From the Here is the City website, a note from ‘The Management’ re the possibility of a Christmas party:

‘As you are already aware, due to the fact that investors are upset with us over the firm’s stock price (and the government is pretty miffed as it had to bail us out), earlier this year we decided to cancel our annual staff Christmas bash.

Many of you have, however, expressed anger at this decision, especially as some of our rivals have covertly arranged parties out of the public eye. And this year has been a difficult one to say the least – cheap food in the canteen is no more, cabs home are a thing of the past, and that lovely luxury toilet paper we have used for years has been replaced by something more akin to sandpaper. Not to mention that the chats we all used to enjoy around the water coolers are no more – as there are no longer any water coolers. And the tea and biccies in the meeting rooms have also been canned, along with the fruit trolley. The bar outside the canteen has also been mothballed.

We do appreciate that a year-end p.ss up, and an opportunity to make inappropriate comments to females colleagues, is the only fun many of our male staff are likely get this Christmas. And, as many of you have correctly pointed out, being totally tanked up and violently sick at the bank’s expense has become something of a tradition, and freezing your socks off late at night, whilst being ignored by countless black cabs as you attempt to get a ride home, is good for morale. Furthermore, isn’t it only appropriate to raise our glasses in honour of the thousands of our colleagues who never came back to their desks this year, after having received a telephone call from an anonymous staffer in HR asking them to go up to one of the executive meeting rooms for a brief chat ?

With all this in mind, we have had a rethink. A quick calculation has revealed that, for the cost of rather less than 50 risk management staff, we can push the boat out again this year, after all. So, go find your dancing shoes, we’re gonna drink and party like there’ll be no 2009!’

Absolutely.