Britain’s brain drain damaging our economy.

[buck]

It was shown that many who leave return within a few years without the authorities realising.For example many nurses spend time in the USA for money and extra experience,but return home and resume NHS work.It is more of a brain gargle than drain.

I was a part of the brain drain in 1968, when I joined a long time friend in Montreal, he was a professional metallurgist who found work at Pratt and Whitney Canada which produces turbo prop engines. I was a royal Navy veteran with a Higher National Certificate in Electrical Engineering recruited in Britain for Radio Corporation of America also in Montreal working on Microwave radio development, spacecraft, and digital video conversion for airport displays. My friend stayed for about four years then returned to UK because his wife was homesick, and worked in Cheddar, Somerset on electricity pylons until they bought a rural post office in the West Riding. After the work ran out I joined Accuray Corporation of Columbus, Ohio working on Automation control of industrial processes, especially on paper mills. After nine years in Canada, my company asked me to go to New England, and I've been here ever since. A good 30 to 40 percent of British immigrants to Canada would return home, some to stay, some to return. We used to call it the thousand dollar cure. But in truth it was a lot more expensive than that. Buying a house in, say, Toronto was, and still is very expensive. After it was sold to go home, it would rise in value so quickly that you would not be able to afford one like it if you decded to return.

Do I ever regret leaving UK? About all I missed for a while were the pubs, especially on a Sunday lunchtime. But I quickly adapted, learned to like ice hockey, and basketball, became passionate about the Greenbay Packers, and eventually the New England Patriots. I had worked happily at Davy Ashmore but I heard later that it had folded, like most of Sheffield steel firms. So I guess I did the right thing in the end.

 

---------- Post added 24-01-2013 at 09:04 ----------

 

I remember one of those idiotic US presidental candidates saying tax cuts would make employers create jobs. How thick is it possible to get?

It comes from an 'idiotic' principle that the more money you have in your pocket instead of the government's, the more you will be able to spend on goods and services, all of which require people to create. Those are called JOBS.

[maxmaximus]

Let's say the UK needs 1,000 new nurses or plumbers, jobs that people already here won't do. But no one is emigrating. What do you do then?

 

Your problem is that the number of jobs in any particular sector goes up and down. If the number of trained people in one sector goes into short supply then the obvious solution is to increase immigration to meet it. Otherwise there'll be a continued shortage.

 

Firstly what makes you think people here won't do these jobs; bearing in mind they won't have the benefits of getting money for doing nothing.

 

Secondly there are plenty of people wanting to be nurses but for now it’s cheaper to import them rather than train them.

 

Thirdly I haven't said there can't be any immigration, just that the net result should end up at zero net immigration, which allows for people leaving and coming here providing they equal each other out.

 

---------- Post added 24-01-2013 at 15:13 ----------

 

Don't you think companies raising wages to match those abroad might help?

 

I don't think you can force companies to pay more but you can cut the tax they pay and make it more difficult to recruit cheaper labour from abroad, this should have the effect of increasing wages.

[altus]

It's a red herring, UK business leaders are just after improving the bottom line, so of course will blame whatever ills (including the brain drain) on the tax regime (as usual).

 

Which I guess is the point I was really trying to make.

 

The Telegraph had almost exactly the same article a year ago. I wonder if it will reappear again next year.

[evildrneil]

comes from an 'idiotic' principle that the more money you have in your pocket instead of the government's, the more you will be able to spend on goods and services, all of which require people to create. Those are called JOBS.

 

Nice theory - pity it doesn't work...

[buck]

Nice theory - pity it doesn't work...

It does here. We're a spendthrift nation.