Honestly, as someone who lived in Britain for a little while: it is a poor country.

First, there are a lot hooligans, drunks and layabouts. In recent years, add in lots of illegal migrants. Many people on social welfare, living in social housing, with either no ability or no desire to better their lot.

Then you have the NHS. Anecdote: one friend with severe back pain from a herniated disk waited a year for surgery. When she was put off again - make due with hot baths - she went out of the country and paid for it privately. That is not first-world health care.

The infrastructure feels like it's crumbling. I particularly remember the rail system, because I commuted weekly by train. They claimed something like a 95% punctuality rate ("excluding conditions not in their control"). In the course of one year, my train arrived on-time exactly once. Not very much is under their control.

Being a DIY type, I was appalled at the building standards. First anecdote: Visiting a friend whose bathroom has just been professionally renovated. They had another electrical plug installed, so the electrician just strung a loose wire across the wall. Then the painter painted over it - not behind it, just over it - so if it shifted you saw the old color.

Second anecdote: the apartment we lived in was in an old building, and water was added later. To get the water pipe into the apartment, they had just bashed a hole in the brick wall above the front door. When we lived there, decades after this had been done, it was still exactly that: a pipe going through a hole bashed in the wall. Oh, and the wallpaper was installed upside-down.

All this grousing shouldn't be taken the wrong way. Britain is a great place to visit, and I enjoyed temporarily living there. But for the average Brit or Scot? By Western standards, Britain is poor.

> Being a DIY type, I was appalled at the building standards

Yup. It's no understatement to say a good tradesperson is extremely difficult to find. They all charge the inflated going rate regardless of their skill level, as people are desperate. They often get pretty shiry/nasty if you demand things or want to check their work - to keep you afraid and to accept their very subpar work.

Materials are shockingly terrible across the board too

I've been putting off renovations because I've had so, so many bad experiences with tradespeople in the past.