>home to one of the most established and trusted legal systems in the world

I live in England and I have very little faith in the legal system, either in its laws or in the prison system. In fact, between criminalizing posession of some pornographic cartoons and the Snooper's Charter, not to mention the mandate that ISPs keep your history metadata for 9 months now, I have lost all faith in the English legal system. The populace that is apathetic to encroachments on rights, freedoms, and privacy, much like how it is currently trending in the US, is even worse given that there is no constitution to protect those rights, and we have to trust this government to create a 'bill of rights'. I can't be the only one incredibly cynical about what that would entail.

Please do not forget events such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Sev..., they were arrested solely because they happened to be Irish and nearby an IRA attack.

> At their trial the judge told the defendants, "If hanging were still an option you would have been executed."

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Conlon

Considering the amount of cases in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Overturned_conviction... I would not put too much trust in the UK legal system.

That's nice and all, but poverty in the Midlands and the north is on par with Eastern Europe.

Sure, the salaries are higher, but the expenses eat up most of it.

And people don't have the option of cheap countryside, living off their own land.

I love the UK, but it's got some serious problems.

But yeah, at least on the world stage, it's not completely irrelevant.

We are a bit of a second-rate nuclear power though - we are completely dependent on the US for delivery systems (Trident missiles) and, apparently, for the design of warheads.

If the US decided it didn't want the UK to be a nuclear power then I don't think we'd be able to maintain the capability for very long.

Britain was the third nuclear power, can’t imagine they just threw the plans away... Also the French are managing to maintain theirs independently just fine.

I don't think a 1960's weapon design (if we ever really had them - there is some debate as to whether the UK conned the US into giving us proper multi-stage weapon designs) is going be that useful on a Trident missile.

> two of the best universities in the world

There's more than just two! Admittedly only Oxbridge are consistently top 10 but there are a disproportionate number of other UK unis in the top 200.

This is absolutely correct, and also shame on me for forgetting Imperial which is usually in the top ten as well.