Cork city councillor stonewalling his constituents

Cycling in Cork. That’s a topic I could write on and on and on about. Oh, wait. I have. To claim that it is being treated with disinterest and ignorance by some, and outright hostility and derision by others would be the understatement of the year. And given the fact that I’m writing this in the waning days of 2018, I have a quite a bit of reference material to go by. However, so far, every serious political player here in  Leeside had at least provided lip service to alternative, sustainable transport options. Until Friday evening.

Enter Joe Kavanagh, member of Fine Gael and city councillor for the electoral ward of Cork North East. For those of you who don’t know Cork, this effectively covers everything north of the Lee and east of the N20, with a few exceptions around MacCurtain Street. Just a rough outline, but you get the area. Mr. Kavanagh has traditionally not been one of the more progressive councillors in Cork, which in itself isn’t bad. As much as I love progress and as much as I am in favour of a radical redevelopment of Cork, not every new idea is a good one, and voices of caution are often needed. However, when it comes to cycling, Mr. Kavanagh has shown a decidedly mean streak, all but exploding with glee when he could latch onto a cycling-critical caller on Cork’s 96FM, one of the local radio stations in this area, about cyclists running red lights, which is a real problem, even die-hard cycling supporters will tell you that. However, when asked by cyclist and pro cycling activists to turn his attention to other road users who are violating the rules, such as cars or taxis blocking bike lanes, you know, the parts of the road that cyclists should have for themselves in order to minimise accidents, he has not shown any willingness to engage or even reply to those who brought them to his attention on social media. A thread by Twitter user @CorkCyclist shows that this goes back all the way to 2017, so this is not new behaviour.

This is where things get interesting. In response to Councillor Kavanagh’s tweet dated February 1st, 2018, Cork Cycling Campaign, a pro-cycling advocacy group, reached out to him on Twitter in early December 2018 as to whether he could help with the seemingly endless problem of cars parking in the Alfred Street bike lane, something that has been getting under my personal skin as a Coke Zero Bikes user for quite some time. Once again, there was no reply. Then, on December 28th, a very interesting tweet appeared on my timeline. Councillor Joe Kavanagh had simply blocked them. Several Twitter users who follow the group, reached out to him, and were promptly blocked as well. I myself did so just before 10 P.M. on Friday evening, not really expecting much. By the morning of Saturday, December 29th, I had joined the illustrious round of users blocked by Mr. Kavanagh. 

Well, at least my private account was. I run a dedicated account to promote my blogs and other social media activities which is still unaffected, though that will probably change once I publish this post.  By the way, it is perfectly within the limits of Twitter’s Terms & Conditions to have multiple accounts, just in case anyone tries to claim that I’m somehow being duplicitous or dishonest. I decided to follow this whole thing more closely, and sure enough, as the day wore on, more and more users ended up being blocked by Mr. Kavanagh. Some were just bog-standard Twitter users, some were cycling activists, and some were candidates of other political parties running in the upcoming 2019 local elections, in which Mr. Kavanagh is running for re-election on the Fine Gael ticket. He even went so far as to block @RandomCorkStuff, a completely non-cycling-related account with over 13000 followers, after they had simply asked him for a comment.

Now all of this in itself is irritating and worrying enough. A city councillor should have no reservations about engaging with their constituents and with advocacy groups, especially when these groups are as reasonable and civilised as the Cork Cycling Campaign is. However, a tweet that I came across while browsing on my blogging account turns this whole affair from a simple PR disaster into full blown Trump territory. In this tweet, the good councillor states that he simply blocked a few accounts due to the “negativity of their comments”, adding that these were without any foundation.

Wow. That is rich! I have added some screenshots of some of the comments to this post, so you can see the supposed “negativity” yourself. In one case, namely @RandomCorkStuff, the reply simply read “Any comment?” Now, I may be overly naïve, but I fail to see how these two words, from an account that simply spreads some Pure Cork stuff throughout twitter, could be in any way negative. Not to mention the original request by the Cork Cycling Campaign to simply use his contacts as a city councillor to get some sort of increased policing of the cycle lane on Alfred Street. And what about Elisa O’Donovan, a candidate for the Social Democrats running in the Limerick City West electoral ward, who never had any contact with Mr. Kavanagh? How is she spreading negativity?

