Limerick You're a Langer

5th Apr 2012

There was a bit of panic last week on Leeside when it emerged that Limerick’s city and county councils were to merge. This would mean that the Treaty City’s population would exceed that inside the official murrayeah boundaries of Cork city thus the preposterous claim was that Limerick would become the “second city” while Cork “slips to third”.

There were fellas in a terrible tizzy talking about foreign investment being axed and otherwise intelligent Cork lads in suits in near meltdown worrying about the impact this alleged seismic shift in status would have on tourism.

Feens need to calm down and take a step back.

The sun was out last week which caught many Limerick lads and ladies by surprise.

Before we obliterate and destroy this red herring it is worth noting that the unmentioned but heavily implied city in this story is Dublin - the implication being that the Pale is the “first city”. What a laugh. 

This would suggest that other cities and towns are all in some sort of dog-eat-dog battle -desperately clawing for the remaining places on a notional city leaderboard topped by the Dubs.

Firstly, any Corkonian who gets worried about the status of his own city or county needs to cop on to himself. Sure if cities and counties were judged and ranked on population that would imply the Dubs live on the island’s number one city and nobody, probably even the Dubs themselves, believe that for a second.

CAT AND (MICKEY) MOUSE
It reminds us of another classic myth about status – the old yarn that Kilkenny is city. This pretence has gone on for years and nobody in Cork really cares what spin the Cats want to put on their mickey mouse hamlet that consists of two or three streets, a small shopping centre, a GAA pitch, three roundabouts and a nightclub that is only distinguishable from a cattle mart in that the bullocks in the former are not prevented from escaping into the real world by a metal fence.

Kilkenny: still a city, apparently.

SHITTY CENTRE
In fact, Kilkenny is so small that when travelling on the “ring road” that encircles the village you can actually roll down your car window and speak to someone at the opposite end of the ring road. It’s that small - although not as small as Kilkenny people must have felt when their footballers lost 4-30 to 0-4 to footballing giants….London last weekend. Ouch!

Sure, God love us.

If they want to pretend they live in a city it has no affect on us down here in paradise.

LIMERICK YOU’RE A LANGER
Every now and then Limerick gets notions about itself like an obese junior B footballer in his forties who occasionally suggests he might make a “comeback” after a few pints because the young fellas aren’t as good as his generation used to be. 

Crack dealers in Limerick protest against the re-emergence of E's which is killing the market

These notions can be correlated with very brief spells of fine weather, like the bout we had last week. Apparently the rain that falls constantly over Limerick even stopped for a few hours.

As all Corkonians know many Limerick people can die if they get sun on their faces (this is why the Rubberbandits wear plastic bags on their heads) so a lot of Limerick’s criminals, especially drug dealers (which from what we hear in the media seems to be an enormous amount of its citizens) had to go indoors.

A typical Saturday afternoon shopping in Limerick where all shoppers are cavity searched upon entry and exit to the city centre

You might have empathy with those who experienced this temporary euphoria while the streets of Limerick were briefly cleared of knife wielding tracksuited zombies.

Ordinary Limerick people saw the golden rays of sunshine light up their drab city for the first time in years. Burned out cars in the middle of housing estates sparkled like modern art, broken windows glistened prettily in the bright beams falling from the sky and the skin of those out shop lifting for the day didn’t seem quite as sickly pale as usual.

Limerick's premier politician demonstrating the city's traditional welcome routine

The next thing you know the warm weather induced rush of dopamine had Limerick people thinking their city might actually be better than Cork. To be fair most of them aren’t allowed to visit faraway places like Cork because of bail conditions set down by the courts (in fairness no point visiting the Rebel county if you have to be back to sign on at a Garda Station by 5pm every day) so they would only have heard of our greatness.

GERRYMANDERING

Technically Limerick city may have a population now of 187,000 people when their local authorities merge while the area contained by Cork’s “city boundaries” comfortably houses 118,000. Even if we cared about raw numbers we all know that cities are not defined by a Corpo/Council border drawn centuries ago but by where farmer’s fields meet housing estates.

On the southside the city bounds only go as far as Douglas Village so this doesn’t even include the 1.5 million people living in Grange – give or take a few.

Cork: Ireland's most beautiful and friendly city. It's ok to get a stiffy if you're an exile abroad looking at this gorgeous photo.

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY
But to get into trivial arguments about populations is ridiculous. Cities are ranked by quality, not the quantity of people living within imaginary borders that are only known to a few public servants. We’ve had a sack load of independent travel guides heaping praise on Cork while turning their noses up at other hell holes to the north.

And sure if Cork was ranked by population then it wouldn’t be Ireland’s number one city. And it is.
So sit back and relax feens. We’ll always be number wan.