From: The Office of the Chief Executive and Vice-Chancellor

Subject: New Year's Message

Dear Colleagues,

Yes, another old year draws slowly to a close and another new year starts to beckon. But before we ring in the new, let's ring out the old by reflecting on some of the high points of the past 12 months. (Mrs Dilworth - please tidy.)

It was a year in which we sadly had to say goodbye and farewell to 47 of our former academic colleagues. Parting is always such sweet sorrow, but we have the consolation of knowing that those who have left us are now free to develop their distinctive if limited talents in any other area of life than higher education. Good luck and Godspeed to all of them.

Our sadness at the loss of so many academics is, however, undoubtedly tempered by the news that during the year 2007 we successfully appointed another 65 administrative staff. Many of these will be employed in our highly successful Human Resources department, where one of their most pressing tasks will be to organise the restructuring of more academic staff during the coming year.

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In September, we were delighted to open our new Global Warming Institute. This building, which has been generously financed by three leading oil companies (Mrs Dilworth - fill in names) will employ over 50 researchers and take little more than a year to discover that many of the recent pronouncements about global warming have been greatly exaggerated.

One other day that stands out in all our memories was surely the special October graduation day for new graduates from our franchised campus in Chongquing, Inner Mongolia (Mrs Dilworth - check spelling). It was wonderful to see so many happy smiling Mongolian faces and to realise that the University of Poppleton now means something in a part of the world that previously hardly anyone had heard of.

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All that remains is for me to wish you and your families a happy and (subject to the conditions of the Framework Agreement) prosperous New Year.

Let's ring in the new!

The Vice-Chancellor (signed in his absence by Mrs Dilworth).