He seemingly contradicts himself in a conversation with Cian Ginty, the stalwart driving force behind IrishCycle.com later on the 29th, stating “I have no idea what these people are talking about to be honest. I have never supported ‘motorists parking in cycle lanes’ or parking in any illegal fashion anywhere or at any time.” So first, he states that he has blocked a few accounts for “negativity”, while later he claims he has no idea what all the fuss is about? Not to mention that he apparently stonewalled the question as to why he had blocked the Cork Cycling Campaign in the first place. With this behaviour, Mr. Kavanagh has gone from simply being unable to handling different viewpoints into potentially dangerous territory for him in my opinion. I certainly find his statement about spreading negativity as the reason for blocking numerous accounts, including mine, to be highly inappropriate and indeed insulting.

This whole affair is extremely worrying on multiple levels. There is the obvious level, namely the disdain shown towards a significant part of the electorate by an elected representative. When serving as a city councillor, or indeed in any public office, elected or not, it is vital that the office holder is able to grasp opposing viewpoints on a particular topic and look for common ground. This means that any public official must also be willing to engage with advocacy groups that may not share the same viewpoints as you yourself might have. The political system that underpins most of the western democracies is built on compromise, and simply shutting down any communications with certain sectors of the electorate undermines the very foundation of representative democracy. Stonewalling those that do not agree with you, and THEN accusing them of being counterproductive and negative is outright sabotage of those foundations, and not a smart move in the run-up to an election.

It also highlights a worrying lack of knowledge or even awareness about the massive changes going on with regards to mobility right now. More and more people, especially in my generation and younger, are not necessarily interest in owning a car or driving somewhere. It is simply too expensive, and too much of a hassle in an urban environment, though I get why it is still necessary in rural areas, especially given the “excellent” levels of service provided by Bus Éireann. Cycling is seen as a viable alternative by more and more people, I know how much the availability of Coca Cola Zero Bikes opened up the city to me even in its current castrated form. It is vital that city planners and officials plan accordingly, especially in a city like Cork, that is still tied down by its corsage of medieval streets, and never got the “benefits” of being flattened by US and UK bombers. Stonewalling cycling advocates and pushing for a retention of the car-centric status quo, in a city that simply wasn’t built for cars, is not just backward minded, but also puts the viability of Cork city as a whole at risk. In Dublin, large employers like Google, VoxPro, Vodafone, Alstom, or the Dalata and Radisson hotel groups have already thrown their weight behind an initiative called Cycling Works Dublin, and it is only a matter of time before a similar group becomes active here in Cork. 

Finally, and most worryingly, this whole mess shows a complete lack of understanding of how social media as a whole work, and how important it is to control your personal narrative. By blocking someone on Twitter, you don’t shut down their account, you simply prevent them from seeing what you do, and from interacting with you. On the same note, you yourself lose the ability to see what the other person is doing, what he is posting, or from replying to any statements that that person might make. You lose the ability to control the narrative, how your image is viewed, and possibly modified, by others. In a time when it is all too easy for a shitstorm to kick off, and in a time when these online outrages have real-world consequences, the inability to control or influence your own narrative is a significant loss. This is all the more true when you’re in the public spotlight, as elected officials are bound to be. Willingly giving up this ability just to blot out parts of a public conversation you don’t want to deal with is nonsensical, and indeed counterproductive. This is the type of behaviour I would have expected from a rural councillor in Lower Ballygonowhere, but not from a councillor in Ireland’s second largest city.

So where do we stand at the end of this? Well, as of this morning, Mr. Kavanagh has blocked a total of 30 accounts, according to a tweet by Cork Cycling Campaign this morning, with criticism of his actions, and efforts to ensure he isn’t re-elected gaining momentum. This might very well be the last stand for him, and those that sympathise with his point of view. Make no mistake, change is coming to Cork, and those who oppose it will, in the long term, find themselves in the metaphorical ditch.