With today's inflation rate at 0.7 per cent, most of its variable rate products do not pay enough even to preserve value in real terms.

These can facilitate quick sales, which tend to preserve value, but can disadvantage some creditors.

The opportunity was taken to change the arrangements to appoint administrators but in the context of seeking to promote the rescue culture and preserving value.

Benign neglect has proved a much better route to preserving value than the blizzard of initiatives that have done such harm to the rest of the group.

The parents may not be religious themselves - often they aren't - but they sense that faith schools preserve values, disciplines and habits of the heart that are elsewhere being lost.