Board members, particularly when their company is not doing well, are never more appreciative of the need to measure their words at annual general meetings. Last week's Silvermines outing was no exception, and the chairman, Mr Bob Morton, was often at pains to steer the meeting through the probings, observations and diffident voting of the shareholders. Mr Morton, in fact, had to point out that he would not be so obtuse as to hold a meeting in either Skye, the Isle of Wight, or Orkney, if a resolution giving the engineering and technology company the option to hold the a.g.m. in Britain was passed.

When pressed on his statement for the stock exchange and the "expectations" which would follow in comparison to last January's profit warning, Mr Morton was at his most careful: "In terms of expectations, the expectations which are reflected in this statement will not be the expectations which were expected in the previous statement." So there.