Features

Overworked underpaid Britons migrating in numbers

Published

3 years ago

2022/12/4

by Eir Nolsoe

Feelings of being overworked and underpaid prompted Rachel James, 29, and her partner to leave their jobs as doctors in the NHS to move to Australia. Two years later, the couple have no plans of returning.

“The pay is between double and triple what we would get in the UK,” Rachel (not her real name) says. She lives in Cooktown, a coastal town a four-hour drive north of Cairns. They enjoy free accommodation because the Australian health service offers incentives to people to work in rural areas.

The biggest difference is in the quality of life. Unlike in the British health service, the couple’s work rotas are linked so they can have days off together.

“In the UK, when I was working as a doctor I struggled a lot in my foundation years with anxiety. I did mindfulness. I did exercise. I saw my GP. Nothing has ever done more for my mental health than having money left over in my bank account at the end of the month and being able to spend time with my partner,” she says.

Rachel and her partner are among thousands of UK medical graduates who leave to go abroad every year. While this type of brain drain has typically been limited to specific occupations, life in the UK is about to get tougher for young people across the board.Real incomes are falling, taxes are rising and buying a home or starting a family is getting increasingly unaffordable. Scores of highly skilled workers – many of whom are already working remotely – may soon wonder whether they too would be better off somewhere else.

The political and economic turmoil of the past months has filled newspaper columns with comparisons of the UK and Italy.The Economist magazine controversially ran a front page saying “Welcome to Britaly” with short-lived prime minister Liz Truss pictured as a British-Italian mash-up of the Statue of Liberty. The magazine said that both countries shared “terminable political drama, economic stagnation and nervous bond markets”.

But one feature of countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, whose economies were badly wounded after the financial crisis, is just how many of their young can be found in Britain and elsewhere. The number of Italians and Spaniards in the UK more than trebled in the decade or so after the financial crisis, while Greeks more than doubled.

The UK is expected to suffer the highest inflation and the deepest recession among the G7 countries, according to the OECD. Real incomes are predicted to fall by a record 7pc over the next two years, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Pensioners will however not feel the same hit, as the Government has decided to honour the triple lock and uprate state pensions in line with double-digit inflation.

In many ways, life in Britain will likely get more difficult. Working people will have to pay higher taxes to fund services for a growing elderly population, as the labour force is shrinking. But young people were already dealt a bad hand, with low growth and high house prices putting milestones such as owning a home and starting a family out of reach.But will it get bad enough to send Britain’s best and brightest abroad in search of a better life?

A mass exodus

The answer is not straightforward – and there’s little consensus among experts. In certain industries, the UK is already experiencing a brain drain. Some analysts say that global labour shortages and the rise of remote working mean that this phenomenon could spread more widely among highly skilled workers.

The trend has so far been most pronounced in healthcare, which is known to have a highly mobile workforce. Falling real pay and worse working conditions than in other wealthy countries mean it has been an issue for several years, according to experts.

Figures from the General Medical Council show that nearly 10,000 doctors left the UK medical workforce last year. Previous analysis indicates that around half plan to move overseas, the GMC said.

“Brain drain is a nice term but it’s more than that. It’s an exodus, a mass exodus of not just doctors but healthcare professionals,” says Dr Latifa Patel, representative body chair of the British Medical Association and a junior doctor herself.

“If you put it in the context of what we’re lacking in the NHS at the moment, it’s even more worrying. NHS England alone has 132,000 unfilled vacancies. Between 10 and 15,000 of those are doctors,” she says.

According to Patel, doctors typically emigrate to other English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada. Their pay has fallen by 30pc in real terms since the financial crisis, she says.It’s not just about money though, she says. The workload and quality of life are possibly even more important. This is echoed by Rachel James’ experience who left for Australia.

“If I had thought [the NHS] would change in any reasonable time frame, we wouldn’t have made the decision to be here,” she says.

