7 Million Londoners, 1 London

"We had the remarkable triumph of persuading the International Olympic Committee to award London the Olympic games in 2012, and one of the strongest cards that Seb Coe and myself were able to point out was that in this city 300 languages are spoken and the people that speak them live side by side in harmony.

If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that.

This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you choose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential."

- Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, 8 July 2005