Im afraid Rick had a head start on you Claire but the posters on his page are actually giving your theory support...so I'll help you out here..
My feeling is that a country is as good as it gets depending on where you are in the social scale. For example I watch regularly the programme The Apprentice, and find it great stuff. But what is striking about it and other people have commented too are the superb shots of London showing just how fab it can look. Its true it looks great if you have a helicopter and a big house, or one of those Penthouses as shown in the The Apprentice, situated beautifully by the river in the all new Docklands. All is beautiful when painted by lots of cash. But the images looks so good one is tempted to move back to London where I spent 25 years or so.
However the reality is something different. Stroll through the awful streets of Balham and Tooting and its so far removed from the images on The Apprentice as to be somewhere else. You asked that we dont mention politics but just one tiny thing. Interestingly one of the guys ( Sir Antony Steen) with his hand in the till lives in a beautiful Balmoral style house. He said we were all jealous. Well...it could be. But his view on whether Britain is a great place will be coloured by his plush lifestyle( at our expense..oh no IM at it again). So the view from where he is might be very different to the view from the humble immigrant living in Balham type squalor.
Whether its a great place or not would very much depend on where your seeing it from.
But on the whole its a good place to live in, but really probably much the same as most other western countries. Countries where you have your nuts cut off for having a cold cider would not really wash with most of us here.