I was paying tens of thousands of pounds in tax – and then your phone ends up getting stolen out of your hand in the street. What am I paying all that tax for?” Ray Amjad, 24, poses this rhetorical question from the one-bedroom apartment he’s currently renting in Japan. He’s lived there for eight months, ever since concluding that he was on a hiding to nothing in the UK.
Amjad could epitomise the so-called “brain drain” that has plagued the nation over the past year – a term referring to the mass exodus of young, talented Brits who are abandoning the UK to live abroad. A Cambridge graduate originally hailing from Manchester, Amjad secured a well-paid job after university before going travelling. But visiting other countries opened his eyes to what he saw as the failings of his native one: petty crime, train strikes, overpriced accommodation, crumbling public services and, of course, “miserable” weather.