There is a lot of research on immigrants to the UK but what do we know about the ones who leave? “Not a huge amount to be honest,” says Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory.

“We don’t know that much about who they are or what they’re doing when they’re overseas. We have some figures from the US and Australian visa data, for example, showing that a fair number go to other English-speaking countries,” she says.

The image of UK emigration mainly being made up of retirees swapping Manchester for Mallorca is incorrect, according to Sumption. It’s much more likely to be young people with few responsibilities and ties going elsewhere. While there are some visa schemes for unskilled labour, many leaving are likely to be highly skilled to qualify for immigration rights.

Overseas opportunities

UK emigres show up in immigration data in other countries but research on them is sparse and little is known about their overall skill level. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that some 90,000 Brits left the country in the year ending in June 2022. There is no information about how many of them leave for job opportunities.Separate data going back to the start of the 90s shows that every year more Britons leave than come back. Figures from the last three months of 2019 – meaning the latest available data not potentially distorted by pandemic trends – shows that 138,000 UK nationals left while 78,000 arrived. This is common according to Sumption – most countries see a net outward flow of their own citizens.

The UK experienced a period of almost continuous net emigration between 1964 and 1983. But rising flows of arrivals from other countries mean the UK has since benefitted from brain gain rather than drain. The limited data means that it’s difficult to know how many highly skilled workers leave.Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, says in his experience the flight of young people abroad has not yet become a big trend but warns that working from home has made many more conscious of overseas opportunities.

“The nature of the labour market has become much more global post-pandemic,” he says, “because when everybody was locked down it didn’t matter if you were in Manchester or Malaga – it was still possible to do many jobs from anywhere.

“So I do think it’s really important to remember… that the world is not going to wait for Britain to sort itself out. The UK has great strengths but we need to be aware that skills shortages are a global issue and other countries are looking at our talent as well.”

This has been the case for freelance designer Elise, who decided to pack up her life in London this summer to move to Lisbon. At the age of 32, felt she was done with living in shared flats but couldn’t afford other options. Despite having a successful career, homeownership was still firmly out of reach.

“I have come to terms with the fact that I don’t feel like I’ve ever really be able to buy my own house. I’m also at a point where I don’t really want to do like shared living anymore and rent is going up. So I felt like I might as well move somewhere else,” Elise, who prefers not to use her full name, says.

After testing it out for a few months, she is now back in the UK while waiting for a two-year visa so she can move permanently. She was already working remotely in the UK.

“There’s no time difference so I didn’t have to tell my clients or change anything about the way I worked. I can just transport it over there quite smoothly. Obviously with the visa comes a whole other kind of tax that I need to look into as I’ll be living there. But from what I’ve heard, it’s fairly straightforward,” she says.During her first months in Lisbon, she was staying in co-living spaces where digital nomads like her have access to a workspace and can socialise together.

“It’s really great because you just meet lots of people who are doing the exact same thing. Everyone was pretty much around the same age group. It was a good way to meet people and feel a little bit of a sense of community with it,” she says.

Sluggish growth

Experts disagree on how likely the UK is to suffer a brain drain of highly skilled workers. Many say people tempted to leave face too many obstacles for a large-scale exodus to happen.

“If you want to go let’s say to another English-speaking country, the US or Canada or Australia, you have to get a visa. You can’t just say oh, I’d like to move. You’d have to get a job offer, for example. Those are quite considerable barriers,” says Alan Manning, an economist specialising in migration.

While the UK is expected to experience a deeper recession than its peers, vacancies are still near record levels. Research on emigration is sparse, but a report by the Home Office from 2012 found that there is an “inverse association” between British emigration and unemployment.

“In general, as UK unemployment falls, more British people emigrate and when unemployment in the UK is high, fewer British people emigrate,” it says. The report’s authors suggested that while it might sound counter-intuitive it was because employed people have more resources to move abroad.

