The Republic of Durlia is a gargantuan, genial nation, ruled by the Prime Minister with a fair hand, and renowned for its museums and concert halls, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 14.526 billion Durlians are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The large, liberal, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Durlia Metropolis. The average income tax rate is 90.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Durlian economy, worth a remarkable 2,254 trillion pounds a year, is quite specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Tourism and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an impressive 155,209 pounds, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Students abandon classrooms for online education, no one born in Durlia can fix a leaky faucet, the people of Durlia are renowned for their nihilistic attitudes, and intellectual snobbery has the cognoscenti sneering at anyone who doesn't have an opinion on the semiological drift of Umberto Eco's works. Crime is totally unknown. Durlia's national animal is the fox, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Durlia is ranked 4,743^rd in the world and 90^th in Europe for Smartest Citizens, with 130.38 quips per hour.