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cc. All Staff@popp.a...

I hope that you are refreshed by the summer break and are preparing for this university's strategic objectives in the next academic year. To further such implementation, I am now issuing the following post-break guidelines.

1. All staff should refrain from using the word "holiday" in formal communications. The appropriate term is "mandatory leave" e.g. "I regret that I have been unable to deal with your complaint about the class of your daughter's degree until now because of the requirements of mandatory leave" rather than "Sorry not to have got back to you but I've been on holiday in Tuscany".

2. All postcards from mandatory-leave locations should now be removed from office walls. Their continued presence implies a lack of current seriousness and can engender unnecessary concern among those members of staff who have only been generically addressed as in the formulation "To Dr Quintock, Maureen, et al".

3. All staff are once again reminded of their statutory obligation to remain "within administrative contact" during mandatory leave. This year the following staff proved impossible to contact during August: Professors: Dobbing, Tucson, Litewaite, Hemming, Porteous, Lapsang and Noblett; and Doctors: Cardwell, Dutton, Reggay, Jimpson, Caldwell, Pasture and Frimling.

(It is perhaps a reflection on their inadequacy that more effective communication was made by an academic who is not even listed in our prospectus - Grodon Lupping the Fourteenth.) 4. Please note that the Code of Conduct prohibits the use of "expressions of a cynical nature that might undermine the university's commitment to evidence-based instrumentality",extends to such post-mandatory leave formulations as "Back to the grindstone" and "Where's the old ball and chain".

Yours in pursuance of key objectives.

Jamie Targett

Director of Corporate Development