And that, of course, my Lord Mayor includes the holders of your high office over so many years - and it includes the City Corporation. We at the Bank have enjoyed tremendous moral and practical - not to mention gastronomical - support in all our efforts to promote the reputation and prosperity of the City, and I hope that you may feel that we have been equally supportive of initiatives that you have taken to the same end. From my perspective it’s been a very warm and constructive relationship which I have no doubt will continue. You, Gavyn, have certainly contributed to that relationship during your period in office and I am grateful to you for that. But more than that you have maintained the finest traditions of the Mayoralty in the lead that you have given to the City. You have taken on an exhausting - and in this case I really mean exhausting - program - both at home and around the world in promotion of our interests and you have still found time, with the Lady Mayoress, to entertain us right royally this evening. We are all most grateful to you. So to you all - as I make the transition from Who’s Who? To Who’s He? - I say thank you and farewell until we meet again - as I very much hope we will if ever Vanessa and I manage to tear ourselves away from Cornwall.
A year ago there were grounds for hoping that the external storms were beginning to abate, but those hopes were deferred - by the after-effects of corporate governance and accounting failures in the US and by uncertainty associated with the war in Iraq. There nevertheless remain reasonable grounds for  BIS Review 29/2003  1  thinking that the external environment will now gradually improve as we move through the second half of this year into next, and that this will help to offset the gradual moderation we are beginning to see in the growth of consumer spending. That would open the way to continued relatively steady and better balanced growth - at or above trend, with inflation remaining close to target. But there are certainly short-term risks on either side, and given those risks - including the risk of slow growth in the Eurozone, particularly in Germany - I agree with your assessment that the economic case for euro-entry has not yet been made. More generally on that subject, I very much welcome the Treasury’s exhausting - I mean exhaustive - broader assessment of the longer-term pros and cons which I hope, when people have had time to digest it properly, will result in a better balanced - less polarised - debate on the economics of the euro question. I confess that I had hoped that we would by now be further along the narrow channel I have described on past occasions between the Charybdis of external weakness and Scylla of unsustainable consumer demand.