Well, I've carried the L85 on three occasions, once for a week-long exercise where I got pretty familiar with it, and once in a situation where it was quite possible that the targets would be shooting back. I found it quite reliable [the earliest Sterling-produced versions were said to be the worst] and genuinely liked the L86A1 LSW version.
Note that the complaints made by many British troops, particularly the Paras and Royal Marines, were not offered by the Gurkhas, who use their weaponry hard and to the limits of their design, but with meticulous maintenance and care, developed through empirical methods. I suspect the paras and Marines have been using lubricants not particularly compatable with the Marines salt-water environs and possibly the Paras exposure to cold at aircraft operational altitudes; less careful attention during night operations could make a difference too.
But the IW and LSW have always worked well for me, and the new H&K developed L85A2 version seems to have done even better in this most recent exercise for them in Iraq. I'll be hearing firsthand accounts shortly, but in any event, it seems they're no longer the troopies biggest gripe- that's now the new issue of boots they got, which performed pretty poorly, I hear.
-archy-/-