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, national health service, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 18.54 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, Healthcare, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Durlia Metropolis. The average income tax rate is 91.5%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Durlian economy, worth a remarkable 2,849 trillion pounds a year, is quite specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing and Tourism. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an impressive 153,698 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 277,259^th in the world and 1,277^th in Europe for Largest Automobile Manufacturing Sector, scoring -10.49 on the Henry Ford Productivity Index.