Now don't get me wrong - I love Britain. Of the three short holidays I will take this year, two will be spent here. I love the landscape. I love the history. I take delight in the infinite variety of the people that live here, either by accident of birth or by choice. I even quite like the unpredictable weather - something I realise I take for granted when my colleague told me they had missed the changing of the seasons.
There are things I don't like, too, of course - the expense and discomfort of my commute is a constant bugbear, our tax system is faintly ludicrous and although I am lucky enough to have bought a house long enough ago to be sitting on a reasonable chunk of equity, I lament the tribulations of my friends and colleagues who remain at the mercy of an unfriendly rental market, unable to afford to clamber on to the first rung of the property ladder. As Stephen Wilmot argues in this week's property matters, that wouldn't be such a bad thing were our attitudes to renting even half as enlightened as some of our European neighbours.
So I do understand why so many think that the grass will be greener elsewhere - even though the latest GDP figures suggest the country is slowly pulling itself out of recession, you wouldn't exactly describe Blighty as a land of opportunity these days, when the only opportunities seem to involve heading, Dick Whittington style, to the capital and handing over half your salary to a Rigsby-esque landlord. A concerted effort to build new industries around the country would do more to ease that pain than the government's policy of inflating the housing market again.
Certainly, a significant number of younger people now head overseas to forge a career and many have no plans to ever come back. Many others choose to retire overseas simply to enjoy a better standard of living in later life. Of course, the dream doesn't always match the reality, frequently because simple financial considerations aren't always taken into account. This week's cover feature explains how to avoid the errors that could ruin your ex-pat dream.
While we're considering the populist view of Britain's protracted decline, it's worth turning to some research I recently received from Barclays Stockbrokers. The point it makes is that the negative sentiment towards Western economies is actually great news for investors, even if the future of global growth lies elsewhere. "We do like emerging markets longer term, and Asia is our favourite region. But don't write off the West. Tactically we like it: low and mistaken expectations are easier to beat," they argue.
That's particularly true of the UK and European bourses, where even after a decent run valuations are hardly stretched. And, as we've seen with the first rush of results season, companies continue to churn out healthy figures, in many cases because the green shoots of recovery in the UK are, finally, starting to emerge.
