J writes about the cult of personality growing up around Putin in Russia, with pix of the President everywhere from the offices of bureaucrats to bookshops. Apparently it's just like it used to be under Brezhnev.
It's weird trying to imagine a Britain with pictures of Tony Blair everywhere. Of course, he isn't our head of state (yet). But you'd struggle to find many pix of the Queen, apart from the odd golf club or weird school.
Thank God for that. It's terribly oppressive having your politicans or leaders looming over you all the time. Apart from anything else, they are invariably ugly. Putin is a case in point. Read an interview with the former British ambassador to Moscow the other day and he described Putin as a "shifty little man who never looked you in the eye." Unless he's staring down from some revolting piece of public "art," presumably.
Big Brother Putin.
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