I'm with Helena on the World Cup vote.
I went to Russia to research my book, Dead Ball. It is about a Russian billionnaire trying to kill England players to fix World Cup qualifiers. I also read a lot about Russia to get my facts straight.
Look, Russia is a great country. And my favourite novel is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. A Russian. But...
... Russia has serious problems. The government is dodgy. Much of the media dare not criticise the government. Great journalists - like Anna Politkovskaya - who have written about Russian oligarchs and their 'wars' in Chechnya, etc. have been murdered.
Politkovskaya on President Putin's birthday.
Our media is free. Well, more free than Russia's. We have seen this with the Times and BBC's investigations into FIFA.
Would you rather live in a country with a free media and not have the World Cup in 2018? Or would you rather live in a less free country and have the World Cup?
The one good thing about all this is that Russia must be really careful with how it treats football, big business and its journalists from 2010-2018. So it's a good thing! It means ordinary Russian people may get a better deal. And less former Soviet States will be invaded.
Read Marc Bennett's Football Dynamo: Modern Russia and the People's Game. Or my own Dead Ball.
http://www.tompalmer.co.uk/
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