are apt to attribute the sudden spurt in Britain’s prosperity in the mid- to late-1980s to a deregulated and reinvigorated City, it owed far more to the massive windfall from the North Sea. Take a look at the numbers. In 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, the amount Britain owed, as a nation, was £88.6 billion. In the subsequent six years, taxes from the North Sea (which had been pretty much non-existent previously) generated an incredible £52.4 billion.

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