I think the U.K. is one of the most interesting places in the world. It has a cultural history that few places can match. Oxford alone is more interesting than most countries.
When I walk around Cambridge, for example, it gives me such a buzz to think “this is the place where DNA was discovered! This is where the atom was first understood. This is the town in which Nabokov, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Wordsworth and Milton all studied.”
When I go to Bath, I love the cafes and Georgian architecture. I love to think of Jane Austen characters walking the streets. Liverpool means the Beatles, the Yorkshire moors mean the Brontes, Edinburgh means the Scottish Enlightenment, Oxford is the place Oscar Wilde and JRR Tolkien lived and studied. It is endless. This island feeds the imagination like nowhere on earth.
Yes, the weather is awful atm. But it changes. This time next week it could be snow and sunshine. And anything is better than the kind of suffocating heat a lot of countries endure. Sunshine and heat come with a price. They mean snakes and giant spiders and swarms of biting insects.
In spite of the pessimism, we’re a pretty well run country as well. Never underestimate how corrupt a lot of places truly are. My plumber, for example, came here from abroad. I won’t say where he’s from, but he once said to me “I feel ashamed when I go home. Everything is so corrupt that nothing ever gets done. Bridges aren’t built and roads aren’t repaired because the money is siphoned off by corrupt officials. It’s so widespread and so ingrained that no one bats an eyelid. Even the police will ask you for bribes.”