JPS, I take your point about the emergent nanny state culture in the UK - and the fact that we are the most surveyed nation in the world, but although you have always prided yourself on your 'liberty' you are also a nation in which 45% of the populace are creationists, and around the same number go through life without even owning a passport. Hardly what I'd call either enlightened or free.
I'm being facetious of course, but it has always struck me when I visit, ironically, how anglicised (Migs Anglicised ...see what I did there?) ...sorry, how anglicised parts of the Eastern Seaboard are compared with your Western counterparts.