Philip Thornton (Extracted from "Brain drain from UK is 'worst in the world' " , The Independent, 25 October 2005)

"Britain has lost more skilled workers to the global "brain drain" than any other country, according to a report by the World Bank. More than 1.44 million graduates have left the UK to look for more highly paid jobs in countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia. That far outweighs 1.26 million immigrant graduates in the UK, leaving a net "brain loss" of some 200,000 people."

[Ed: It is impossible to draw up a realistic balance sheet of the quality of brains that are coming and (mostly) leaving the UK. But, as always in history, economic prosperity has followed the discoveries of very rare "super-brains", usually working in small groups, who either find themselves in propitious circumstances or when individuals seek one another out for reasons of intellectual excitement rather than immediate income. On this basis who can tell what is really happening in the modern world? I suspect that the real brain drain is occurring in what is now the most complex and exciting of all scientific disciplines -- genetics and future stem cell technologies. And here there are already a few signs that the "super-brain" groups are already to be found in Singapore, South Korea and China.]