The United Kingdom of The Makerfields and Burnham is a very large, safe nation, remarkable for its irreverence towards religion, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic population of 334 million Burnhamites love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Administration, and Education. The average income tax rate is 72.8%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but stagnant Burnhamitan economy, worth 3.97 trillion Mancs 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 major contributions from Soda Sales, Woodchip Exports, and Information Technology. Average income is 11,883 Mancs, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Blue-collar workers agree that Thirdsday is the dreariest day of the week, the military is slashing spending on conventional arms and diverting it to spending on prosthetic arms, officials pull all-nighters to check immigrants for potential links to terrorists, and one tree's worth of paperwork accompanies each imported log of timber. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. The Makerfields and Burnham's national animal is the Bee, which soars majestically through the nation's famously clear skies.

The Makerfields and Burnham is ranked 50,373^rd in the world and 424^th in Europeia for Most Cultured, scoring 72 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.