This is particularly pertinent for this downturn, which is characterised by a highly unusual combination of labour shortages and recession. Many other wealthy countries are also experiencing worker shortages. This means that people in the UK are in a better position to leave than during previous recessions. This will particularly benefit people with good skills. Brexit has made it more difficult to emigrate without a job offer or a particular skill set.

“I think there are two conflicting things. One is the economic fundamentals of the UK as a place to be a highly skilled worker are very strong. So particularly in London, but also Manchester and Birmingham,” says Adam Hawksbee, director of centre-right think tank Onward. On the other hand, he says, the failure to build more houses and lab space around cities means many workers and entrepreneurs are priced out.

“We need to see more from the Government on what their offer is to young people and young families. Because unless they’re very clear that they want them to stay in the UK to engage in the workforce, they’ll be looking elsewhere for other countries which are much more positive about the contribution they can provide.”

The UK’s weak productivity and sluggish growth mean young people have enjoyed much less prosperity than their parents did at the same age. From the mid-1950s until before the financial crisis, real incomes grew by 2pc a year on average. The recession is expected to cause a 7pc fall over the next two years, effectively wiping out 10 years of growth and bringing incomes back to 2013 levels. If the forecasts are correct, incomes will only have grown by 0.5pc annually in the two decades to 2028.

“Pay progression among cohorts has stalled for those born after 1980. So each five-year birth cohort before 1980 earned more than the cohort that came before them. There’s not been very much pay progression at all for those born after 1980, which are the millennials,” says Molly Broome, an economist at the Resolution Foundation.

The stagnation in incomes and growth has not been reflected in house prices. As successive governments have failed to ensure enough homes were built and central banks have inflated asset prices through quantitative easing, prices have soared.

Close to half of 25- to 34-year-olds owned their own home in the late 1970s to early 1990s. Today this figure has dropped below 30pc. This does not reflect a change in preference: around 80pc of young renters say they want to own a home, a figure which has remained stable over many years. First-time buyers today face property prices 5.9 times their annual salary, Nationwide data shows. This is up from 2.7 in 1983. In London, the ratio is even higher at 9.6, rising from 3.7.

Punishing tax burden

Liz Truss’ fateful mini-Budget also pulled the housing ladder further out of reach for many young people, after mortgage rates soared. As a result, thousands of people have been locked into renting for longer, while demand was already well above last year’s levels in every region and country of Great Britain. Rents for new tenancies are at record highs, increasing 16pc in London in the year to October and 3.2pc in the rest of the country, Rightmove data shows.

“The base of voters [for the Conservative Party] is elderly homeowners who have very few incentives to be compassionate to the young wanting new homes built near them. This is extra central for the Tories. If they don’t create homeowners there isn’t really much of a party left,” says Robert Colvile, the director of right-leaning think tank CPS.

While he believes that the UK still has a lot to offer highly skilled workers, Colvile worries that over time highly skilled young people will be tempted to look elsewhere if things don’t improve.

“Longer term there is obviously a danger that the harder it gets to afford a home, the higher your marginal tax rates get, the more expensive childcare becomes and the more people will vote with their feet. I mean, people respond to incentives,” he says.

Parents in the UK also face the third highest childcare costs relative to their income among rich countries. There’s little hope of respite, as services are expected to face a near double-digit real terms cut over the next few years.

“Every marginal pound that the government spends seems to go towards supporting old people. The base of tax-paying younger workers who are having to pay for this whole thing is getting squeezed and squeezed,” Colvile says.

The measures announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the Autumn Statement mean the UK will have the highest tax burden since the Second World War.

Bloomberg analysis has found that the marginal tax rate – meaning how much you get taxed for every extra pound you earn – is 42pc for people earning over £50,270 and 62pc for those earning over £100,000.

Having to pay more to the public coffers makes life in the UK less attractive according to David Smith, 33, who works in financial services. He moved to Hong Kong in 2018 with his company. He planned to stay for two years – it has now been four and a half, although he will soon have to come home because of family ties.Including bonuses, David earns £90,000 a year. In Britain, he would pay 40pc tax. In Hong Kong, the top rate is 17pc.

