Mr. Paul Stanley:

We are trying to be positive. We arrived at that view by looking, for example, at the unemployment data and the recent figures on housing. We have seen the monthly increase in arrears on our mortgage book slowing down month on month for nine months. We took on board the fact that consumer demand for next year is slightly better than this year. Retail sales, consumer confidence indicators and so on are other factors we have considered. All of these are gently pointing to a stabilisation of the economy.