East is east

As we've mentioned before, The Board pays for his playboy lifestyle of chocolate milkshakes and Jeff Koon baroque eggs by working as a junior reporter with the Limerick Leader.

That's right. Junior.

Anyway, amid the curdling stew of local democracy that currently has this city by the malleus, The Board has been tasked with covering what goes up, on, and sideways in the four-seat Limerick city east ward.

Alas no! He wails.

But luckily it amuses him that city east is home to some of the most intriguing sorts in local politics.

The city south ward is too dense, too dry, too full of future TDs keen to keep all their bridges intact.

The problems in the city north ward are too serious to poke fun at.

But the east is the colourful, beating heart of the city.

We have the 812th Mayor, who in the early 1990s spent his nights turning on water pipes with a big wrench after the council kept turning them off during the charges row.

We have Ginger McLoughlin, the most popular man in Limerick who was once described as having the largest hip bones this side of the 38th parallel.

We have Kieran O'Hanlon, the former PD and now seemingly former Fianna Fail councillor (judging by his campaign literature) who just keeps on winning.

And then we have Buster. Noel Hannan (pictured) has many titles. Some people call him the mayor of Garryowen. Everyone calls him Buster. He doesn't put up posters. He doesn't think he needs to, because everyone knows him. He is popular and swears a lot.

Buster has his eyes on Cllr Kieran Walsh's vacant seat. He might just get it. But so could Denis McCarthy or Christy McInerney or Paddy Mason.

The outcomes and permutations and jibes and darts are too many to count.

2009 is The Board's first experience with covering local elections, and already he knows he hates them as much as Robbie Keane, The Eagles and Roy Orbison.

But if he was to pick one group of men clambering to stand for the heaving soul of Limerick that would make this whole exercise more enjoyable, it would be this lot.

Huzzah for that.