Britain, and therefore Scotland, has sunk to 25th place in International Living magazine's 30th annual survey of the best countries to live, scoring 73/100 behind Uruguay, Lithuania and The Czech Republic. France came out on top for the fifth year in a row.
The survey analysed 194 countries and based results on nine criteria including the cost of living, leisure and culture, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and climate. This involved looking at everything from the average cost of a cup of coffee, to average house prices, tax and inflation rates, GDP per capita and the number of people per musuem.
The top ten were:
1. France
2. Australia
3. Switzerland
4. Germany
5. New Zealand
6. Luxembourg
7. USA
8. Belgium
9. Canada
10. Italy
The Bottom 10 countries were:
1. Somalia
2. Yemen
3. Sudan
4. Chad
5. Afghanistan
6. Sierra Leone
7. Djibouti
8. Eritrea
9. Guinea
10. Angola
So let's be grateful were not living in any of these last ones, but it would be nice if, while we were running the world as America's deputy, trying to make IT a better place to live (as we say we are) we might find some time to get ourselves into the top 20 countries in the world to live in..... they did. ... As usual we got left behind.
I'm betting we'd be farther up than 25 if we were independent!