“To me, it feels like if you work hard in the UK and earn a good salary you are punished with extortionate taxes which makes earning over £50,000 a year pointless. I’d rather work fewer days a week and keep under £50,000 salary in the UK,” David says.

In Hong Kong, he has been able to save £40,000 every year. He is also able to take his pension as a lump sum there. From his stint abroad, David will be coming back to Britain with a £340,000 savings pot to spend on his first home.

“The higher taxes you pay in the UK are extortionate. I grew up around Blackpool stacking shelves on minimum wage and then I have moved up the salary brackets. In Hong Kong, I can literally put away £40,000 a year because of the low taxes.”

Growing unease

All of these things – rising taxes, falling living standards and the unaffordability of buying a home or starting a family – are ammunition for the Labour Party, which is closer than at any point in the past 12 years to getting back in power.

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Features

Ethnic-related problems need solutions now

Published

4 hours ago

2026/01/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake in Jaffna

In the space of 15 months, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has visited the North of the country more than any other president or prime minister. These were not flying visits either. The president most recent visit to Jaffna last week was on the occasion of Thai Pongal to celebrate the harvest and the dawning of a new season. During the two days he spent in Jaffna, the president launched the national housing project, announced plans to renovate Palaly Airport, to expedite operations at the Kankesanthurai Port, and pledged once again that racism would have no place in the country.

There is no doubt that the president’s consistent presence in the north has had a reassuring effect. His public rejection of racism and his willingness to engage openly with ethnic and religious minorities have helped secure his acceptance as a national leader rather than a communal one. In the fifteen months since he won the presidential election, there have been no inter community clashes of any significance. In a country with a long history of communal tension, this relative calm is not accidental. It reflects a conscious political choice to lower the racial temperature rather than inflame it.

But preventing new problems is only part of the task of governing. While the government under President Dissanayake has taken responsibility for ensuring that anti-minority actions are not permitted on its watch, it has yet to take comparable responsibility for resolving long standing ethnic and political problems inherited from previous governments. These problems may appear manageable because they have existed for years, even decades. Yet their persistence does not make them innocuous. Beneath the surface, they continue to weaken trust in the state and erode confidence in its ability to deliver justice.

Core Principle

A core principle of governance is responsibility for outcomes, not just intentions. Governments do not begin with a clean slate. Governments do not get to choose only the problems they like. They inherit the state in full, with all its unresolved disputes, injustices and problemmatic legacies. To argue that these are someone else’s past mistakes is politically convenient but institutionally dangerous. Unresolved problems have a habit of resurfacing at the most inconvenient moments, often when a government is trying to push through reforms or stabilise the economy.

This reality was underlined in Geneva last week when concerns were raised once again about allegations of sexual abuse that occurred during the war, affecting both men and women who were taken into government custody. Any sense that this issue had faded from international attention was dispelled by the release of a report by the Office of the Human Rights High Commissioner titled “Sri Lanka: Report on conflict related sexual violence”, dated 13.01.26. Such reports do not emerge in a vacuum. They are shaped by the absence of credible domestic processes that investigate allegations, establish accountability and offer redress. They also shape international perceptions, influence diplomatic relationships and affect access to cooperation and support.

Other unresolved problems from the past continue to fester. These include the continued detention of Tamil prisoners under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in some cases for many years without conclusion, the failure to return civilian owned land taken over by the military during the war, and the fate of thousands of missing persons whose families still seek answers. These are not marginal issues even when they are not at the centre stage. They affect real lives and entire communities. Their cumulative effect is corrosive, undermining efforts to restore normalcy and rebuild confidence in public institutions.

