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Question: Mr Governor, I'm a local and I've lived here all my life, so I guess I speak for many of the silent majority, so to speak, when I say what I'm going to say. First of all, I would like to pay you a compliment. I confess I am always an admirer of your wit, humour, intellect and energy in doing good for Hong Kong. However, this is apparently not appreciated, unfortunately, not appreciated by the PRC. So, when you came out here three years ago you had the ideal or the plan, or maybe it is the British Government's plan, to then democratise Hong Kong and apparently, given the recent LegCo Election, you have already achieved what you have set out to achieve. Now, with the remaining 600 or 500-plus days, I guess your relations with the PRC continue to be very important, if not more important. Now, I know of course that you want to improve the relations with China, but how are you going to do it. I mean are you confident in improving your relationship with China given the fact that they don't even want to talk to you rightly or wrongly. Also if I could put it in a clinical if not brutal fashion, would you seriously consider, or are you prepared to consider stepping down like a statesman and making way for somebody who can really, or at least who China can accept. That way I think it will be really in the greater interests of Hong Kong. I am sorry to put it in this fashion, but this is I guess what many local people who really care about Hong Kong want to ask, bearing the interests of Hong Kong in mind.
Governor: Well, I was very grateful for the compliments in the first part of the question and I had a feeling when I was listening to them there was going to be a but, and there was. Just a couple of things. First of all, the policy that I've been pursuing is of course the policy entirely endorsed not just by the British Government but by the House of Commons at Westminster, as well as having the backing of all parties at Westminster. What it amounts to is believing that we should discharge all those promises that were made to people in Hong Kong in the Joint Declaration. Not forcing the pace on democracy but giving people the fair elections which they were promised. So what we are talking about is whether or not the Governor of Hong Kong and the Government of Hong Kong, and the British Government, should try to live up to the promises that were made to people at the time of the Joint Declaration. I'm going to continue to do that for the next 600 days. This isn't going to be, certainly, an easy job now we've got the Legislative Council Elections over. There are going to be continuing problems from time to time and I'm going to be staying here to try to sort those problems out.