Horse 1346 - A Gold Medal Performance from London

Once the streamers, the balloons and the bunting have been put away and the joys of the last two weeks fade into distant memory, England will emerge from the dream and face a post Olympic hangover. Unlike the hangovers of say Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney or Athens (which was so much of a bender that they've invited Europe to help clean up), London will do what London always does and quietly sweep the economic mess to the rest of England.

If you draw a line from Bristol to The Wash, you split England into roughly two equal population halves but two very unequal economic halves. Helpfully, the blue motorway signs up and down the sceptred isle indicate "The North" and "The South" and tell you which part is bright and beautiful, and which part houses those dark satanic mills (or used to before they were all closed).
It is fitting in the eyes of the great wen that is London (home of the Houses Of Parliament and "The Square Mile") that this great city shouldn't be forced to actually pay for what it causes, and so Governments in their benevolence decide that The North should instead. It will accomplish this conjuring trick with further reductions in services and exporting horrible, dirty and smelly factories to places like Vietnam and Thailand; and of course that mythical beast called China which seems to be able to magic up anything you ask of it; including little plastic red buses, black taxis and Union Flags that can be flogged off to tourists.

Mrs Thatcher had the right idea. During the early years of her tenure as PM, from 1980-1985, 103,600 jobs were lost in the City of London; The North lost 1,037,000 in comparison which is only a shade over tenfold, so what were those disgusting creeps like Scargill complaining about anyway? The fact that The North never really recovered isn't an issue is it? Poor people are too illiterate to read the Financial Times and too stupid to work out what's going on because the Comprehensive Education System threw them overboard at about the same time as their real wages were kicked to pieces.
As a result of the events of the past four years with the Global Financial Crisis, the Eurozone Crisis and other malaise like the Parliamentary Expenses Scandal and the Leveson Enquiry into the media and ethics, you can't honestly expect that the City of London should want to, or is even likely to accept responsibility for any of these things even if it caused them. Not whilst it can claim that it brought the nation together, united under the banner of Team GB, and has held such a lovely Sunday School Picnic and Sports day. Sure, nobody else but the City of London and possibly Stratford will have benefited from it all but since The North is mostly where all the poor people are (because they can't afford to pay the rent within the M25 any more), then it scarcely matters really.

Besides which, the economy is a demand driven system and the people of The North can't very well demand much on those horrid wages anyway.
In an economy where people are competing against each other, there are winners and losers and the one thing that Olympics have taught us, is that Second Place is the first loser.
The City of London is the gold medal winner of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and It's only fitting, right, proper, and very very British that it should get the glory.

So when the £11bn demand notice comes in from the creditors, it will invariably be everywhere else but London who ends up paying for it. That's probably a good thing since the tourists can't really leave London because the trains don't run properly, thus ensuring that their dollarpoundeuros remain in London where they belong (both the dollarpoundeuros and the tourists).