Last Saturday I was the guest speaker at the Headway Ball. Let's hope you never have to phone these people.

Volunteers run the charity that helps people cope with accidental brain injuries, caused by car accidents, motorbike accidents, falling down stairs or tumbling off ladders.

A bang on the head can take away your your emotional control, your capacity to stand up, sit down or cuddle your kids.

You can recover - unfortunately not everyone does - but even if you do, more often than not, your life is changed either physically or because in some strange way a touch with death will leave you trembling for life. Your character alters.

Headway helps. I know they do because it once happened to someone I was going out with.

There were 200 people at the Ball and they raised several grand. And if you've got a bob or two, do give Headway a call on 01825 724323.

After dinner, the conversation turned away from heads and injuries to work.

One couple from Rottingdean confessed they had become unwilling weekenders. They worked in Reading Monday to Friday and then came back to jolly old Rotters for Saturday and Sunday.

An office manager for a big leisure company and a man in the drug industry both said they would have to take a 30 per cent wage cut to find similar jobs in the area. How depressing that our economy is still that weak. So much more to do, as they say.

As these thoughts rumbled round my brain, there appeared another letter campaigning against city status in the paper (letters Tuesday October 24).

It argued people living here and working elsewhere not only leads to "impermanence" but a lack of loyalty to Brighton and Hove. That would be news to the Rottingdeaners.

Furthermore, they said weekenders and commuters are taking the jobs of the "Brighton born and bred" - a phrase to make you shudder.

What worrying echoes it has in these times when people play fast and loose with the race card.

It's meant to summon up proud images of civic loyalty, but instead it just sounds dangerously like "send them home". But that would stunt our economy.

Just as there is a compelling case to welcome immigrants to the country for their skills, there is a powerful need to do the same in our town.

But first some facts. There is a myth going around about commuters and people who move here.

Apparently, we are being overrun by them. They arrive here, buy our houses and drive up prices.

They have no loyalty to the town because they're up to London on the train every day, too early to buy breakfast and back too late to spend any money locally except on a take away.

But here's the truth. 24,000 people commute into Brighton every day and 20,000 commute out.

Of those, only 23 per cent work in London. The rest work in Shoreham, Newhaven, Lewes or Burgess Hill.

Brighton and Hove is in fact the regional centre of the local economy. So not only are people coming into the town with their money and spending it in Brighton and Hove-based businesses, relatively few people are working in London.

But what about people moving here? The current Registrar General population estimate is that 258,113 live here.

The net migration into the town in 1998/1999 was just 3.1 per cent of that figure.

However, the people who do come here are surely making a definite choice.

In my experience they are like religious zealots about the place. Their loyalty to the town is that of a classic convert.

Many of the ones who do commute to London are bringing contacts and business back to the town and I know several people who are going the whole hog and moving their work down here.

Brighton and Hove is not one of "life's pit stops" as the letter disparaged. It is a town that has always welcomed guests - permanent or temporary - because its economy has always expanded as a result.

Let's hope we continue to grab that opportunity to grow and perhaps become a city.

That way people will no longer have to commute from Rottingdean to Reading just for the money.