With a general election just weeks away and the country slowly sinking into a state of blissful oblivion, members of the world media descended on the tiny village of Ballygoback in West Limerick at the weekend for the launch of a new political party, the NPP.

The NPP, (No Policy Party) is the brainchild of local raconteur and part time salmon poacher, Mr Daithi O’Conchubhair, a fluent English speaker and a leading authority on the early influences of peat briquettes on the environment, and their later disastrous effects on global warming.

Mr O’Conchubhair, who is a small farmer, (retired) and who is in receipt of a modest pension from the state, as well as the free travel and electricity, convened a press conference in Din Joe’s Bar and Grill where he outlined his policies. (or lack of them.)

“I will make no election promises.” he told a loud and inebriated audience, still sweating from the exertions of their earlier salsa dance classes. “And I will BREAK no election promises either,” he continued, “which is more than can be said for any of that shower of chancers who are running against me.”

Mr O’Conchubhair then went on to give a detailed analysis of the political and financial state of the nation as he saw it.

“The country” he said “is banjaxed! We might have mass migration and mass education and mass employment and mass deployment, but tell me this. Does anybody go to Mass anymore?”

He went on to say that if elected, he would abolish all taxes. “This is not an electioneering gimmick,” he insisted. “merely a bit of an incentive to get people to vote for me. If we don’t give the government our money, then they can’t squander it. It will but a stop to all the junkets and the Chevrolet shirts. Jaysus, I can’t even afford to buy the second pair of underpants, and herself is worn out from trying to wash the one that I have, every couple of months!”

On the language question, Mr O’Conchubhair is keen to see it restored to its former favoured position as the main means of communication.

“’Tis nothing but Irish now,” he said “and the bit of vernacular has gone out the window. People can’t speak proper English no more. I blame the Irish colleges. They have the students brainwashed, so they have. And what use is it to them? If they go into a restaurant or a supermarket and say ‘Conas ata tu?’ they will get a quare look from the lad behind the counter who is most likely from Poland or Nigeria or Duagh, and who might think he is being subjected to some kind of racial abuse. We should stick to the language we were born with and not be pandering to the gombeen men from Dublin 4 who never danced a polka set or milked a 5-gallon cow in their lives!”

A keen sportsman who once played pitch and toss for the county at junior level, Mr O’Conchubhair regrets that the ban on foreign games was ever lifted. “They let in the rugby and the soccer, and now these lads are prancing around our stadium as if they own the place. ‘Tis good enough for them. I was passing the sports field below yesterday evening and our boys were hurling against Tour in the Junior C competition. I looked in over the ditch, and there was an ould fellow playing in goals for us. He must be sixty if he was a day. And what was he pucking out the ball with? A f***ing cricket bat! Jaysus, I nearly turned in my grave, and I not even dead. A f****ing cricket bat! Did we spend the best days of our youth during the fifties and sixties killing ourselves on the building sites of Birmingham and Coventry, only to come home to watch an ould lad pucking out a sliotar with a f***ing cricket bat! We must bring back the ban and put a stop to all this nonsense or the next thing is they will be playing f***ing polo up in Aras an Uchtaran – on f***ing donkeys!”

Mr O’Conchubhair also deplored the casual use of bad language in everyday conversation which, he claimed, had now reached epidemic proportions. “There is no need for half of the f***ing swearing!“ he declared.

He will commence a heavy canvass of all areas as soon as the election is called. And he has a novel method of looking for support.

“I’ll be using the bit of reverse psychology,” he explained, “and will be asking everyone not to vote for me, and telling them I can do nothing for them and that I have hardly no chance of being elected. That way they might take pity on, me and I could top the poll and get in on the first count”

The NPP will hold their annual Church gate collection every Sunday between now and polling day and Mr O’Conchubhair took the opportunity of appealing to a worldwide audience through Sky News and the BBC to support the new party with both money and votes, but especially money. Their election slogan, painted in large whitewash on the side of a Massey Ferguson tractor and trailer, is “Vote for O’Conchubhair – and elect the hoor!”

We shall continue to monitor and report on the progress of this new and colourful political party over the coming weeks.