Others thanked him for coming and later the mayor got big cheers from a separate crowd as he brandished a broom and thanked those volunteers who had arrived to help clear up the mess as representing the real "spirit of London".

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To most Norwegians, London came to represent the spirit of freedom during those difficult years.

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"It's not in the spirit of the thing, " said Kevin Button of Ashford, in Kent, just outside London.

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