Gearup, crime in the US is not nearly as bad as the media would have you believe. The cores of the major cities there have serious problems but then there are a few neighbourhoods in Toronto that I would not enter alone at night and we've had more than our share of school shootings here, and about 5-6 times a month we get people firing shots in crowded nightclubs. I'm sure there's a few spots in London that aren't the safest either. As for health care, we've got a gov't monopoly here that's even tighter than in the UK- if you need medical treatment here, your options are wait two years hoping you don't die or pay big $ to get it done in the US, unless you happen to have friends in high places who can put you at the head of the queue (our federal health minister just got prostate surgery with no waiting while the average wait for us plebes is 6 months). I do agree though that we are much better off than most Europeans- in a couple of years I'll be able to carry a fairly large townhome for < $1300 (mortgage, taxes, etc) and I won't have to ransom my firstborn if I decide to get a car. Aircraft rentals are so cheap here that it's probably cost-effective for a brit to come over here to do the training- I don't know what instruction costs there, but the rental costs to get a PPL would be roughly $4,000 less in Canada than in the UK.
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Nuke the rainforest- it's more efficient than logging.