Small fairly culturally homogenous or monocultural rural communities Northern Europe tend to have relatively low crime rates, be relatively harmonious and clean and, in a few countries (England included) to be quite tolerant of other people's eccentricities and foibles, as long as you keep the bits of your land that affect other people clean and tidy! People still get up to all sorts of naughty stuff but they don't end up shitting on each other's doorsteps quite so much. Even the drug addicts will tend to bugger off somewhere they don't stand out so severely. It is when you get denser, more urban conditions that things change, even though there are plenty of extremely low income workers living in the country.
You sacrifice all of the wonderful enrichment and wonderful diversity, the people trying to sell DCs crack outside your local tube station, the night life, the shops being open late at night and on Sundays and the ready availability of companionship and entertainment at all times to live in a more wholesome environment, but I don't think it can be all that bad from the London side of the fence, since I (and lots of other Londoners) have jumped ship and headed for the country at the first opportunity. The only thing I have to say to those that follow me is that there is no point moving if you bring the bad stuff with you, if you see what I mean. I am like the other poster here who was like a "fish to water" and have become a country person over time, and really the way I see newbies now, I didn't realize that was how it came across - people really do move in and ruin places, setting up little enclaves of urban life, or buying up half a village then not living in it, or parking giant expensive people carriers through the middle of the village like a blockade, shit and rubbish littering the floor around them which used to be pristine, or just thoughtlessly "developing" community focal points like pubs, shops, post offices etc. into nice glass-fronted buildings for themselves, which I have to say leaves the pre-existing community gutted, a shell.
I think there is a community-breaking failure of integration when some people come out to the country, and that creates imposing ghettos and displaces local culture. Which is ironic because if you speak to people and they tell you why they wanted to raise their kids in the country, it seems like that is exactly the sort of thing they chose to get away from in the first place.