Britons seem to be leaving the country in record numbers.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of emigrants from the UK rose to a record 400,000 in 2006, the highest number since records began in 1991.

So what is it that drives us to want to leave?

MSN, 3 Dec

Hm, what could it be?

Because, apart from the disgustingly depressing climate; educational environments where children learn that any form of human contact is unnatural and wrong, but knives are an everyday implement of survivial; cumbersome public administrative networks so strangled by bureaucracy that the only things guaranteed to happen are massive cock-ups of the data protection or violent-killer-on-the-loose-again-oops kind, plus the obligatory annual increase in managerial salaries; a customer service culture based around money-sapping touch-tone phone calls to robots; direct mail, need I say more; environmental taxes that aren't actually used to help the environment; the teaching of teenagers that building your future on an avalanche of credit is not just acceptable, but clever; the insiduous encroachment of our civil liberties via patronising, nanny-state policies; the encouragement of a culture where common sense is not just ignored, but is disallowed; the inextricable intertwining of our national identity with the act-first, leave-the-thinking-to-the-next-administration, war-mongering policies of our 'friends'; binge-drinking for pleasure and to dull the pain; the embedding of the notion that there are no accidents, only people who owe you money, into our psyches; "news"papers full of gossip both banally true and outrageously false about people who we don't know and will never meet; work environments that foster lethargy through the encouragement of mediocrity and conformity, rather than motivation through creativity and engagement; consumers who can't cook won't cook; communities full of isolated individuals who have never met each other, and the notion of Katie Price the novelist, I can't think of any reason why anyone might want to leave.

*throws away soapbox - and promptly receives a fine for not recycling it*