The Editor, doubtless admiring my zeal but fearing the backlash, rejected my alternative suggestion for a headline to accompany his excellent post-referendum Message last issue.

“I think we’ll stick with ‘The Voice Of The Future’, Sam,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in a leather armchair in his Gentlemen’s club on Stephen’s Green. “I feel it’s the kind of measured, positive, inclusive statement I wish to make, at this critical and divisive time in our nation’s history,” he continued, refusing to catch my eye, “although, I grant you, it does lack something of the immediacy of your undeniably bold suggestion. What was it again?”

“‘Fuck Off Culchies’,” I explained.

The Editor coughed nervously and called for two more qaudruple brandies. “So, how’s the dungeon coming along in Snort Towers?” he said a little too brightly.

Okay, Sam knows only too well that we all have our personal constituencies to look after but, frankly, after the way the referendum vote split exactly along the great urban/rural faultline, your favourite columnist reckons the time for soft, mushy words is past. Now is the time for decisive action and the wielding of a very big chopper.

Fortified Erection

There can be only one meaningful response to the urban/rural schism and it is this: Samuel J. Snort Esq would today like to proclaim the new Independent Irish Republic Of Dublin (IIROD). Or, to give it its full constitutional title, IIRDWBOWAKTOAACLTGLAC (Independent Irish Republic Of Dublin With Bits Of Wicklow

And Kildare Tacked On And Air Corridor Links To Galway, Limerick and Cork).

Taking for granted the expulsion of all potential “fifth columnists” and the erection of a fortified ring of steel to maintain the borders of the new republic, the benefits of this radical partition will be innumerable. Here are just a few of the more obvious ones to be going on with.

• Now that there are no more culchies in the

city, an end to the all too familiar Friday evening chaos at Heuston Station when they all rush home to have sex with their mothers, after a whole week of having to take it “outside the family”. In fact, thanks to our super-efficient air-corridors, there will be no need for Heuston Station at all, so that fine building will be turned into a state of the art club, called The Night Train, to be run by my businessmen friends, the brothers Hernandez, who will also be doing a nice sideline in happy pills.

• A radical revamp of the GAA. With the association in the new Republic now populated entirely by the enlightened peoples of the East and other urban concentrations, votes at Congress will be effectively decided by a block of young dudes who like a spliff and listen to And You Will Know Them By The Trail Of Dead on their way to county finals. The result? Lovely, lazy summer days watching charity cricket at Croker, as a Rastafarian selection take on the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

• A referendum every month. Sample topics: the legalisation of dope, the legalisation of prostitution, free contraception for all, the legalisation of dope etc etc. The issues will be debated thoroughly on our popular current affairs show Answers and Answers (hosted by Fintan O’Toole with a panel consisting of Fintan O’Toole) and the final results will always be issued in advance of the poll, just for a laugh.

Evil Shite

• An end to illegal toxic dumps. Instead, all our evil shite will be loaded onto boats and sent up around the coast where they will be scuttled off Donegal.

• Going abroad has never been cheaper, especially now that Meath officially qualifies as “abroad”. Not that you’ll want to go there, of course, other than on some kind of anthropological field trip. (“What is that Herr Doctor?” “Ah, how vunderful – zat, my little friend, is a church.”)

• They thought we were in an era of endless coalition government but, no, under the new dispensation Joe Higgins will achieve the first ever one-person overall majority (following an electoral pact with the Greens, Sinn Fein and Ming the Merciless, the latter having been parachuted out of the cruel wilderness i.e. Rural Ireland, into the land of milk and honey i.e. Dun Laoghaire).

• Vastly improved relationships with our friends in the North, now that we have jettisoned the pathetic, sectarian mono-cultural part of the country. To celebrate, our good buddies David Trimble and John Taylor will join us for a typical night out in the capital, during which they will be divested of their clothing, painted day-glo orange from head to toe and tied to a lamp post in Temple Bar. If the multi-cultural excitement is too much for them they can always bugger off back up the M1 to Louth and start a new plantation.

• And, finally, the Angelus will not be removed from our tv screens. Instead, we will play it backwards to give heavy metal fans a good laugh.

Looking forward to seeing you in our new pagan paradise republic, I remain

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq