LIKE correspondent CT Riley (HAS, Oct 9) I am struggling to accept that the threat by Tracey Emin to go and live in France is a great loss to Britain.

This is an artist whose displays include an unmade bed and unwashed underwear, which students everywhere would do for nothing.

She is thinking of going abroad to avoid a proposed increase in the top rate of taxation to 50 per cent. This shows to Gordon Brown that if you stick around long enough you are bound to get something right.

According to media reports, other high earners unhappy at paying more tax include Premiership footballers who may have to go and play in Spain to maintain their take-home pay amounts. The country will just have to struggle along without them.

More seriously, I hope that surgeons, scientists and other useful people are not lost to the country in some modern-day version of the brain drain.

Martin Birtle, Billingham.