Equal Rights

Another area where delay will prove costly is the resettlement of Malaiyaha Tamil communities affected by the recent cyclone in the central hills, which was the worst affected region in the country. Even as President Dissanayake celebrated Thai Pongal in Jaffna to the appreciation of the people there, Malaiyaha Tamils engaged in peaceful campaigns to bring attention to their unresolved problems. In Colombo at the Liberty Roundabout, a number of them gathered to symbolically celebrate Thai Pongal while also bringing national attention to the issues of their community, in particular the problem of displacement after the cyclone.

The impact of the cyclone, and the likelihood of future ones under conditions of climate change, make it necessary for the displaced Malaiyaha Tamils to be found new places of residence. This is also an opportunity to tackle the problem of their landlessness in a comprehensive manner and make up for decades if not two centuries of inequity.

Planning for relocation and secure housing is good governance. This needs to be done soon. Climate related disasters do not respect political timetables. They punish delay and indecision. A government that prides itself on system change cannot respond to such challenges with temporary fixes.

The government appears concerned that finding new places for the Malaiyaha Tamil people to be resettled will lead to land being taken away from plantation companies which are said to be already struggling for survival. Due to the economic crisis the country has faced since it went bankrupt in 2022, the government has been deferential to the needs of company owners who are receiving most favoured treatment. As a result, the government is contemplating solutions such as high rise apartments and townhouse style housing to minimise the use of land.

Such solutions cannot substitute for a comprehensive strategy that includes consultations with the affected population and addresses their safety, livelihoods and community stability.

Lose Trust

Most of those who voted for the government at the last elections did so in the hope that it would bring about system change. They did not vote for the government to reinforce the same patterns that the old system represented. At its core, system change means rebalancing priorities. It means recognising that economic efficiency without social justice is a short-term gain with long-term costs. It means understanding that unresolved ethnic grievances, unaddressed wartime abuses and unequal responses to disaster will eventually undermine any development programme, no matter how well designed. Governance that postpones difficult decisions may buy time, but lose trust.

The coming year will therefore be decisive. The government must show that its commitment to non racism and inclusion extends beyond conflict prevention to conflict resolution. Addressing conflict related abuses, concluding long standing detentions, returning land, accounting for the missing and securing dignified resettlement for displaced communities are not distractions from the government programme. They are central to it. A government committed to genuine change must address the problems it inherited, or run the risk of being overwhelmed when those problems finally demand settlement.

by Jehan Perera

Features

Education. Reform. Disaster: A Critical Pedagogical Approach

Published

4 hours ago

2026/01/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

PM Amarasuriya

This Kuppi writing aims to engage critically with the current discussion on the reform initiative “Transforming General Education in Sri Lanka 2025,” focusing on institutional and structural changes, including the integration of a digitally driven model alongside curriculum development, teacher training, and assessment reforms. By engaging with these proposed institutional and structural changes through the parameters of the division and recognition of labour, welfare and distribution systems, and lived ground realities, the article develops a critical perspective on the current reform discourse. By examining both the historical context and the present moment, the article argues that these institutional and structural changes attempt to align education with a neoliberal agenda aimed at enhancing the global corporate sector by producing “skilled” labour. This agenda is further evaluated through the pedagogical approach of socialist feminist scholarship. While the reforms aim to produce a ‘skilled workforce with financial literacy,’ this writing raises a critical question: whose labour will be exploited to achieve this goal? Why and What Reform to Education

In exploring why, the government of Sri Lanka seeks to introduce reforms to the current education system, the Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Education, Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, revealed in a recent interview on 15 January 2026 on News First Sri Lanka that such reforms are a pressing necessity. According to the philosophical tradition of education reform, curriculum revision and prevailing learning and teaching structures are expected every eight years; however, Sri Lanka has not undertaken such revisions for the past ten years. The renewal of education is therefore necessary, as the current system produces structural issues, including inequality in access to quality education and the need to create labour suited to the modern world. Citing her words, the reforms aim to create “intelligent, civil-minded citizens” in order to build a country where people live in a civilised manner, work happily, uphold democratic principles, and live dignified lives.

