Being stung by the PDs

TWENTY-eight years has always seemed like a long time to me. However, it had not felt to me like a long time since I was last carried in my father’s arms squealing and screaming like a wounded animal having been stung by a wasp. In the intervening 28 years, I have studiously avoided repeating the experience because I remember the pain as being almost life threatening. Summer days sitting in Clare supping a pint, I have been almost pathological in my desire to avoid the black and yellow monsters when they come into view.

Over the years, I have become quite adept at physically urging them to leave my airspace and so when last weekend one swerved into view and attempted to rob our drinks of their sweet sugar, I nonchalantly swept my hand in its direction to knock it off course and confuse it with sheer brute force. This has worked countless times in the past and I had no reason to believe it would not work again.
This occasion arose in the Lake District, where Helen and I were enjoying a weekend with some good friends, the male half of whom is possessed of a debilitating fear of wasps, owing in the most part to his allergy to their sting. As we sat in rare sunshine, sipping a pint and administering love, care and attention to our dog and their child, a wasp decided it might be time to sample the wares we were enjoying.
Unfazed by its presence, I swung an arm in its direction to fling it as far as possible from us and, unlike the hundreds of times I have done it in the past, I found that the beast was caught in my fingers. I continued the movement, digitally extricating it from my grasp and cast it off.
As I turned round, I sensed something was different this time. Clearly something on my face alerted Ted, who asked in a voice laced with heartfelt panic, “Have you been stung?”
After a moment’s consideration, I was able to answer in the resoundingly positive. I had indeed been stung on my little finger. The pain was nothing like I remember, it was more like a dull ache. I can testify truthfully that it is not something I would invite again, more a deeply unpleasant feeling.
I shall never again be scared of being stung but I shall be no less zealous in avoiding their sting than I have been thus far.
The reason I am raising this essentially inconsequential incident is that I feel the same way about the Progressive Democrats as I do about being stung by a wasp. The essential difference is that I am aware that, unlike the sugar-seeking insect, the PDs have the potential to cause genuine damage.
I believe that in 28 years time, I will not have exaggerated the extent of their political threat, I shall remain acutely aware that they are indeed a menace and a gang to be avoided at all costs.
Internet and political gossip in the last few months have been hinting strongly that a new political party may well emerge in Ireland. The concept is a delightful one to me but the accompanying detail of the prospect is far from the same. The general consensus in the press seems to be that the time is right for a new centre or centre-right party to emerge.
From a marketing point of view alone, this is nothing more than gibberish. A marketer would examine the Irish political scene and find Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and state, justifiably, that the centre-right is chock-a-block with vote seekers.
In the 1980s, when the PDs were first formed, there was at least a groundswell of support for low taxation, right-wing politics in Ireland because the public servants of the nation were tired of almost half their wages being taken in tax. Such a situation no longer exists.
In fact, public servants might well be craving a more left-wing political party that would represent them and their unions, as opposed to the flaccid bones of the Labour Party, who seem more likely to defend their moneybox than the worker in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime adversity. From our current standpoint, we can see the damage done to the economy of the country by the kind of economic policy espoused by the PDs.
The sound and thunder around the newest political party in Ireland and its potential leanings all became clear recently when it was reported that the former leader of the thankfully defunct Progressive Democrats was involved in fashioning something from the ruins of his last engagement.
Certainly the man has the right in a democratic society to form whatever sort of party he wishes but any talk of Ireland “needing” a political party led by Michael McDowell and his ilk is the equivalent to a debutant requiring a severe skin rash to gain her first kiss.
Politics in Ireland is wide open simply because it is so narrow. The centre and centre-right is so crowded that there is barely breathing space and the lonely left is an abandoned sepulchre.
There is an enormous amount of space for a new party in Ireland. The trouble is that nobody is looking in the correct places. There is a theory, neither right nor left, which states that the lives of all can be made better. It proposes that a more equal society be built. Let the rich get rich but do not allow those who are poor to lag too far behind them.
This theory, popular with the British Tories before the election, has been rubbished by their think tanks in recent weeks. They can no longer adhere to such a theory as their cuts will bring about the exact opposite consequences.
Lots of people in Britain remember Thatcher but obviously not well enough because they elected the Tories. Ireland should remember the PDs and the damage they did and studiously avoid supporting any reheated, rebranded version of the party, which puts itself forward for election.