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After an opening ceremony going on into the early hours, directed by Danny Boyle and watched at one point by 26.9 million viewers in Britain, the Olympic Games in the Lea valley settled down to its sporting business, with only marginal complaints about empty seats, food queues, over-protective branding and the loss of the keys to Wembley stadium. The locks were changed. Two hundred and four copper petals attached to steel tubes had risen into the air without a hitch to form an Olympic cauldron of flame, to the designs of Thomas Heatherwick. The Queen had co-operated in making a jokey film sequence with Daniel Craig in the character of James Bond, during which she pretended to parachute into the stadium. Predictions of medal numbers for Britain seemed initially over-optimistic.
Business leaders visiting London for the Olympics asked David Cameron, the Prime Minister, what was happening to Britain’s economy, according to the FT, as figures showed a shrinking of GDP by 0.7
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