Interpreting her narrative, I claim that the reform is intended to produce, shape, and develop a workforce for the neoliberal economy, now centralised around artificial intelligence and machine learning. My socialist feminist perspective explains this further, referring to Rosa Luxemburg’s reading on reforms for social transformation. As Luxemburg notes, although the final goal of reform is to transform the existing order into a better and more advanced system: The question remains: does this new order truly serve the working class? In the case of education, the reform aims to transform children into “intelligent, civil-minded citizens.” Yet, will the neoliberal economy they enter, and the advanced technological industries that shape it, truly provide them a better life, when these industries primarily seek surplus profit?

History suggests otherwise. Sri Lanka has repeatedly remained at the primary manufacturing level within neoliberal industries. The ready-made garment industry, part of the global corporate fashion system, provides evidence: it exploited both manufacturing labourers and brand representatives during structural economic changes in the 1980s. The same pattern now threatens to repeat in the artificial intelligence sector, raising concerns about who truly benefits from these education reforms

That historical material supports the claim that the primary manufacturing labour for the artificial intelligence industry will similarly come from these workers, who are now being trained as skilled employees who follow the system rather than question it. This context can be theorised through Luxemburg’s claim that critical thinking training becomes a privileged instrument, alienating the working class from such training, an approach that neoliberalism prefers to adopt in the global South.

Institutional and Structural Gaps

Though the government aims to address the institutional and structural gaps, I claim that these gaps will instead widen due to the deeply rooted system of uneven distribution in the country. While agreeing to establish smart classrooms, the critical query is the absence of a wide technological welfare system across the country. From electricity to smart equipment, resources remain inadequate, and the government lags behind in taking prompt initiative to meet these requirements.

This issue is not only about the unavailability of human and material infrastructure, but also about the absence of a plan to restore smart normalcy after natural disasters, particularly the resumption of smart network connections. Access to smart learning platforms, such as the internet, for schoolchildren is a high-risk factor that requires not only the monitoring of classroom teachers but also the involvement of the state. The state needs to be vigilant of abuses and disinformation present in the smart-learning space, an area in which Sri Lanka is still lagging. This concern is not only about the safety of children but also about the safety of women. For example, the recent case of abusive image production via Elon Musk’s AI chatbox, X, highlights the urgent need for a legal framework in Sri Lanka.

Considering its geographical location, Sri Lanka is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, the frequency in which they occur, increasing, owing to climate change. Ditwah is a recent example, where villages were buried alive by landslides, rivers overflowed, and families were displaced, losing homes that they had built over their lifetimes. The critical question, then, is: despite the government’s promise to integrate climate change into the curriculum, how can something still ‘in the air ‘with climate adaptation plans yet to be fully established, be effectively incorporated into schools?

Looking at the demographic map of the country, the expansion of the elderly population, the dependent category, requires attention. Considering the physical and psychological conditions of this group, fostering “intelligent, civic-minded” citizens necessitates understanding the elderly not as a charity case but as a human group deserving dignity. This reflects a critical reading of the reform content: what, indeed, is to be taught? This critical aspect further links with the next section of reflective of ground reality.

Reflective Narrative of Ground Reality

Despite the government asserting that the “teacher” is central to this reform, critical engagement requires examining how their labour is recognised. In Sri Lanka, teachers’ work has long been tied to social recognition, both utilised and exploited, Teachers receive low salaries while handling multiple roles: teaching, class management, sectional duties, and disciplinary responsibilities.

