Places to live.

The Forbes list of the most reputable countries in the world. Each year, the Reputation Institute ranks the most nations and companies on the planet in various categories, using reams of survey data and its own proprietary RepTrak Pulse scoring system. Here are the results for 2016, based on some 48,000 responses from people in G8 countries, responding to questions on how they perceive different countries in categories from government to overall happiness.

 20 Singapore
19 Portugal
18 Germany
17 Spain
16 Belgium
 15 France
14 Japan
13 United Kingdom
12 Italy
11 Austria
10 Netherlands
9 Ireland
8 Denmark
7 New Zealand
6 Finland
5 Norway
4 Australia
3 Switzerland
2 Canada
1 Sweden

I wonder how they select the people to answer their questions and I wonder what questions they ask.

My knowledge of Sweden is rather limited. In fact IKEA is about the sum total of my knowledge. Oh, and fjords! My knowledge of Scandinavia as a whole comes down to the comedian Sandi Toksvig and quite a lot of excellent detective stories on film and in television series. There is the education system in Finland which is supposed to be very good and I hear that Finland send out "baby boxes" to all new mothers - a range of new baby essentials in a box which can be used as a crib for the tiny person - an idea that Scotland wants to pinch.

The few Canadians I have met have all been excellent people and some of my musical heroes come from that country: K D Land, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young.

So the top two countries seem fine. But they do have rather more severe winters than I am really prepared to put up with.

I half expected the UK to have fallen off the list and I notice that the USA does not appear in the top 20.

And here's a link to a series of jokes about Donald Trump, if you can stand to wade your way through them.

There you go!