The United Kingdom of Blackfriars is a massive, genial nation, ruled by Cardinal Dominic with an even hand, and remarkable for its daily referendums, compulsory military service, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, devout population of 1.325 billion Blackfriars are prohibited from doing almost everything except voting, which they do timidly and conservatively.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Whitecloak. The average income tax rate is 79.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but inefficient Blackfriar economy, worth 47.6 trillion Gold Bars a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is led by the Basket Weaving industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Retail, and Furniture Restoration. Average income is 35,928 Gold Bars, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Jumping in puddles after rainstorms has become an indoor activity, the new Refuse Hills housing development is under construction, saying that someone looks a bit pale can be construed as hate speech, and exorbitant spending on icebreakers breaks the ice at every budget meeting. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Blackfriars's national animal is the Corgi, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Catholicism.

Blackfriars is ranked 267,801^st in the world and 4^th in Knights Hospitaller for Highest Unexpected Death Rate, scoring 26.4 on the Bus Surprisal Index.