Olympic tourism update

Ah – so those miserable traders who everyone told to shut up were dead right, back in August. Britain received its smallest number of foreign tourists for almost a decade this summer, largely as a consequence of the Olympic Games, it is thought. The only recent year which saw fewer people visit our country was 2003 – the year we invaded Iraq, when everyone hated us and the Yanks. It may well be that foreigners refused to come this time because they were scared by reports of hordes of Brits dressed in purple tracksuits grinning manically at them at every tube and railway station and street corner. I think the tourists preferred it when we were just abusive or ignored them entirely, or gave them misdirections out of xenophobic spite. The silver lining, though, is that we fleeced the foreign mugs who did come over this year for more money than usual. And of course, as a consequence of the Games, we feel very good about ourselves.