The UK
I could be living somewhere a hell of a lot worse, the UK has its good and bad points:
Good:
* Guns - we have the strictest gun control laws in Western Europe. If you want to bugger about with guns then you join the army.
* Weather - temperate (its usually raining).
* No wild animals - no danger of getting eaten on the way to work.
Bad:
* The Constitution - its 500 years out of date, and burdened with idiotic imperial hangovers. Neither is it very democratic. I think this is an important problem. See Tom Paine & Thomas Jefferson. Also see The Putney Debates, John Locke and Montesquieu - I'm also fascinated by the American Revolution being a continuation of radical English political thought.
* Transport - a very poor joke - if you want to breathe petrol fumes, the UK is the place to go. Trains are expensive and the railway system disastrously fractured.
* Europe - you only have to spend a day or two on the continent to realise they have a much higher standard of living than us. The special relationship with the US is only special to us, not them.
* Drink - I'm a teetotaller and the Brits are drunk most of the time.
* People Too many. I need space to breathe.
I've lived in the UK since 1966 when my family returned from Hong Kong. My Father had been living in the far East since WW2. He'd been an RAF Bomber pilot in WW2, ended up at Kai Tak in Hong Kong flying Dakotas for transport Command after the war's end, and after being demobbed, had returned. Initially he and my Mother lived in Singapore, then moved to Hong Kong in 1957, when I was born. My Father flew Short Stirlings, Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys and Bristol Blenheims operationally in WW2. He also instructed Army Glider Pilots in Netheravon and Shobdon. My Uncle was a Captain in the Australian army who was captured at Singapore, survived, and started up, or his wife started up, Australia's first hovercraft service.
So I came to the UK at age 7, to go to school, and the family moved back here then. I wish we had stayed in Hong Kong, but my Father wanted to retire and garden, so that was that. I therefore regard the UK through the eyes of an immigrant, and I've got to say, I find it hard to love the place.
There are various good things and various bad aspects to the UK. The constitution is ridiculously out of date and authoritarian, to the point of not really being a democracy. Getting around is a royal pain. The roads are clogged, the trains too expensive to be a viable alternative, and although I wouldn't say the place is full up, the infrastructure is groaning under the weight of the sheer number of people using it.
Why? Well the UK is basically a low tax, low investment economy, more inclined to American style capitalism than French style social markets. I think both systems have their attractions. There is much higher unemployment in France, and rules and regulations are invasive, as are taxes, if you want to start a business. But if you've ever been involved with British bureaucracy, you may think the French have the better system. In both countries bureaucracy is a pain, but at least in France you get a brilliant health service and trains that actually run on time and are clean. In Britain sometimes they don't even turn up. The food in France is infinitely better than the Tescos crap you are more or less forced to live on if you live in the UK. it's also expensive.
There are all sorts of debates to be had about the various merits of the systems, but the people I can't stand in the UK bray like donkeys about the superiority of anything British. It is simply not true. There are almost always other, equally valid alternatives. In the age of mass international travel more and more people will come to realise this.
There are parts of the UK that are undoubtedly beautiful, but if like me you tend to regard beauty as being uncluttered, you're going to be out of luck. The physical size of the precludes there being much of anything - and some environments are absent entirely, desert for instance. There's so many people here that the only undeveloped bits are of no real economic use - everything remotely useful has been interfered with by man.
The "British character" is mixed. I'm a teetotaller, and the drinking culture here is ridiculous. Every event of any significance is regarded as an excuse to drink or get drunk. Bad day at the office? - better go and drown our sorrows. Great day at the office? - better go and celebrate with a drink! Funeral? We'll get drunk at the wake. Wedding? We'll get drunk at the reception. This drinking culture results in many town centres being no go areas for anyone remotely sober on a Friday and Saturday night. Even where I live, in a small country town of 20,000, the centre of town at weekends is a shouting, fighting, alcohol fuelled hell. In my view alcohol should be taxed much more heavily than it is, to counter this dreadful culture. I'm never going to get elected to anything on that platform however!
In the UK we also still have Kings and Queens, Lords and Ladies, knights and commoners. All this should be done away with immediately. Apart from the fact it isn't 1314 any more, it leads to ridiculous and completely unwarranted arrogance on the one hand, and servile crapitude on the other. Now Britain is a multi cultural society, we should all just be equal citizens. Our king should be the law. The American Founding Fathers got this dead right. Here's an essay I wrote on this. I am a republican.
The other aspects of the society I really can't relate to are: Soccer - of no interest to me whatsoever. Cars - who cares? The roads are clogged. The honours system - "Order of the British Empire" anyone? Food - you either pay through the nose for some sort of poxy artwork on a plate, or you eat supermarket crap.
So what do I like about the UK? Um, er, well I guess I'm fairly comfortable here. I am English after all. Despite the drawbacks above, it is civilised in the sense that the majority of people accept and obey the law. The bad guys get locked up, by and large, and the whole thing goes creaking on in a fairly predictable, familiar fashion. There are a lot of clever people living here, and London is the biggest and richest city in Europe. Parts of some of the second line cities are apparently pleasant as well, such as Manchester and Cardiff.
I've got to say though, it's also fairly easy to see why the greatest export of these islands over the last several hundred years has been people. Because of the ludicrous class system, opportunity only beckoned abroad.
I think if I was living in another country, I'd regard the UK as somewhere nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. Millions disagree, as there are people from all over the world trying to get in legally or illegally. I guess it's just the luck of the draw. If I'd been born in some sub-saharan shithole, I'd probably feel differently. I accept I'm fortunate.
That's it really. I realise there are much worse places to live. But once you get here, and you've experienced alternatives, you realise there are better places as well.