At present, a total teaching load is around 35 periods a week, with 28 periods spent in classroom teaching. The reform adds continuous assessments, portfolio work, projects, curriculum preparation, peer coordination, and e-knowledge, to the teacher’s responsibilities. These are undeclared forms of labour, meaning that the government assigns no economic value to them; yet teachers perform these tasks as part of a long-standing culture. When this culture is unpacked, the gendered nature of this undeclared labour becomes clear. It is gendered because the majority of schoolteachers are women, and their unpaid roles remain unrecognised. It is worth citing some empirical narratives to illustrate this point:

“When there was an extra-school event, like walks, prize-giving, or new openings, I stayed after school to design some dancing and practice with the students. I would never get paid for that extra time,” a female dance teacher in the Western Province shared.

I cite this single empirical account, and I am certain that many teachers have similar stories to share.

Where the curriculum is concerned, schoolteachers struggle to complete each lesson as planned due to time constraints and poor infrastructure. As explained by a teacher in the Central Province:

“It is difficult to have a reliable internet connection. Therefore, I use the hotspot on my phone so the children can access the learning material.”

Using their own phones and data for classroom activities is not part of a teacher’s official duties, but a culture has developed around the teaching role that makes such decisions necessary. Such activities related to labour risks further exploitation under the reform if the state remains silent in providing the necessary infrastructure.

Considering that women form the majority of the teaching profession, none of the reforms so far have taken women’s health issues seriously. These issues could be exacerbated by the extra stress arising from multiple job roles. Many female teachers particularly those with young children, those in peri- or post-menopause stages of their life, or those with conditions like endometriosis may experience aggravated health problems due to work-related stress intensified by the reform. This raises a critical question: what role does the state play in addressing these issues?

In Conclusion

The following suggestions are put forward:

First and foremost, the government should clearly declare the fundamental plan of the reform, highlighting why, what, when, and how it will be implemented. This plan should be grounded in the realities of the classroom, focusing on being child-centred and teacher-focused.

Technological welfare interventions are necessary, alongside a legal framework to ensure the safety and security of accessing the smart, information-centred world. Furthermore, teachers’ labour should be formally recognised and assigned economic value. Currently, under neoliberal logic, teachers are often left to navigate these challenges on their own, as if the choice is between survival or collapse.

Aruni Samarakoon teaches at the Department of Public Policy, University of Ruhuna

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

By Aruni Samarakoon

Features

Smartphones and lyrics stands…

Published

4 hours ago

2026/01/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

Diliup Gabadamudalige: Artistes can stay at home and hire their avatar for concerts, movies, etc.

Diliup Gabadamudalige is, indeed, a maestro where music is concerned, and this is what he had to say, referring to our Seen ‘N’ Heard in The Island of 6th January, 2026, and I totally agree with his comments.

Diliup: “AI avatars will take over these concerts. It will take some time, but it surely will happen in the near future. Artistes can stay at home and hire their avatar for concerts, movies, etc. Lyrics and dance moves, even gymnastics can be pre-trained”.

Yes, and that would certainly be unsettling as those without talent will make use of AI to deceive the public.

Right now at most events you get the stage crowded with lyrics stands and, to make matters even worse, some of the artistes depend on the smartphone to put over a song – checking out the lyrics, on the smartphone, every few seconds!

In the good ole days, artistes relied on their talent, stage presence, and memorisation skills to dominate the stage.

They would rehearse till they knew the lyrics by heart and focus on connecting with the audience.

Smartphones and lyrics stands: A common sight these days

The ability of the artiste to keep the audience entertained, from start to finish, makes a live performance unforgettable That’s the magic of a great show!

When an artiste’s energy is contagious, and they’re clearly having a blast, the audience feeds off it and gets taken on an exciting ride. It’s like the whole crowd is vibing on the same frequency.

Singing with feeling, on stage, creates this electric connection with the audience, but it can’t be done with a smartphone in one hand and lyrics stands lined up on the stage.

AI’s gonna shake things up in the music scene, for sure – might replace some roles, like session musicians or sound designers – but human talent will still shine!

AI can assist, but it’s tough to replicate human emotion, experience, and soul in music.

In the modern world, I guess artistes will need to blend old-school vibes with new tech but certainly not with smartphones and lyrics stands!