The 2 only reasons not to buy a UK cube, is as you say, freeloader will bug you, and also to shaft Nintendo Europe a bit for their

way of marketing and supporting the product.
Buying the UK cube on the other hand will contribute to showing NOE they are still getting customers, and increased sales might convince them to shake up the way they operate a bit.
Dont forget if its too much trouble to bother with freeloader for your import machine you are going to miss out on a lot of bargainous PAL games now, and particularly in the future when it (probably)goes the way of the Dreamcast.
I've always championed buying the UK cube ever since I found out it also can do the imported Progressive scan games.
And Ive never been in a rush to import the latest game before UK release, too much of a backlog of unfinished ones, I can wait for the PAL release.
So far only Animal Crossing has warranted using Freeloader, are there any other worthy non PAL release games?
lets face it Progressive scan doesnt make Nintendos games any more fun, fun is what the machine is about.
Enjoy which ever machine you chose anyway, in your shoes I would get one of each seeing that lik-sang have dropped the prices of the NTSC's, and not bother with the lifestyle object that is the Q (admittedly this is the design they should have marketed for the Gamcube world wide, cool sells) anyhow you can turn your Gamecube into a lifestyle object using those Gold feet at lik-sang.