Dear All,
Here at the Institute we pride ourselves on keeping the government of the day accountable. Our Policy Review Committee is second to none (although arguably third to quite a number of similar bodies). By applying stringent statistical analysis to election promises and their real world outcomes we have benchmarked world's best practice to the point where total quality control is no longer an issue. So it comes as slight embarrassment to reveal that the head of this august body has actually been dead for the last 18 months. Professor Sydney von Trapp had, in that time, been promoted three times and was mooted as a possible Vice-Chancellor. His protracted silence, which until recently had been admired as canny fence-sitting, was revealed to be advanced putrefaction. The dangers of tenure!
My intention today was to reveal the results of our study into the current government's promise to supply every high school student with a computer. Obviously, our top analyst's rigor mortis (not to be confused with academic rigor, which is an understandable mistake) put paid to such hopes. Fortunately, or to put it another way, fortuitously, a letter chanced across my desk this week from an old friend, the head-mistress of Our Lady of the Reformed Viper School for Girls. I think you will agree that it provides a salutary lesson in the dangers of promises made hastily in the heat of an election campaign.
Dear Sir/Madam (Editor's note: maybe not such a close friend as I believed)
I have retired to the drawing room in the west wing. The east wing has been closed due to an accident with our school computer. You may recall that it was large enough to necessitate the removal of three year ten classes, could calculate the square root of 144 with a week's notice and still have enough memory left over to play a game of Pong. It's much vaunted Chess program was revealed to be a sham. If the computer was losing, a voice simulator would say. "My God! Will you look at that very interesting thing behind you." and then simulate a sneeze that blew all the remaining pieces off the board. Admittedly the large glass valves gave off an attractive glow when operating at full tilt, but the resulting heat killed off 25% of the girls in the class 9G and scorched our priceless collection of Monets painted by Manet.
Subsequently we made a request to the relevant government department for 125 lap-tops. However, a second syllable administrative error resulted in the arrival of a score of chihuahuas, lhasa apsos and shih tzus. Melanie Howitzer, a particularly bright girl in one of the upper forms, has used the dogs in what she calls a canine binary Turing machine. The details are a little sketchy, though the RSPCA are expressing great interest in the results. Maintenance is much easier, involving a number of rolled up newspapers in lieu of an expensive IT department.
This is merely a stopgap measure, though. The bursar is concerned about the level of expenditure on squeaky rubber bones which is 12% higher this financial year. Any advice you can give me on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards and felicitous salutations
Sister Dulcie Dostoevsky.
Thank you for your time.
