The people who have followed what I have written over the years will know that the one thing I come back to, time and again, is that at some point interest rates will rise — a truism admittedly — and that when they do rise they should rise at the correct pace.

This debate has once again been ignited with the arrival of the new Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. Once or twice over the past week Carney has hinted that individuals and businesses need to start preparing themselves for the possibility of a rate rise.

We all know, of course, that a rate rise will come sooner or later but after four years or more of 0.5 per cent Bank Rate, it's human nature to fail to prepare - and we all know what happens when you fail to prepare.

Now even when they do start to rise, I do not expect interest rates to go up sharply. Carney, like his predecessor, King, knows that sentiment and borrowers could be hit hard if this were to happen - and quickly land us right back in the economic mire. In short, no decision on rates will be taken lightly. 

So when might 0.5 per cent interest rates come to an end? Despite strong manufacturing and services sector data this week, let's not kid ourselves - the economy is still delicate. 

For starters, some on the Monetary Policy Committee are still hankering after more QE,and we shouldn't forget that the Eurozone crisis hasn't gone away The spike of 10-year bond yields in Portugal to 8 per cent this week is a stark reminder of how all is not well across the Channel; and as our biggest export market, the UK economy will always be deeply sensitive to the Eurozone.

Let's not forget that many households are still significantly leveraged. There's a lot of debt in the economy, and it needs to be managed carefully.

These threats, and the fact that the 'recovery' of the economy is still very tentative, are more than enough to brush aside concerns of stubbornly high inflation.

All in all, despite Carney's hints of higher rates, and robust new data from the manufacturing and services sectors - I cannot believe that 12 months from now rates will have changed materially, or certainly be any higher than 1 per cent. There's just too much at stake.

What's most important of all, is that when rates do finally start to go up, they go up organically and at the same pace at which the economy is recovering. That, more than anything perhaps, will be Carney's biggest challenge.